Watchdog group criticizes prisons’ satellite TV use
State Corrections Department gets its 2nd Golden Fleece
By Alan Gustafson
Statesman Journal
January 28, 2010
A Salem-based group awarded another “Golden Fleece Award” to the state prison system Wednesday for spending nearly $1 million on satellite television service for inmates.
Last year, the same nonprofit group — Common Sense for Oregon — handed out its inaugural golden fleece award to the corrections system. The first award criticized the prison system for serving soda pop to prisoners.
“They are our first two-time winner,” Ross Day, the group’s executive director, said Wednesday.
Day said the latest fleece award was triggered by a corrections employee who complained about inmates watching cable television programs.
“We got a tip from a corrections employee who said he can’t afford regular cable and here these prisoners are sitting there watching satellite television,” Day said.
Prison officials confirmed spending about$1 million per two-year budget cycle for satellite television service.
It’s paid for through the Inmate Welfare Fund, which doesn’t receive any state general fund money, officials said.
Funded by prison commissary sales and inmate phone calls, the IFW totals $10.2 million in the current two-year budget cycle. Of that, about 10 percent is earmarked to pay for satellite television.
“I understand that people may be surprised that part of the Inmate Welfare Fund goes for satellite television,” said Jennifer Black, a Corrections Department spokeswoman. “But it also goes for education programming, and alcohol and drug treatment. And our mission is to run safe and secure institutions, making sure offenders have something to do while they’re not working or in programming.”
Inmates who demonstrate good behavior can purchase personal televisions through prison commissaries. Bolted to bunks in cells, the TVs can be hooked up to a satellite signal.
Prison officials said Oregon’s 14-prison, 14,000-inmate prison system derives safety benefits from inmates watching television inside cells. It prevents fights that used to break out when inmates gathered in large groups to watch TV in recreation rooms.
“It’s an inmate-management issue,” Black said. “You can’t have 100 or 50 inmates in one big room trying to watch one television and deciding what (show) is on. That does not work for operating safe and secure institutions.”
Day doesn’t dispute the safety benefits linked to inmates watching television within their cells.
“I understand the purpose behind it,” he said. “The purpose is they are electronic babysitters, and it could be a safety issue for the guards. It’s something for the prisoners to do, to keep their minds off doing other things.”
However, Day said, the prison system should pull the plug on the satellite service and switch to a cheaper system that delivers basic television.
“They could just as easily go out and buy a $50 antenna, throw it up on the roof, and the prisoners could get free television over the air, just like many Oregonians,” he said.
The switch would free up additional inmate welfare fund dollars for “better uses,” such as drug and alcohol treatment programs, Day said.
Antennas aren’t a realistic alternative for a prison system with institutions scattered throughout the state, corrections officials said.
“My guess is that it’s not,” Black said. “We have institutions in Lakeview and over on the coast, and having an antenna isn’t going to work in those kinds of places,” she said. “Is it going to work in an old building like OSP (Oregon State Penitentiary)? I’m not sure.”
The Corrections Department later issued a written statement: “Purchasing a $50 antenna would not work for the Department. We have many institutions in rural areas outside of the Willamette Valley, and satellite/cable is the only option.”
Day said he was hopeful that the prison agency eventually would scrap satellite television. He said the prison system stopped serving soda pop to inmates after receiving the inaugural golden fleece award.
In response, Black said, prison officials launched a program to phase out soda pop for health and budgetary reasons well before the group spotlighted the issue.
“I’m sure that they take credit for it, but we were already in the process of phasing it out,” she said.
agustafs@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 399-6709
Golden Fleece Awards
Common Sense for Oregon says that it presents the Golden Fleece Award “to a politician, program or other spendthrifts that waste hard-earned tax dollars on foolish items that ordinary Oregonians would never support.” The Salem-based nonprofit organization has handed out four fleece awards, two of them to the state prison system, since launching the effort last year.
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Comments
It’s prison, they should not be able to have t.v. at all. everyone of them should be in a class room if they do not have a deploma or working on growing their own food.
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