Pa Prisons on Lockdown, Day #10

Gov. Wolf & Secretary of Corrections John Wetzel have once again overreacted and jumped into panic mode over complaints from the guards union. We have been on lockdown for 10 straight days. Let's look at what happened, drug dealers in prison and drug addicts in prison try to get drugs in every day. They have it mailed in, smuggled in, pay guards and staff to bring it in but let's face it, it will never stop. Drugs are the epidemic of America. Gov Wolf & Sec. Wetzel said 1% of Pa state prisoners are the cause of this but the other 99% are being affected in a severely negative way. As of 9-5-18, no mail is allowed to be sent to any Pa State Prison. Anyone wishing to send mail to any Pa state prisoner you must now send it to the following address:

SMART COMMUNICATIONS/PA DOC
Inmate Name; Inmate ID #
Name of State Prison
Po Box 33028
St Petersburg, Florida 33733

**All mail must have a name and return address or it will not be given to inmate. Once the company receives the mail, they will search it for contraband and then scan it, and email it to the facility in which the inmate is in, the company claims that they will shred all mail but I doubt that will happen. Any photographs sent to a prisoner will be handled the same way. The inmate will get a copy and the original will be destroyed. As of today, there are multiple legal organisations working with inmates in order to file a lawsuit on this. Once you email a person's private letters, this invasion of privacy is there for anyone to read forever. Deleted emails can ALWAYS be brought back and read. I understand the need to keep drugs out of prisons, I am anti-drug, but to penalise 49,500 people for the actions of 500 makes no sense. This is a true invasion of privacy. They also informed us that we are no longer allowed to receive the books, magazines and newspapers we have already paid for. We are forced to forfeit the money we paid and all reading material that we have already paid for will be destroyed. Why? The USA Today newspaper comes directly from the company why destroy my newspaper and force me to forfeit the money that was paid for the mail order subscription? This is extremely unjust and it's a joke when Gov. Wolf & Sec. Wetzel are on the news saying guards put their lives on the line every day. Until society sees what's going on in places like this, then they might believe that crap but let's be real for a minute, there are still no cameras on the blocks at Dallas, every jail is supposed to have them but this jail won't put them up. It's for everyone's safety but the guards fight against installing them because most of them come here and go to sleep while they are supposed to be working the blocks. Just a fact that inmates miss yard, medical appointments, work, school, programs, all on a daily basis because guards just go to sleep. Guards are now being paid maximum overtime, some are making over $50 an hour for this lockdown to come in here and go to sleep while they let a handful of trusted inmate workers come out and hand out the food, clean the block & pick up trash. They are even so lazy they are allowing these same inmates to open the cell doors of the men who are scheduled for phone calls, all because they don't want to get off their butts and push the buttons themselves. So let's finally see the realisation of what's going on in places like this. For Wolf & Wetzel to say anyone puts their lives on the line in these places is laughable. This is prison, there is violence, but in my 20 years in prison only 1 staff has put his life on the line and lost it and that's 1 too many but it's not an every day thing like they make it sound. What the D.O.C. fails to release the statistics on is the amount of inmates who are assaulted by staff, trained staff who are making $25, $30, $40 an hour to be trained professionals but since inmates have no one to speak up for them, we are ignored or called liars. When Pa State Senator Sharif Street was here 3 weeks ago, he and his team saw so many racial injustices in this prison, Keir Bradford-Grey, a black woman who is the Chief Defender of the Defenders Association in Philly, she is a top notch lawyer, she witnessed on multiple occasions how prisoners are treated by racist staff in this prison. Sometimes one must say enough is enough. I was given a misconduct today. I was on the phone with a friend of mine and because the guard was in a bad mood, he made me get off, but since my 1 minute on the phone wasn't quick enough for him, he wrote me up for a rule infraction. I could lose my job and my status as Vice President over this. But who cares when prisoners are treated like garbage. Pennsylvania and Gov. Wolf have decided to treat us like garbage, making 49,500 men and women suffer for the actions of a few. No more photographs on regular photo paper. Now they are black and white on copy paper. What's next, taking the pictures I treasure of my dead parents? I, like over 100,000 Pa citizens, am extremely frustrated and angry at Gov. Wolf and Secretary Wetzels new outrageous mail policy. I thank you for letting me vent my frustrations today. We are moving into lockdown day #11, when will this end?