Prison Commissaries Gouge Inmates, Support Taxpayers BY: Frank F. Gullwhistle

Each of the Pennsylvania state prisons has a little store or commissary in which prisoners who have the money are permitted to buy a few items. The prison commissary is a company store. The prisoner may not buy from any other source and she or he must pay whatever the commissary decides to charge.
In theory, the prison commissary is operated for the benefit of the Inmate General Welfare Fund. The pretext is that the commissary makes only 5% profit and that the profit is used to benefit the prisoners themselves. As with everything involved with the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections ("DOC"), it's a lie. For example, recently over a million dollars from the fund was siphoned off so that the DOC could buy into a television scheme for the guards to get college degrees.
The money which prisoners spend in the commissary, is either donated to them by their families and loved ones, or it's earned by the prisoner by doing menial labor within the prison. Prisoners are paid 19 cents per hour! The majority of prisoners are paid about 4 hours a day (76 cents), five days a week ($3.80). Some prisoners are paid a little more per hour and/or paid for more than four hours per day. In the calculations which I've used in this article, I took an average of 19 cents pay for 6 hours per day, or an income of $1.14 per day, $4.56 per week, $18.24 per month.
Since television cable service costs the inmate about $15 per month, it's obvious that $18.24 will not go very far. Many prisoners receive occasional donations from their families loved ones. In effect, loving families, almost all of whom are from the very most impoverished part of our society, support prisoners. The DOC has a specific strategy to wring as much money as possible out of the impoverished families. In many cases, it's the families' money which is spent in the prison commissaries.
Prisoners' families are already greatly overtaxed by the prison system. The telephone system alone is a racket which bleeds families for many millions of dollars each year. It's not just prisoners who are gypped in the prison commissaries, but also the families who generously try to support them. It's one of the state's more insidious schemes; to force poor people to support the prison system.
What's sold in a prison commissary is very limited and very expensive. It nets so much money for the prison system that the new prison television system has a "shopping channel" just to get money out of the prisoners. Everything from televisions sets and clothing to tobacco and food is sold in the commissary.
The prison system has for a century kept prisoners addicted to tobacco and then used the drug to manipulate the prisoners. At present, tobacco is withdrawn from the addict as part of the punishment meted out in the prison hole.
The food fed to prisoners in most of the prisons is VERY bad. At State Correctional Institution at Smithfield, for example, much of the food is simply unedible. On top of that, the culinary manager, Gary Scott, has pinched so many pennies and cut out so many foods that many prisoners simply don't have enough to eat. While guards get a taxpayer feast of prime crab meat, prisoners get oily noodles and red gravy. They have no choice except to try to feed themselves from the commissaryFoods, cosmetics and so forth, will be dealt with below. For now, consider a few of the other kinds of items sold in the commissary and the disgraceful way in which prisoners are gypped and cheated. For comparison sake, I've included a comparison to what we ordinary citizens pay "on the street," for similar items so you can see how badly prisoners are overcharged


http://www.prisoners.com/comm$$.html