Prisoners right of access to the courts is being limited, as a result, prison conditions will become harsher and more punitive. In Georgia, a senior prison official watched while guards brutally beat handcuffed inmates. Correctional officers in California encouraged combat between prisoners by placing rival gang members together in the prison yard and then shot inmates when they fought. The practice of overcrowding cells and subjecting prisoners to unsafe and unsanitary living conditions also continues to exist. Prisoners accorded the opportunity to acquire knowledge and skills are better equipped to resist a life of crime once outside of prison and more likely to gain employment and become self-sufficient.
Programs treating alcohol and drug addiction have a similar impact in rehabilitating prisoners.
Eighty percent of prisoners are convicted of crimes because of substance abuse. Children locked up in adult facilities are eight times more likely to commit suicide, five times more likely to be sexually attacked and twice as likely to be assaulted by staff than juveniles confined in a juvenile facility. Adult institutions also lack the same type of programs and services that juvenile facilities provide to rehabilitate young offenders. Essentially, by incarcerating child offenders with adults we are giving up on the future of these children. The likelihood they will return to crime rises when they are initially imprisoned in an adult institution.