Prisons hold more inmates than they were built to hold.  Prisons cannot afford the staffing they need to keep both staff and inmates safe.  Thus.  An inmate killed another inmate in the overcrowded Menard Correctional Center in Illinois this week.  More than half the crowded inmates at Menard are there as punishment for murder. John Maki, director of the prison-monitoring John Howard Association, says Menard has a long list of problems: “This is why everything matters in prisons. Why food matters in prisons. Why medical care matters in prisons. Why staffing levels — because they are such tense and course of places, that when something goes wrong, it can spark really bad things.”

http://news.wsiu.org/post/prison-group-says-conditions-tense-menard