I feel like they should prescribe sunlight for prisoners. I was held for 10 years without seeing the sun, and many jails and prisons are built on budgets that don't allow for any sunlight.
Do you mean that your cell didn't have sunlight or that you literally never went outside? I was watching a documentary on ADX Florence, which is known for its maximum-security isolation, and prisoners were allowed one hour outside per day.
Yeah, the ADX guys sued to get that back. They lost it at some point and went years without. I tried to sue, but it is almost impossible to sue for lack of sunlight because you need to employ expert witnesses to even have a chance to prove that lack of sunlight is harmful to your health.
I was held in cells without windows for five years. The other five the cells had windows but were so dirty that practically no sunlight entered. Never went outside. Maybe a total of 10 hours outside in 10 years. The first five years in a facility where they didn't design any outside into it because it was built in the middle of a downtown area and there wasn't space. The other five in a facility that had large outside areas but no staff to organize corralling a whole cellblock of inmates, getting them through the corridors of the buildings to the outside, monitoring them so they didn't escape and then getting them back. That requires a lot of staff, and most jails and prisons are vastly understaffed.
At some point when it is all over I will write about it. I've not been to trial yet - so this 10 years was while unconvicted waiting for trial, which is even more insane. It's not even the worst of it, IMO. When I finally got out I started working for criminal justice charities on various issues, and I started getting harassed by the police. They would literally come and drag me out of my house every single day of the week and arrest me and cuff me behind my back on the street (this is the USA too, not some Third World dictatorship!) and then let me go a few minutes later. Eventually they arrested me and I served another five months simply because I Tweeted about the harassment. There was nothing illegal about it, but a judge in the USA can do whatever he wants, so there you go.
