Prison Conditions in the United States

After visits to more than twenty institutions in the United States and Puerto Rico, including state, INS, and federal prisons as well as jails, Human Rights Watch concludes that the most troubling aspect of the human rights situation in U.S. prisons could be labelled "Marionization." Thirty-six states have followed the example of the maximum security prison in Marion, Illinois, to create super maximum security institutions.

The states have been quite creative in designing their own "maxi-maxis" and in making the conditions particularly difficult to bear, at times surpassing the original model. As a result, inmates are essentially sentenced twice: once by the court, to a certain period of imprisonment; and the second time, by the prison administration to confinement in "maxi-maxis" under extremely harsh conditions and without independent supervision.

The increasing use of prisons within prisons" leads to numerous human rights abuses and frequent violations of the U.N.

Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. The United States imprisons more than a million of its citizens at any given time, a larger number than any other country is known to imprison anywhere in the world.

In this report, Human Rights Watch makes a series of recommendations regarding the human rights aspects of imprisonment in the United States.