Almost all Pennsylvania's 25 prisons are in rural areas. They were put their intentionally to supply jobs and a huge influx of state money into poor white, mostly Republican areas. The prisons are a kind of red-necks' welfare.

Because the prisons are in rural areas, television is not available off the air. In most prisons the prisoners or the prisoners' families subscribe to a television cable system. Twenty three different private cable companies provide the services. In most areas it was the presence of the prison which made the cable system possible for the whole community. Without that captive, dependable monthly income, the little private cable companies simply couldn't afford to supply the service to a widely spread out rural population.

In exchange for "buying in bulk" and for taking hundreds of services off a cheap single wire, the local cable companies generally gave the prisoners a break in their cable rates. Whereas you may have to pay a quarter of a day's wages for your TV cable service, most prisoners pay about half or three quarters of a month's wages for their service.

Across the state about $2,500,000.00 a year is paid by prisoners to the various private cable providers. It is a great and reliable income for these small businesses.

The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections ("DOC") saw what was going on; over two million dollars was going to private enterprise. The huge fortune helped to subsidize domestic service for the communities around the prisons.

DOC is extremely greedy. It's run by a pack of money-hungry conservatives. It couldn't stand that small private companies were benefiting from the prisoners' business. DOC decided to socialize the system.

DOC concocted a system to both control what prisoners were allowed to watch and to make a lot of money on them. The scheme would also injure the small cable providers which had undertaken the expense of wiring the prisons.

The DOC TV scam creates a state-wide, government run, government censored system of television service. It is a socialized system where everything from programming to fees is controlled by the government.

Beware, gentle reader, your system may be next. Prisons are the test tube where your totalitarian government tests its schemes before imposing them on you.

Correctional Television as the DOC television scam is called will use a satellite to pump state approved television programs all across the state to all 25 prisons. Whereas the private cable companies are providing about 50 channels, DOC's socialized system will provide only 30 censored channels. Included in the number will be several "educational" channels and other purely propaganda sources sanctioned by the government. 

DOC will charge prisoners about $14 per month for its service. This is more than most of the local cable providers charge the prisoners now. There are over 36,000 prisoners in the state system. If only half of them subscribe to the socialized system, that will gross the DOC $3,024,000.00 per year.

Neither the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania nor the Department of Corrections has legal authority from the legislature, the taxpayers or from anyone, to operate a television service in competition with private enterprise. There is no legal authority for the state or the DOC to sell anything, let alone TV services at a profit. Similarly, there is no legal authority for the operation of a monopoly or for wholesale censorship of programming.

We can find no approval for this scheme from the Federal Communications Commission or the state Public Utility Commission. Certainly, the private enterprise cable companies which pay taxes and support the community have not approved the DOC scheme. They are all injured by it.

Independent sources of unbiased information such as the Pennsylvania Cable Network which carries the proceedings of the state legislature and the courts, have been excluded from DOC's monopoly. In their place, DOC will produce its own propaganda at a studio owned by and controlled by the state in Elizabethtown, PA.

It is obvious that this scheme of state selected, state approved programs provided at a profit over a state controlled system is a serious abridgment of the constitutional rights of free speech and a free press. A socialized system of this sort is an obvious affront to free enterprise. It couldn't have been devised by anyone except conservative Republican zealots obsessed with money and power.

Among the documents that we've acquired relating to the TV scam is one which prison officials have tried to keep secret. We include a scan of the document's first page.