YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR
by Timothy J. Muise

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Did you ever see a monkey dance under the orders of his "grinder" for some meager coins from some onlookers? The ape has been removed from all the splendor of a free-range beast in the jungle and reduced to a clown in order to put brass in pocket. What does this remind me of? It reminds of how this latest batch of guard recruits, yes, folks, they have hired a whole new pack of layabouts, dance for their "grinder" sergeant enforcing petty rules that the grinder and his fellow oxygen wasters have long since ignored. They have taken a young man and removed him from any chance of free-range integrity, reducing him to the clown of law enforcement. Bozo and Ronald McDonald have nothing on these court jesters.

This dog and pony show that is the DOC would be comical, you could just throw a tent over this circus, if it was not coasting the state $550,000,000 per year. You see, you pay Bozo, Clarabell, and Ronald McDonald. They are your employees and instead of protecting the public safety they are turning young low-level offenders into future murderers. The circus is in town and if you get close enough you can smell the manure emanating from the soulless turnkeys. Long left in the past is the fact that men are sent to prison AS punishment, not FOR punishment. Men (and women) are sent to prison here in the commonwealth to be rehabilitated. To trust these clowns, these pigs slurping off the public trough, to rehabilitate is just like trusting Enron with the bailout money - sure folly. Oversized shoes, bulbous red noses and water squirting carnations they head off to the bank to fill their deep pockets with blood stained taxpayer green. YOUR green.

When there is a shift change at the prison the guards coming through the gate look like the clowns coming out of the Volkswagen at Ringling Brothers. To slap you across the face the guard's union claims that they are understaffed. This is the biggest propaganda line since Hitler said he wanted the Jews to register for a "census". These false claims of understaffing create murder. How, you ask? Well, the union has placed such a boot across the throat of the jackals in the DOC administration that they allow them to have umpteen captains, boatloads of lieutenants, and throngs of sergeants, leaving the line guard the minority of these fools. Without line guards the education, employment, and programming activities are shut down. Prisoners find other things to do and they are quite counter-productive to rehabilitation. They are the activities that allow the low-level criminal to advance to an angry, hate filled, killing machine. The lion has been poked with a sharp stick and eventually these clowns are gonna have to let him out of the cage to come visit you! Think it's funny now? They say you get what you pay for. Does it cost a half-billion for failure? When are you going to demand that the circus be shut down?

What's the solution? The ONLY plan that can work is a total overhaul. The clowns must be taught that in this state it is the LAW that you rehabilitate. The next step is to force the union back to the bargaining table and get rid of all the managerial staff. This overstaffing is the same thing you see when you drive by a road crew of city workers and see ten men leaning on shovels. We must cut the fat off the fat lady, trim the beard off the bearded lady, and pluck some of that brass out of the pockets of the clowns and invest it in the future success of the errants the system is legally bound to rehabilitate. The joke is over. The draconian old-school, good ole boy, jackal administrators who resist change must be sent packing. They should paint bullseyes on them and let them roam the streets of the Mattapan corridor like a big midway shooting gallery. Maybe then they will get the point! Corrections must be taken away from the law enforcement driven supervision of the department of public safety and placed back under the umbrella of the department of health and human services as it was when we had the most successful furlough program in the country, one of the lowest recidivism rates, and one of the most successful parole supervision rates as well. Of course this will mean less jobs for the clowns but that is the ONLY way you will be able to get what you pay for.

"If you want to see the scum of the earth and the dregs of humanity, go down to your local prison and watch the changing of the guard."

Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)

"Who shall stand guard to the guards themselves?"

Chazal