Department Of Corrections
Secret
Money Grabbing Schemes

Keeping secrets and doing things in secret are hallmarks of all tyrannies. Despotism and injustice hide themselves with secrets. The villain must keep us in the dark.

The DOC is supposedly managed by a volume of "directives" and "policies." The law (45 PaCS 6501 et seq.) says that all such regulations must be publicly published for every citizen to inspect. The DOC simply disobeys the law. Almost all of its"directives" are closely guarded secrets which are manipulated at whim.

Recently the DOC and fanatical conservative politicians have devised schemes to gouge money from prisoners and their families. Prisoners and their families are the poorest people in the state. They have almost nothing. The conservatives want to snatch even those few pennies. It's part of the new slavery.

DOC has concocted "directives" to facilitate this abuse. One of them is about how they squeeze court costs and fines from penniless prisoners. The one we are publishing here is the secret directive called Collection Of Inmate Debts, "Policy Number 005." It's too long for us to publish in its entirety. If you want a copy of the whole directive, drop us a line. In this article, we'll cover only a few highlights.

The "definitions" section makes it clear that any money donated to a prisoner by his impoverished family, or won in court over his suffering or maiming, or earned by him by slaving for 19 cents per hour, is called "income." The DOC will seize all it can get.

The section on "Restitution, Reparation, Fees, Costs, Fines and Penalties" says that, if a loving wife donates $40 to her prisoner husband to buy a pair of shoes, the DOC will seize 20% or $8.00 of it. The prisoner will not have enough left to buy the shoes he needs. That's okay because, then, the next month, the DOC will take 20% of what's left ($6.40) and so forth, until the prisoner is how the fanatics want him to be: penniless!

What's especially nice about his conservative system is that it costs more to operate than it can produce. Conservatives aren't very smart. They are just cruel.

There's a special section of Policy 5 dedicated to money which the DOC claims that a prisoner owes to it. For money owed to the DOC, the prisoner loses 50% of the money in his account. Take Jim Mathas, the 68 year-old man who sweeps the dank cellblock. He gets paid about $15 a MONTH! He wears out one of the junk uniform shirts which the DOC pretends costs $13. In the first month, the DOC seized $7.50 from the old man and generously let him "keep" $7.50. He's old and in ill health but it costs $2 to see a nurse and $2 more for the medicine. He can't afford his medical care and also pay the $7 to rent his TV cable. Television is the only "escape" and entertainment he can get.

In the end, the old man dies; killed for $7.50! To the conservative fanatics $7.50 is far more important than the life of an old, Hispanic prisoner, and it only costs DOC $11 to collect the $7.00!

If someone wants to take your money, you can defend yourself in court and make them prove you owe the debt. The court would NEVER require you to pay out 50% of your net worth, not even in bankruptcy. The court would order humane installment payments.

What's an illiterate old prisoner to do over $7.50? To you, it's trivial and insignificant. To Jim, it's a month of his life!

You wonder what kind of petty, nasty people think up this kind of stuff. It goes way beyond insanity. It's a kind of mental abrasion.