|
Jeffrey Beard, the current Secretary of Corrections,
has issued a regulation to punish prisoners for being old, crippled
or sick. He has ordered a 30% reduction in the tiny stipend they
receive from the state to buy their essentials of life.
For years sick prisoners who were not able to safely work within the prison were allotted a measly 72 cents per day (less than a cup of vending machine coffee), $3.60 per week. The disabled prisoners used the trifling sum to buy soap, shampoo and similar essentials. Jeffrey Beard has ordered that disabled prisoners, the crippled, sick and old, will now receive only 50 cents a day or $2.50 a month! What could possibly justify such cold hearted cruelty? Beard wants to pinch pennies at the expense of the disabled. How much money will the Secretary of Corrections save? Not enough to pay for his fancy state car; not enough to pay the medical benefits of one guard, not enough to carpet Beard's office or repaint the mammoth parking lot at central office. Taxpayers spend about $90.00 a day for each of the almost 42,000 prisoners in the Pennsylvania prison system. Where does that money go? Not to the prisoners. Their stingy meals cost less than 35 cents apiece. You know yourself how little 35 cents can buy? Where does the rest of the $90 a day go? Almost all of it goes to the staff, over $3,000,000.00 a day! In most civilized cultures, the elderly, the sick and the crippled are cared for; their time is eased. Not in Jeffrey Beard's prison system. Even a sick prisoners may need to buy a few necessities, socks, underwear, paper, a pen... Most of the sick prisoners are older people. They no longer have family on the streets who can help support them. These old and sick persons are wards of the public, of you! I wonder if you're as calculating as Jeffrey Beard. Are you proud to have stolen 22 cents a day from a cripple? an invalid? The sick and old prisoners have nothing to do. They languish in their dreary cells. Jeffrey Beard has arranged it so they can't even watch television. They can't afford to pay for the cable service let alone buy a set. In order to pad the payroll and hire even more overpaid and under worked staff, Beard is starving the prisoners and seriously curtailing their programs and medical care. His most recent and most shameful ploy is to take out his failures and mismanagement on the most helpless prisoners, the invalids. You are welcome to use or republish
any of our material.
|