It’s easy to underestimate the brutality of boredom, but people in prison will tell you that keeping your mind occupied is essential to survival. Paulette Fiedler, a 69-year-old prisoner at Logan Correctional Center in Illinois, keeps her mind alive by reading — she plows through book after book. So, Fiedler said, when she got cataracts in both eyes, she wanted them fixed as soon as possible. But the prison doctor told her that she’d have to make a choice. Which eye did she want fixed, the right one or the left one? Multiple Illinois prisoners say they have been denied eye surgery because of a “one good eye” policy that only entitles them to have one functioning eye. James Cox said he entered Illinois’ prison system with perfect eyesight. But in 2015 he got in a fight with another inmate at Pinckneyville Correctional Center who knocked him upside the head with a hardcover book, hitting his eyeball. The pupil dilated so wide, it looked as if one of his blue eyes had chang...
Striving for a World without Capital Punishment