For every dollar Pennsylvania taxpayers invest in education, they squander $7.02 on imprisonment. Almost all the prison money goes to paying guards and for medical care. Guards are paid better than school teachers. Guards are parasites who do almost no work and nothing constructive. In Pennsylvania the staffs of the 24 prisons are notoriously lazy and there are twice as many state prisons as state universities.
According to the Justice Report of the Justice Fellowship, Pennsylvania taxpayers invest only $6443 a year per average school student. The same taxpayers waste $45,233 a year to punish the average prison inmate.
After the huge expense for staff, medical care of prisoners is an enormous expense. Prison sentences are vindictively lengthy. Prisoners grow old and feeble in the unhealthy prisons. They go mad from the cruel and unusual conditions, they get sick from the unhealthful environment. They need a lot of medical care.
In Pennsylvania's prisons there is no effort at rehabilitation and almost none at education. The whole Pennsylvania prison system is focused on cruel and expensive punishment. Prisoners are made worse, not better.
Revenge is an expensive luxury for a civilized society! Pennsylvania's prison system is regressive and out of control.
The punishment mania is far greater in Pennsylvania than in surrounding states. Pennsylvania spends twice as much on its punishment mania versus education than any of its neighbors. For each dollar spent on education the ratios in surrounding states are: Politicians like Republican State Senator Stewart Greenleaf aren't satisfied yet. They are anxious to waste even more money on punishment. Greenleaf has a "hospitalization" plan that will raise the cost of punishment from $45,233 per person to $155,231!
The way to reduce cost to taxpayers is to greatly shorten prison sentences with effective parole, to adopt inexpensive alternatives to imprisonment and to get rid of half of the bloated, overpaid guard force.
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