Johnny E. Mahaffey
June 9, 2013

To bluelotus:

I've seen inmates die under situations that had they not been in prison, and had the right care, would've lived. And it's to be expected I suppose. Prison is a business now, no different than any other. Except, people are the product; housed as tax collecting numbers claimed by the system. An audit of the entire U.S. prison system is long overdue. There are too many people making too much money from the incarceration of humans as dehumanised prison ID numbers. More numbers, equal more funds, and more funds equal more promotions and raises; it's a never ending cycle of political self-service from the state heads, to the solicitors, to the judges, all the way down to the turn-key jailers. In South Carolina, inmates are the new cotton.

Empathy is a word unknown to modern law. I seriously think that some of the medical staff try; but some... well, you can tell why some staff - medical and all other - work for prison instead of a regualr public facility where their demeaner and ideology would result most definitely in unemployment, if not their own incarceration. Some are moving forward, creating a career in the imprisonment racket; while others have fallen here not from choice, but other, failed, careers, and its everyone's fault but their own it seems - or at least they'd have you think that. And it's those disgruntled individuals that make the others look bad.

Stress is a leading cause of many healthy problems, so why someone would do a job that makes them so miserable is beyond me. Why would you literally kill yourself over a meagre pay-check with practically no health benefits. Excuses are just excuses, it's a big world with more opportunity than people like to admit. The thing is, fixing or improving things usually takes effort, and the ineffectual efforts of the embittered that hinder the whole process attempted by the honest.