Disenchanted With
The Pennsylvania
Prison Society
By: Greg Ofner

I enjoyed your website and will follow closely, adding my voice to advocacy issues to support our folk inside Pennsylvania's prisons.

Has anything changed with the Prison Society1 and their refusal to get political or take real advocacy positions2? The Pennsylvania Prison Society is a private group which supposedly is concerned for prisoner welfare. In reality, with the exception of a few "Visitors3," the Society is an emasculated, useless committee obsessed with the restoration of the ancient Eastern State Penitentiary4 as a tourist trap5.

EDITOR'S NOTES / FOOTNOTES


1 The Pennsylvania Prison Society ("PPS") has a unique legal and constitutional mandate to impartially watchdog the prisons.
2 To be fair, PPS is involved in a VERY FEW matters to represent prisoners, for example, the suit against the Commutation Board amendment and the lobbying coalition.
3 "Visitors," officially called "conveners" in the eighteenth century parlance when the society was established, have a legal right to visit any prisoner in any prison at anytime to assure that he or she is being fairly treated. Some of them are exceptional individuals.
4 Eastern Penitentiary is a hideous hulk of a dungeon in which countless lives were destroyed, but which PPS and others thinks is a quaint or amusing landmark and moneymaker. The place should be torn down the way the Nazi concentration camps were plowed under. It's surely not an amusement park.
5 Making matters far worse is the fact that PPS is now in a direct conflict of interest. It is contracting to provide certain "services" to the Department of Corrections ("DOC"). How will it ever challenge it's business partner? You can't get into bed with the devil without getting covered with soot. The PPS cooperates with the DOC instead of confronting it. Damn Poor!
Barbara Kestler

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