There are prisons, into which whoever looks will, at first sight of the people confined there, be convinced, that there is some great error in the management of them; the sallow meagre countenances declare, without words, that they are very miserable; many who went in healthy, are in a few months changed into emaciated dejected objects. Some are seen pining under diseases, “sick and in prison;” expiring on the floors, in loathsome cells, of pestilential fevers, and the confluent small-pox; victims, I must say not to the cruelty, but I will say to the inattention, of sheriffs, and gentlemen in the commission of the peace.
The cause of this distress is, that many prisons are scantily supplied, and some almost totally unprovided with the necessaries of life.
–John Howard (1777), The State of the Prisons in England and Wales, with an Account of Some Foreign Prisons
May the return of the light this season, and this year, bring some light to our correctional policy.
Happy Holidays, and a Happy New Year,
Hadar
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