Introduction: Analyzing the Problem
             The treatment of prisoners causes few legal problems for the government of a dictatorship. A government that refuses to acknowledge the human rights of even its law-abiding citizens is not likely to show too many qualms about shoving its criminals into overcrowded and unsafe prisons – or even to worry about whether the niceties of due process were considered in getting the person to prison to begin with. But the rule of constitutional law changes all that. Because we live in a country in which the rule of law is for the most part respected, the police, the court and prison officials – and the rest of us as well – must recognize prisoners are people who have broken the social contract. But still people like the rest of us. It is from this recognition of our common humanity that the belief in rehabilitation and the rights of prisoners to receive educational, vocational and other rehabilitative services arises. And – perhaps most important of all – it is from such a base of beliefs that arises the idea that an ordinary prison term should not be a death sentence. However, this last assumption is becoming less and less true as more and more prisoners contract AIDS while they are incarcerated.
             There is a need for change in the way in which people are sentenced and once they are in prison the way in which they are housed and the way in which drug rehabilitation programs and health is provided to inmates. However, this is likely to prove to be difficult to do given the fact that those stakeholders – prisoners, their families and advocates – who wish to make changes have far less power than those stakeholders – prison officials, politicians, much of the public – who wish things to remain the same.
             The common condition of imprisonment is that there is very little choice in every aspect of life. This is also true for medical care, where prison authori...