Overcrowding in prisons should not be considered cruel and unusual because they are not being harmfully affected enough for it to make a difference in their lives. This is definitely not as bad as the electric chair or other forms of cruel and unusual punishment.
The Dictionary definition of cruel and unusual punishment is “torture, deliberately degrading punishment, or punishment that is too severe for the crime committed.” Let’s look between the lines of this definition. Deliberately means to do something on purpose. The Warden and all other prison employees are not purposely overcrowding prisons. They are actually trying to make more space by letting some people go which means that they do care, despite contrary belief. Degrading means when someone feels humiliated. Yes, maybe in prisons when it’s really crowded the prisoners privacy may be taken away, but there shouldn’t be privacy in prisons anyway. They all did something to get in there and they need to be watched at all times because they have proved to
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However, do people believe people are mentally damaged when sent to things such as church camps, or have big families? They are usually packed into rooms with multiple people and limited privacy. If parents still send their kids to camps and they return just fine how are the prisoners any different? There is no scientifically proven proof that the reason some of the prisoners are mentally unstable is due to overcrowding. It could be remorse, stress, or even just loneliness. “Expert Frank Porporino summarized some of the literature on prison affects stating ‘the evidence indicates that imprisonment is not generally or uniformly devastating’.” When even experts think that prison overcrowding is not devastating the prisoners that shows a lot. This means that not only is it not cruel and unusual, it isn’t going to change them any more than a smaller populated prison