Courier

Regulation-size basketball courts, yoga rooms and landscaped gardens are just some of the amenities that a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation press release aims to bestow upon its prison inmates.

We are all taught at an early age that there are consequences for our actions; you don't eat your vegetables, you get no dessert; fail a class in high school and get grounded for a month. However, it seems that when you throw all your morals out the window there will always be a place you can go where you're rewarded for being a menace to society: prison.

Not many of us can afford daily trips to the gym anymore, some of us struggle simply to eat and pay rent. Instead of falling back on welfare or food stamps, simply commit murder and all your responsibilities will be placed in the hands of millions of California taxpayers.

Free health care, three hot meals a day, full gym and with a bit of luck yoga room access to any prison inmate lucky enough to be held in any California prison. How backwards has our society become?

In the third quarter the CDCR had a budget of nearly $9.7 billion to support the staggering 317,225 inmates in the California prison system.

The only people who should be watching cable TV in a prison are the guards. There is no justification why any inmate deserves anything more than a book and a bed. Take away the free weights; they only make stronger criminals. My tax dollars provide rapists and murderers with a means to reduce the stress they encounter in their daily lives, but my situation only worsens while theirs improves.

Prison inmates are even allowed to visit one another even if they are serving their time in completely different institutions.

During an appeal, one prisoner names his/her friend as a witness in their case, the court orders a subpoena for the witness to appear and literally provides a round trip and face to face meeting between the two inmates. Prison gangs use this method to relay the most secretive and often deadly orders and all at the cost of thousands of taxpayer dollars.

I have no problem paying taxes, but if Uncle Sam wants me to disclose my actual earnings, then I expect drastic and efficient changes to occur. Times are hard enough with the economy and country the way they are, I am tired of looking around my apartment and seeing all the things that I've worked so hard for given to murderers and thieves.

There are 680 prisoners on the California condemned inmate list, costing almost $23 million annually. I propose Governor Schwarzenegger expedite their executions so that the list reaches zero before the summer season begins. If my tax dollars aren't used properly, then maybe I wont report them responsibly and I implore every hard working Californian to do the same.

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