FACTS, RECAP, AND COMMENTARY
DOES YOUR MONEY SUPPORT ME?
The taxpayers
dole out $36,000 a year, per inmate for the BOP to own me. My
cost is higher than the average inmate, and there is an
additional $5900 minimum
to pay for my medical care.
A hardworking citizen MUST pay federal FICA taxes, or
go to jail. I am
aging in here- I am a grandmother of six, therefore my medical
needs may increase.
All the heavily
processed and preserved foods over the last ten years has given
me high blood pressure.
Since last year, I have been on medication for it. I have
also been issued cholesterol medication. I do not take it because the side effects
are ten times greater than the benefit of the
medication. The side effects include:
My eye constantly jumping, so that I cannot read or write in
peace; sore bones and
joints that feel like "flu like" symptoms, and
restricts any physical activity; problems
with dryness of my eyes; stomach aches; racing heart;
itchiness, and much more.
My motto is if the benefits of the meds are less than the
benefits of not taking it,
why would I poison my body like that? Believe it or not, I am in very good health.
I walk five miles a day. I do an extensive weight routine
with 3 or 5 pounds to stay
toned. I do yoga, and
a little Pilates when I feel like it. I
ran up and down the steep
hill at the back of the Camp, and then up and down the 67
stairs a few times yesterday
because the weather was nice. I will be able to chase my grandchildren, and
hang
out with them when I get home.
Who exactly
pays for my keep? Who paid this
year? Was it the single Mom,
like my daughter, who is struggling because she barely makes
minimum wage? Was
it the waitress that is mostly living off tips? Maybe it was an autoworker, because
they make a little bit more money?
Lets examine how
prison costs adds up quickly to 80 billion a year. I was convicted
with 9 others. The
loss amount for society is $300,000. The
cost for my incarceration,
along with medical costs total to date is $419,000.
The cost to
house my co-defendants is $900,000. (K.D, $180,000, Judy-$252,000;
Tony-$216,000; Dunbar-$18,000; Jay-$36,000; Khalid-$108,000;
and Taylor-$90,000)
That easily equates to 1.5 million for housing. If you add attorneys, court room staff,
transport, Supervised Release, and all other costs, my case easily cost
taxpayers roughly
$2.5 million for all ten of us. This is just the stats for one case, and one
single
indictment. Many are
indicted yearly and sent to prison.
The facts today is
about our United States Constitution.
Many of you do not know
that the Constitution was the document that followed
President Abe Lincoln's
Emancipation Proclamation.
Many citizens that owned plantations were distraught
about losing their slaves.
Slavery was big business, and America as a nation was
built on the backs of African slaves who now are the
ancestors of African-Americans,
and definitely the fore thoughts and foundation of how this
prison system came to
be.
For those of you
who do not know your Constitution, how the document continued
slavery to this day is the wording created in Amendment
13. The Amendments, or
Bill of Rights was supposed to protect individuals from
government power in all areas.
The writers pulled a whammy with Article 13. It states that "anyone convicted of a
crime has no rights".
That means the system can work you like a slave for free, or
choose to pay you twelve cents, and do not have to pay the
minimum wage. It also
means that you have lost all rights to your children and
your family. You are property
of the state/feds, in the most literal sense. How our forefathers kept slavery alive
was using the Black Codes which is the FBOP codes with a
simple name switch in the
document to manage inmates.
The other issue with the Constitution is Article II
and Article III. With
Article II, United States Attorneys have life time appointments
and are considered the most powerful agency in the country,
and have the strongest
union. If a U.S.
Attorney targets you, your chances are impossible of keeping your
life in tack. The
next slavery issue inside the constitution is lifetime appointments
for Article III/federal judges. They have no agency that monitors them, and
even
if they are racist, and using their own agendas on the
bench, nothing will happen
to them. Federal
Judges have been convicted of riding with prostitutes and buying
crack, using crack, and many other outrageous acts while on
the bench. At most,
they might receive a scale back on cases. I actually read a letter
that stated the 'the judge's use of crack did not affect his
sentencing decision.'
An associate was
trying to get her case reviewed when she found out that her
judge was in the newspaper and under investigation after
being caught buying and
smoking crack at the same time that he was on the bench with
her case.
Article II and
Article III of the United States Constitution is the slavery trump
card. Those two
articles stacked the deck against African-Americans and other
people of color. Those
two articles represent capitalism, and is not a part of the
democratic process.
State judges are a
part of the democratic process, and they are placed on a
ballot, and you vote for them. If they break the law, they are usually
removed, if
the public sees fit.
There is no removing a federal judge or a U.S. Attorney/
Assistant attorney.
There is no accountability to the public. That is a major
problem with this system.
People can complain all day long, and also attempt to
put laws into place by contacting their Senators and having
them advocate, but
the problem is that the foundation of the federal prison
system is based on concepts
of slavery. The
writers of the Constitution knew this, and also understood that
they had to stack the deck in order to keep America unequal
and one-sided as
far as the rights and treatment. Originally, it was our
boys and men that suffered most. Today, women are sentenced at an alarming
rate. There is a
steady increase in the number of women coming to prison.
Even more hostile, is the age of the new prison
population. They are "granny
dumping", or sending older women to prison for small
petty crimes at an 800%
increase. Why? I had to think about it. As I sat in the dining room this morning
eating an orange, I looked around me, and everyone at the
surrounding tables
were over 65 years of age.
The lady sitting across from me had a cane.
I read recently
where Eric Holder stated that this system "was broken" and
has failed. It all
depends on who you ask. If you ask
people who support
mass-incarceration, and want harsher sentences,
they would answer
that this system is doing great.
It is costing the
taxpayers over 80 billion dollars a year, that is money
in their pockets.
even the blog that I am writing costs 5 cents a minute.
The prison system
is part of Wall street/the stock market.
The pharmaceutical
companies benefit millions also. Many of the Senators that are fighting
against
abolishing mandatory minimums are connected financially to
the pharmacy
corporations, or other entities where they directly make
money off of prisoner's
blight. As a nation,
we need to check out these politicians, and publish their
beliefs. This is an
election year. Who is for this peculiar
institution, and if
so, why? That's the
question that needs to be asked before a citizen places
a vote.
I have wrote
about a small group of inmates to entertain.
The women of
Arn-2 are not the norm.
Like many countries, if you take away the non-violent
offenders, and the white collar offenders and place them
back into the tax
base and on house arrest to pay large fines, you would only
have the need for
one major prison in the country. That prison would house the violent, and
criminally insane.
One single prison is enough, not 1000's.
Prison is big business.
We have a few
million dollars worth of inmates sitting at Danbury, as I write
this blog. Looking at real numbers, and using an actual case
as an example,
gives the reader a true glimpse of how profitable mass incarceration
in
America is.
Rhonda Turpin
author, publisher, prisoner
http://felonista.blogspot.in/
fb/rhondaturpin
worldbookspublishing@gmail.com
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