Under the unsteady fist of Jeffrey Beard, 1 the Pennsylvania prison system has been systematically lying to a financially strapped public, a willingly gullible press and the docile Republican legislature. Voices which dare dissent are silenced with Saddam-like intimidation, censorship or payoff. Beard's prison system is incompetent and is run by incompetents. It's more than a case of simple corruption. Beard's prison system is greedy, bloated, lecherous and ineffective, the reflection of an abnormal alcoholic psychology. But Beard and company will do anything to keep you from discovering their secrets. A principle policy of Beard's prison system is manipulation of information; mind-control through a diet of lies. Throughout Beard's prison system, prisoners who try to reveal what's really going on are savagely punished. The few dozen brave prisoners who have struggled to improve the prison system by informing us about the blundering ineptitude of prison administrators are ruthlessly crushed. Some are thrown into the hole. Others, like "Jon," a politically savvy prisoner in the Huntingdon dungeon, have been thrown out of work, impoverishing them so that they can't express their insights. Still others, like the lifer from the Dallas prison who helped publish a newsletter decrying the treatment of fellow prisoners, are forcefully uprooted and openly threatened into silence. Under Beard's system, there's no freedom of speech or press if you criticize the imprisonment industry. Beard's prison system wants to conceal its abuses. Nor is it only punishmenting prisoners for their justified complaints. The Pennsylvania Prison Society which once was a fierce watchdog resolutely limiting the worst abuses of the prison system has become a mere butt-kissing lap dog. Cleverly, the prison system has silenced the Prison Society by paying it off, giving it enormous sums of money in the form of contracts for "services." The Prison Society has millions of dollars enabling it to open lavish new offices, but the prisoners are impoverished and starved. Compounding that insult, the Prison Society recently took over publication of Graterfriends,2 Joan Gauker's benevolent brainchild which for twenty odd years gave hope to prisoners through useful news, a forum for letters and understandingly sympathetic counsel. It's been disappointing what the Prison Society has done to Graterfriends. Every page reflects the economic reality that the Prison bosses are paying off the "watchdog." The fox is guarding the henhouse. Administrators of Beard's prison system, from the top down, habitually lie. They lie to you, they lie to the prisoners, they lie to the lawmakers; they even lie to one another. They cover up what's really going on in their university of crime in order to cling to their jobs and to the power that intoxicates them. That's what the prison system is really about: money! money for 15,000 leaches. Beard's prison minions brutally stifle dissent. Their policy of concealment censors information that prisoners may obtain and then pass on to you. Where a prisoner wanted to get a copy of the secret order cutting the prisoners' already meager food rations while giving guards a pay raise, the document was simply seized from him. Where a prisoner wanted to see the policy preserving the confidentially of prisoners' medical records, his request was ignored. Where a prisoner just wanted a copy of the real rules because the guards invented and changed rules as they went along, he was told he had no right to the rules. Where a prisoner wrote to the Governor making practical suggestions about how to reduce the enormous prison budget (each man, woman and child in the state pays $109.00, the prison bosses got hold of the proposal and a bureaucrat named James told him in effect to shut up and mind his own business. Not for 30 years has the prison system been so terrified that you would discover what's going on. It's one of Beard's greatest fears: being exposed and being dumped out on his can. Why must Beard and his thugs work so hard at hiding things? It's a confession of guilt. It's proof positive that they have something to hide. Beard should do the Constitution a favor and quit! FOOTNOTES 1 Doctor Jeffrey Beard Secretary of Corrections Box 598 Camp Hill, PA 17001 email 2 Graterfriends c/o Donnel Brown, Editor 2000 Spring Garden Street Philadelphia, PA 19130 1-800-227-2307 geninfo@prisonsociety.org