COMPLAINTS FROM DEATH ROW SYMPTOMATIC OF SICK SYSTEM

I was appalled after reading "Death Row inmates say their cells too hot"
(Aug. 8). Being tough on crime is one thing, but treatment bordering on
torture is unconscionable. Forcing inmates to stand in toilets and sleep
naked on concrete floors to beat 100-degree heat is more than just inhumane
treatment. Most Floridians would be outraged if their pets were treated the
same way.

Who looks out for the humane treatment of those behind bars? Certainly not
the lawyers for the attorney general's office who claim that these
conditions "are not severe enough to violate the constitution," or Caryl
Killinski, the state attorney in this case, who stated that "it gets warm
in any building not air-conditioned." I wonder if she puts her feet in the
toilet while she works in her office?

With 2 million people behind bars (an international disgrace), Americans
should be concerned more about alternatives to prison, and not with laws
that incarcerate more and more people. The cost to taxpayers for building
more prisons is minimal compared with the price we pay as a society.

Under the law, inmates are afforded the right to medical care and
reasonable accommodations but not luxuries. Prisons are not comfort zones,
as some believe. A quick tour of a local prison would dispel that notion.
But, with most civil rights taken away, inmates (mostly impoverished
minorities) are at the mercy of those who care least. And as citizens, we
should be concerned about not only how inmates are treated but the price
being paid by children of inmates, their families and society as a whole.

I believe in law and order and incarcerating those who break the law. But,
our penal systems ignore the reality of the reentry of the majority of the
2 million criminals behind bars, who are put back on the streets of Florida
and America by the hundreds of thousands each year. Considering that we
have abandoned rehabilitation as a method of preventing a return to prison,
the lack of training in job skills and adequate drug-rehabilitation
programs, the question we have to ask ourselves is this: How will these
felons view fellow citizens when they are released?