Just as there are fraternal organizations such as the Jaycees, Elks and Shriners in your community, inside many of Pennsylvania's prisons there are "inmate organizations." The public-spirited prisoners who are interested in helping the community form and join such organizations. Prison administrators permit the organizations not out of any interest to helping the prisoners or the public. Prison administrators do it for the money. Inside the prisons the inmate organizations earn money. Some comes from dues, as much as $10 a year when the prisoner's yearly income is under $200. Most of the organizations' income comes from "sales" and projects. Prisoners are treated so badly and deprived of so much that many will happily buy little treats, donuts, for example or hoagies, or a Blacks' favorite, bean pies. Prisoners scrap together a few dollars, mostly from their struggling families and from prison sweatshop jobs that pay 19 cents an hour. The profits from the projects and sales appear to belong to the inmate organization, but that's just a pretext. The organizations can't really use the money they earn. Prisoner organizations would often like to help their members or help all the prisoners in the institution, or even help to correct the many, MANY flaws in the criminal justice debacle. All that is forbidden. In most prisons the organizations may only spend their profits where the prison warden, the superintendent (as they like to be called) allows the money to go. What that means is that the administrator has a slush fund that he manipulates to funnel money into causes and vendors that will make him look good in the local community. In one prison, for example, the superintendent wanted organizational earnings doled to his buddies inside the county (which I won't name for fear of retaliation) in which his prison is located. If the prison system is really making an effort to develop socially constructive traits and to rehabilitate former offenders, it should encourage "inmate organizations." It should allow the prisoners to help themselves and their community (which is, after all, the prison in which they live). It should encourage them to spend their money in any lawful ways they wish, to help any lawful cause and/or to promote changes in the imprisonment racket to make it more humane and effective.

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