I'm not trying to provoke the cos, I was just curious for the sake of fiction:

Would being incarcerated in the negative zone constitute cruel/unusual punishment or violate Geneva?

I can't think of any reason why it would be.
You might have a case with the whole negative-emotion-thing, but then being in a regular prison is also seriously depressing.

Are we talking 42 from the comics when it was first introduced or 42 from the Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes cartoon? I know they seem exactly the same, but there are some subtle differences.

In both cases there doesn't seem to be a workout area and the prisoners never seem to leave thier cells. I think that could be a problem. Being in the negative zone itself though I don't think would be a problem though. I'm not sure though. You are taking US citizens and placing them in a prison that is not on US soil and thus not beholden to US laws. You are forcing citizens to leave the country for thier imprisonment. That might be a violation of some sort. I'm not familiar enough with that aspect of the law to know for sure.

I'm pretty sure that being stuffed into another dimension is unusual. Since the negative zone affects you in negative ways emotionally, it is also cruel. There is also the time dilation issue where two weeks pass in the negative zone for every hour on Earth.

Note that they are called Correctional Facilities not Punishment Facilities. The stated objective of a prison is to yield a contributing member of society after the prison sentence. Sticking someone in the negative zone seems like it would make them worse.

There has always been a schizophrenic divide on this issue. One side wants prisoners to be rehabilitated back into society and so they push for humane treatment, jobs training, counseling, and education (I was surprised to learn how many prisoners go for their GED's!). The other side wants the prisoners to suffer as a consequence for their crime, and so they push for more isolation, the removal of any luxury (like a television set), and are typically OK with forced labor. For that later group, prisons are 'Punishment Facilities'.

The Negative Zone seemed much more like an Oubliette (literally, "Forgotten Place") - just a place to dump someone and forget they exist; the ultimate banishment.

I can see jailers spinning it as "we only put them in the can for a couple hours, then we feed them and put them back in." What they don't say is that 2 hours in the negative zone is a month and they would have starved to death around the 29th minute mark.

When I saw this, I thought. "Negative Zone: right, that place that Superman used to send bad people to. No wait, that's the Phantom Zone. The negative zone is the Marvel version that looks like space."

And I get here and I have no idea what it is.

...off to wikipedia, I suppose.

Hmm, there was a lot in the article that I'd never heard of before. I just remembered seeing an empty, but breathable, space. I didn't know there were inhabitable worlds, etc.

I would allow it under the umbrella of voluntary exile versus say a death sentence or life without parole (death by old age or prison violence.) The prisoner gets to live the rest of their life 'free' in an unforgiving place. The cost savings would be huge, the security absolute, and the sentence final. The perpetrator effectively ceases to exist. I'm sure some victims would be quite happy with the prisoner never being a part of our society again.

By making it a voluntary option you can negate some of the cruel and unusual aspects of the punishment. After all deportation/exile is not unusual all by itself.

Of course, the next fun question is what happens when non-criminal volunteer such as explorers, spouses, cultists, etc. I imagine children would not be allowed.
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TAZ

There is no absolute security short of death - not even that in the comic book world.