Pennsylvania’s Department of Corruption
We are printing below a second excerpt1 from Pennsylvania prisoner Terrance Brown’s article detailing a wide range of corruption and cruelty within the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections—PADOC, including criminality within the prison administrators and guards (criminality that includes murder, rape, and extreme violence.) In this excerpt Mr. Brown exposes massive drug dealing by guards, which they blame falsely on the prisoners. Mr. Brown also details the role of the Pennsylvania State Corrections Officer Association—the guard “union”—in “violating every policy with impunity.” —The Editors
The outlandish scandal of violence and rampant drug seizures within the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PADOC) is one of the largest employee coups of its kind. Here in the keystone state, the local news cable stations were airing well-orchestrated and strategically calculated segments of propaganda by informing our public that Fentanyl and other exotic drugs are common and that prisoners’ families and other visitors routinely circumvent security measures to smuggle drugs and other contraband.
Employees/guards were being sent to hospitals under the false claim that they came in contact with Fentanyl and/or K-2 (synthetic marijuana.) Dozens of employees statewide were making all of the same claims. All of a sudden, employees were randomly happening upon drugs, fainting, and falling ill. It was a circus of Barnum and Bailey proportions.
Within 60 days it became national news and the powers that be all sat quiet as they watched their employees intentionally make and file false claims. Before the year was over, we saw major universities like Pennsylvania State and others, write scathing articles refuting the claims of prison staff that adamantly reported they fell ill after minuscule contact with Fentanyl or K-2. In all, it was proven that the employees lied—all of them! No charges were ever filed, and everyone got a pay increase. What the employees did not report was that the small amount of drugs that were found came from other employees. Guards and prison staff know this and those who were not in on the big lie have kept quiet to this day.
The goal was simple: increase the pay scale! Control prisoners’ mail more obsessively. Control the right to decide what books and literature prisoners can obtain. They succeeded. If one employee doesn’t agree with a book received at their “Secure Process Center” in Bellefonte, PA, then the book is denied to the prisoner. Prisoners no longer are allowed photographs or greeting cards. If loved ones send me a photograph, I will never get it. The system will photocopy the picture and give me a paper photocopy! The original photo will not get sent back to the person who sent it. The same with greeting cards and personal letters. I only get a photocopy and the original is kept in St. Petersburg, Florida at a company called Mail Guard/Smart Communications. So, if my own loved ones press a dab of perfume on a letter, I will never be able to smell that scent!
Write to Terrance Brown:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Terrance Brown #DC2474
SCI Albion
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
1 “Pennsylvania’s Department of Corruption”
By Terrance D. Brown, September/October 2023 Socialist Viewpoint