The other day I read a story about a prisoner (pictured above) who died of dehydration. That got me thinking, how does an inmate die from not having enough water? To die of dehydration takes days of not having water, and the math doesn't add up. Science usually agrees that it takes about three days to die of dehydration, but this took seven! Does that mean the guards were torturing him by giving him just enough water to keep him alive? I decided to find out more about prisoners rights in the United States, and here's what I found. Here are some details on the case, thanks to the New York Times: -Terrill Thomas was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and had been put in solitary confinement. -There was an order to cut off the water to his cell. -Thomas had previously been known to flood his cells by clogging the toilet. -He was given food, but no drink at all to go with it. So far we don't know if anyone is getting into trouble. Prisoner rights are a huge issue in the United States. The 8th amendment says that we are protected from cruel and unusual punishment, but what does that even mean? Is solitary confinement cruel? It sounds like it to me. My research showed that over time we have changed the definition of what cruel and unusual means, from "drowning and quartering" in 1848 to the electric chair in more recent history. So my question is, what punishments are okay and what punishments aren't? Personally, I think everyone deserves at least some rights and should be told what is happening to them before and after. I agree that people with worse crimes should have less rights in prison, but they still have the right to live and drink water and eat food. I think they still have the right to not be tortured, because being in prison is already a form of torture. I think that maximum security prisons for people who committed violent acts should have very few rights - just the basics like food, water, a mattress and a toilet. If someone only committed a non-violent smaller crime, I think they should have more of the rights of a normal person. They're already paying a big price by being locked up so we don't need to take everything in their life away for a small mistake.
0 Comments
The other day, when the terrorist attack in London happened, I decided to do some digging to see how different news companies were covering the event. I checked out the MSNBC website and compared it to the Fox News site. They were totally different! On Fox News, the first story headline was about the "Terror Attack in London." There were other stories that had already been posted saying that Trump was right all along to ban immigrants from seven Muslim countries. Some stories even went further than that in support of Trump. On MSNBC there was a very different look. The first headline had nothing to do with the recent 'terror attack,' and instead was about Trump's inability to do his job. In fact, the breaking news story of the London Terror Attack was the FOURTH ARTICLE DOWN on the homepage, and this was only hours after it had happened. I thought it was very interesting that MSNBC does nothing but hate on Trump, while Fox News seemed to do the exact opposite. While all these news sites are competing against each other and disagreeing with each other, they could be trying to work together to figure out how to compromise and provide better, more complete news to the people. And Generation NEWS will be here to provide you as much complete and accurate news as we can from the perspective of a teenager.
|
|