John Carney To Prisoners: “Drop Dead!”

Literally. That’s what happened when Vermont did what Delaware is now doing: Sending prisoners to the Camp Hill facility in Pennsylvania.

Esteban Parra, in an excellent piece in today’s News Journal, lays it out in stark terms:

Vermont signed a three-year contract in 2017 transferring more than 200 of its inmates to Pennsylvania in an effort to ease prison crowding.

But poor health care, the deaths of several Vermont inmates held at Pennsylvania’s SCI Camp Hill facility and allegations of racism resulted in that contract being terminated 16 months later. 

I could quote the entire article verbatim, but it deserves a serious read from all of you. Parra, IMHO, has performed a public service in laying out just how disastrous things are at Camp Hill.  Despite the horrible experience that Vermont officials described, Delaware sent prisoners there w/o even asking about that experience. Why? Because nobody in Delaware had any idea how to handle the corrections crisis, and they just dumped prisoners off on anyone who would take them–for money. Not to mention the orgasmic state that Carney must have reached when he was told he could save $8 a day for each prisoner he dumped into Camp Hill.

Kids, repeat after me. When you contract a public function out to a for-profit enterprise , the way that said enterprise makes money is by providing less than bare bones service, often far from prying eyes. That’s what happened at Camp Hill, according to Vermont officials:

The issue Vermont authorities saw was the lack of palliative care. “What was clear is that they weren’t getting the same kind of quality of medical care as if they were in Vermont. That’s clear.”

Health care on less-than-the-cheap. No wonder Carney’s getting his $8 a day bribe. It’s chump change.

OK, one more quote from a Delaware official just to illustrate how incapable/unwilling our ‘leaders’ are to handle this crisis:

Delaware DOC Commissioner Perry Phelps said after looking at different options, they determined that sending prisoners to Pennsylvania would bring the maximum benefit in the shortest amount of time. 

“We are not trying to punish anyone,” Phelps said. “We are trying to make the system work and unfortunately sometimes we have to make decisions. That was one of the tough decisions we had to make and hopefully it’s a short-term.”

Got it? Even though the track record at Camp Hill makes it all but inevitable that prisoners will be harmed, there was no intent on the part of Delaware officials to cause such harm, so they think it’s OK.

This is a crisis. It is time that all Delaware decision-makers come together and address it in a serious manner.