Mister Johnston made good his storybook escape from the prison's "hole," the ultra-high security jail within the jail used to harass, punish and abuse prisoners whom the prison administrators dislike. The 48 year-old Johnston made fools of prison officials (which is by no means hard to do) by effecting his escape from one of the worst and one of the worst managed prisons in the state.

SCI-Huntingdon is run by a staff of vindictive, bumbling oafs headed by the comedy team of Frederick Frank and Clint Myers. Like much of the Pennsylvania DOC they have an utterly screwed-up set of priorities.  They seem to be motivated purely by personal biases and pettiness instead of by what is in the public good. Both of them along with intellectual giants like Captain Dean Forshey and U.M. Joel Keller should have been dumped years ago.

Effective prison administration requires practical, clear-headed good judgment and well defined priorities. The staff at SCI-Huntingdon has none of those talents. They hold violent personal grudges over trivial matters. They are more interested in causing harm to disfavored prisoners whom they personally dislike rather than to serving the public interest.

In my case, the staff punished me for years in retaliation for my being an author and being critical of them. They respond poorly to criticism. I've spent over 21 years in prison for a rather minor offense.

But what about Norman Johnston? He was convicted of murder and sentenced to life. There can be no serious question but that he was a dangerous man; probably as dangerous as some state cops. He spent 20 years in prison. That's plenty even for murder. The system should have been grooming him into being a good citizen. Instead, for those 20 years at SCI-Huntingdon and at other Pennsylvania hellholes, he was tormented and prodded and hardened.

Now Mister Johnston has escaped. Do you figure he's a better person after 20 years of torture and suffering at the hands of Freddy Frank and the other buffoons of the prison system? How would you respond after 20 years of abuse? You wouldn't want to get even or get revenge on the system which had tormented you, would you?

You can suppose that the escaped former murderer, Norman Johnston, isn't real fond of the system. Do you think that after 20 years of the gentle ministrations of Freddy Frank and his sadistic cohorts, Mister Johnston is a better, gentler person?

While the vindictive bumblers of the SCI-Huntingdon prison administration were tormenting me, Norm and hundreds of others, they should have been helping us become useful citizens. If Freddy and his boss Secretary Martin Horn had done their jobs, they wouldn't be uneasy about the fact that Norman Johnston is out on the streets. He'd be a better person and we'd all be safer. The truth is that all prisoners are made much worse and much more dangerous by people like the administration of SCI-Huntingdon. My suggestion is to throw the scoundrels out.

If you are going to have prisons, make them work to help the society.

So, what about the public? When the poor fellows escaped from SCI-Pittsburgh, the twisted priorities of Secretary Horn's DOC retaliated against ALL prisoners by taking away our personal clothes. How will we pay for this escape and the inept bumbling of the SCI-Huntingdon staff?

Norm wasn't wearing civilian clothing when he escaped. Maybe he'll have to kill someone in order to get some. But he was wearing underwear. It might be a good idea to punish the rest of us prisoners by taking our underwear. And, too, he escaped from the prison hole. Maybe none of us should be allowed to go to the hole anymore.

At about the same time that Mister Johnston escaped form the abuse of SCI-Huntingdon, another life prisoner escaped from the abuse at SCI-Mahanoy near Pottsville in Eastern Pennsylvania. The escape of the 49-year old Colson A. Derby was the kind that prison authorities relish. He hanged himself.