Who Cares If People Go to Prison? You Should, here's why...

Our government pays millions of dollars each year to maintain federal prisoners. The lowest security level is a camp (for either men or women). My focus is on a women's camp because that is my experience.

You, the taxpayer, spend a ridiculous amount of money to put people "behind bars" because they are a "menace to society." Or this is why most people believe we have prisons? White-collar crime makes up about 5% of our population. While punishment is in order, I think we can agree these people are usually not a physical menace to society. If you are over 60 years of age, are disabled or ill, or are coming in on a drug charge (95% of the prison population), the taxpayer pays even more for you to hold a spot. But if you are in a camp - why? It seems like a silly question, but it is not trivial if you consider the costs for these "rehabilitation services."

First and foremost, at a camp, there are no fences, no locked doors to keep us inside. There are two guards on duty during the day. At night there is only one guard for the entire facility from 4:30 pm to 7:30 am. There are two dormitories for living quarters. Each houses roughly 150 women. The rooms should hold two to a room. But it didn't take the BOP (Bureau of Prisons) long to figure out that if they made one of the beds a bunk bed, they could increase their inventory by a whopping 33%. But you don't just add a bed. These residents now share the same space, except now there is a third locker and third wall peg to hold a third person's items. Both dorms hold about 250 women. But every October as we near the annual budget for the BOP, we get counted for said budget, and the dorm populations swell to 350 plus.

As a taxpayer, you pay for an old, run-down, extremely moldy, cinder block, and metal structure. There are two television rooms unless they are needed to hold the overflow of inmates, a laundry/game room, a computer room, a couple of offices that are seldom occupied by the counselor and case manager. There are four alleys with a place called the bus stop sitting at the beginning of each alley. Then there is a communal bathroom across from each bus stop. The bus stop is a room that holds ten women. Five bunk beds, ten lockers, and ten sets of pegs are all in a tiny place. Here is where all of the girls who get into trouble go as well as any new people initially.

There are no fences to hold us in; we stay because we are supposed to. During the day, there are heads of each department there to run their area and their employees. During the day, there are two guards on duty, but once 4:30 pm comes around on weekdays, there is only one guard on duty. On the weekends, we typically have two guards for the visiting room and one guard for the campus. If the guard is male, he usually won't come to the dorms to avoid being accused of any impropriety. So the women rule themselves. People are stunned to learn there are no fences, no locks, no guards, and you are responsible for managing yourself. That is what you, the taxpayer, continues to cover.

A little known fact is that most of these camps are often a support system for the more massive prison with which they are associated. The camp inmates cut the grass at all locations, prepare brown bag meals for those in the larger prison when it is on lock down. We make 1100 to 1300 meals times three times a day for an orange pop for payment. Other inmates teach education at the camp. The cafeteria looks for volunteers to supplement its limited paid workers with the promise of all the food you can eat while working. The inmates teach most of the optional programs and classes. The inmates do the work on vehicles and wash them. They also repair the facility when something needs it IF there is a work order. If a guard or counselor does not put in a work order, nothing gets fixed. The point of the ladies doing this is to give them experience at things like painting, sheet rock, welding, all sorts of building processes. But how can you get experience if you don't have work orders to complete? In my mind, the place should look like new and be in the constant repair when you are paying people to teach these job skills; however little it is that way. Instead, because the Chief Officer doesn't want to work, no one works. No mold, no dirt, no holes in the walls, no ceiling tiles falling should be found if they used the help available to them. More would want to apply for the jobs if they knew they would learn something.

These are some of the things they hold out to you the taxpayer as rehabilitative and as part of the inmates newly learned skill sets they take with them back into the world. What a waste!

Men behind bars cannot go beyond their bars without two guards per inmate. Many of us in camp can go out and about unsupervised. A number of us are selected to maintain the exterior property and to drive guards and women that go from facility to facility or offsite. The taxpayer is paying for us to be held in camp while we provide support services for both the camp and the men's facility. If the men's prison goes on lock down, the women’s camp loses its privileges too. We certainly lose our guards and, on occasions, our entire staff when they get out of control at the larger facility. The men's prison seems to go on tangents doing drugs, and everyone has to go on lock down while the camps staff helps manage the situation. You pay a lot of taxes for us to be cared for when in fact, we are caring for ourselves.