If you don't believe in human rights for criminals, you don't believe in human rights.

A moral measure of society is how it treats those of the lowest status. In the US, that's criminals. As much as we might want to see them as monsters or demons or evil incarnate, they're human.

Compassion should be unconditional. Crimes against incarcerated criminals are still crimes. Yet they're largely omitted from the news, public discourse, and most importantly the justice system. Rapists are sent to prison only to continue to rape inmates with largely no consequences. That's backwards.

Human rights is essential to ethics. It's abhorrent that people condone suffering, whatever the crime. That's vengeance, glorified in movies, but ultimately petty. That's a "two wrongs make a right" mentality. Taking satisfaction in another's misery is the definition of sadism.

Ignoring basic human rights is shameful and ignorant because it's nothing more than a hateful and contemptuous emotional reaction. There's no logic or reason to it. It serves no higher purpose. Nothing of practical or moral value is accomplished by violating human rights.

Prisons are supposed to be correctional. A punitive system doesn't work. Capital punishment doesn't deter murder. Longer sentences actually increase recidivism. Of course, for the safety of the public, lock criminals up. But treat them like the human beings they are.

Further reading:

• One out of 25 people sent to death row is innocent.
• Bryson Martel. Convicted of check fraud. Sentenced to 9 months. Raped by 25 inmates. Contracted HIV. No compensation. Died of AIDS-related complications.
• Prison slave labor?

Credit to Noam Chomsky for formulating a similar idea about free speech: “If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.”

Update: A friend alerted me to this Dostoevsky quote: "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons."