Amid Camp Hill prison COVID-19 outbreak, corrections union urges Pa. to vaccinate staff
Updated Mar 04, 2021;
Posted Mar 04, 2021
State and country prisons across Pennsylvania are seeing troubling rates of coronavirus outbreaks among inmates and staff. The Pennsylvania State Corrections Officers Association is calling on the commonwealth to prioritize the vaccination of prison staff and workers.
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Amid a COVID-19 outbreak at a Pennsylvania prison, the union representing about the state’s corrections officers workers is urging the state to prioritize the COVID-19 vaccination program for prison staff.
John Eckenrode, president of the Pennsylvania State Corrections Officers Association, on Thursday said it was time for the state to move corrections workers to the front of the line, along with teachers, but also smokers and individuals with other health risks. The union represents 11,000 members, including maintenance and food services staff..
New Massachusetts Rules Would Eliminate Handwritten Letters in Prison
Creativ Studio Heinemann, andipantz / E+; Edited: Truthout
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“Paper mail is precious,” Black and Pink Massachusetts Communications and Outreach Coordinator Elijah Patterson testified on January 29 against rules proposed by the Massachusetts Department of Correction (MADOC). The rules would, if approved, formally substitute physical mail for an electronic, scanned copy or photocopy through a third-party vendor.
“It means so much to me to touch the same paper as people suffering in prisons, and when I trace my hand and they place theirs over it, it means a lot for them, too. In that moment, we are together,” Patterson said during the Zoom hearing.
Physical Mail Could Be Eliminated at Federal Prisons
A pilot program initiated under Trump converts mail to electronic scans. Biden hasnât reversed it, and critics call it abusive and harmful to inmates and families.
In his first-week blitz of executive actions, Joe Biden
directed the Justice Department to not renew federal contracts with the private prison industry. â[W]e must reduce profit-based incentives to incarcerate by phasing out the Federal Governmentâs reliance on privately operated criminal detention facilities,â the order stated.
But the profit motive will still exist in the federal prison system, even after private prison operations contracts are exhausted. Food, medicine, telecommunications, banking, and practically every other service for incarcerated people are almost entirely privatized, through a
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The Arizona Department of Corrections headquarters In downtown Phoenix
It was 10 years ago at the Eyman state prison in Florence. John Fabricius, an inmate at the time, had a job working as a clerk for a correctional officer.
He said the Arizona Department of Corrections administrators were nervous, because it was announced a reporter was coming to tour the prison. And that we needed to take a lot of steps to make sure that everything that he saw was exactly what they wanted him to see,” he said.
Fabricius says he was told to instruct fellow inmates not to speak with the journalist and to warn everyone to stay on their best behavior. “You know, literally taking care of every step that he was going to walk on the sidewalk, the buildings he was going to enter, the inmate areas, all of that was scrubbed by inmates for three days in advance of that tour.”