We need NO MORE New Prisons

Pennsylvania taxpayers are paying well over thirty thousand dollars ($30,000) per year, per inmate that are housed within our State Correctional Institutions.  While Governor Corbett has cut nearly 1 Billion dollars from our education system and has made massive cuts to other important state services and programs, Corbett seeks to expand nine existing prisons and build three brand new ones.  SCI Graterford, here in our Skippack/Schwenksville neighborhood is slotted for a new addition/add-on.  During this era of fiscal austerity, Pennsylvania really cannot afford to spend $685 Million to house more people behind bars.

Our simplistic Get Tough on Crime policies have failed us.  This knee-jerk, lock-them-up and throw-away-the-key reaction of ours has neither reduced crime nor made us safer nor eliminated the cause of crime.  If it worked, we’d be building less not more prisons, housing less not more inmates.  We are wasting good tax-payer money on a new Prison Industrial Complex, a prison industry that thrives on our overeager belief that, if we automatically lock up everyone who breaks the law, we will reduce crime and make our streets safer.  NOT!

The state of Pennsylvania is a national leader in incarceration.  Yet this same state falls behind in education, employment, and environmental protection services.  We are moving in the wrong direction.  We have a bloated prison system, which is only getting worse.  For we have virtually had thirty years of limitless spending on our prison system.  Enough is enough.  If other states are able to reduce their prison system, saving billions of tax-payer money, and at the same time keep their streets safe from crime, so can Pennsylvania.

Our state’s mass incarceration policy is destroying families and communities.  It disproportionately affects the poor and, more pointedly, people of color.  It also means fewer jobs in more appropriate areas of public services such as education, public health, environmental protection services, and job training and development.  Expanding our prison population and building more prisons is actually making things worse, making us less safe and more vulnerable.  I urge you therefore to consider giving your support to a grass roots organization called DECARCERATE PA.

DECARCERATE/PA is a coalition of organizations and individuals who seek to end mass incarceration and the harms it brings to our communities.  DECACERATE/PA seeks mechanisms to establish and maintain whole, healthy communities and believes that our overuse of imprisonment as an answer to crime only exacerbates the problems we face.

DECARCERATE/PA therefore seeks an immediate and lasting moratorium on all new prisons: no new prisons, no new county or city jails, no prison expansions, no new beds in county jails, no immigrant detention facilities, no private prisons.

DECARCERATE/PA is also working to pass legislation to move people out of prison—rehab, reform, and reintegrate—taking steps necessary to secure socially responsible, personally secure, and economically viable communities in our state.

DECARCERATE PA meets every 2nd and 4th Monday at the Institute for Community Justice (21 S 12th Street, 7th floor; 267/217-3372).  See their website at “decarceratepa.info” or write to “decarceratePA@gmail.com.”