“Education.”
You cannot expect many, let alone all of us, to be rehabilitated over the decades. It takes for legal relief. Be it through the courts or commutation, if we have no continuing education avenues to travel upon.
The PADOC policy dictates only 10% enrollment per class for lifers, and that often translates into no school, taking a class you’re truly not interested in, or years of waiting for one class. If the enrollment isn’t your problem, accumulated classroom hours is. That’s verbalized to you as you have over the allowable amount of school hours, so we’re graduating you out.
Really, there’s such a thing as too much education? If you believe that as whoever collectively devised this policy seemingly does, then you’re already mentally dead, or you are a part of the fabric of [inaudible] and demoralization our country has grossly thoroughly fallen victim to.
Please do not do that to yourself, your community, where convicts will eventually return to, or the generations to come. Appeal to the legislators to strongly support the education of prisoners and not just those with the pending release dates or those needing their GED for parole.
To leave lifers and long-termers out of the equation is to give credence to us being warehoused, not reformed. And that only adds to society’s fear of those convicted and having served time and weakens the threads of re-entry services. It also adds to the burden on taxpayers to continue to pay for more expensive, often excessive, medical costs, more government or public assistance to those not prepared to have an independent self-sustaining life, and give skeptics more rhetoric to spread.
The education, the change, and heightened accountability starts in the voting booth. What better place to feel empowered, wiser, and safe? Please put your words in motion, put your actions to good use, and help us to get educated so that we can be better citizens. Thank you.
These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
![Prison Radio is sharing an abbreviated version of a press release covering recent racist incidents at SCI Rockview in PA and the organizing to demand accountability. We are reaching out to people incarcerated at Rockview as well as recently transferred folks, inviting them to call, in hopes of hearing commentaries from them.
Benner Township, PA.-
On November 24th, 2023, imprisoned people at SCI Rockview found two nooses hanging in the CO’s office, displayed visibly for many prisoners to see. When the prisoners asked the staff why the nooses were hung, they were told it was a joke.
By December 4th, prisoners filed a grievance to document what they saw, noting that the hanging of the nooses was “unethical, racially motivated, hateful, [a] deliberate debasement of black inmates" and “unsafe for inmates, staff, [and] the whole prison in general.” In the grievance, they demanded that Sgt. Mosser and CO Richard be fired and investigated for a hate crime, and for CO Kirchner to get therapy. Captain Andrews, the head of security, denied the grievance.
The sergeant and COs are still working in the prison to this day, with no repercussions...
As of March 10th, prisoners have reached out to Pennsylvania officials at the Dept. of Corrections in a letter campaign, sending 100 copies of the grievance. Copies of the letter also were mailed to Governor Shapiro, Senator Fetterman, Senator Street, and various advocacy groups. The demands for relief in the original grievance have now become the platform of demands for this campaign. About 20 of the 100 letters were withheld by the prison.
Activists on the outside are joining forces with prisoners to elevate their demands, flooding the phone lines of DOC offices, assisting with outreach to media, and circulating the stories of prisoners who have found unity in opposition to the facility's virulent institutional racism.
In any other workplace, hanging a noose would be grounds for immediate termination. However, Nicki Paul, the superintendent's assistant and "grievance coordinator" informed the public that they self-investigated their staff and found they did nothing wrong.
Read the full article at i
https://conta.cc/4ayDxlB](https://www.prisonradio.org/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)