Now remember, most of the prisoners crowding Pennsylvania's prisons are not hardened killers. They are, for the most part, just folks who have committed felonies of one kind or another, many of which are relatively minor, may have been non-violent in nature, like fraud, check kiting, drunk driving, or maybe burglary, and who are serving sentences of five years or less, yet here the DOC is effectively sentencing them to death from complications of untreated Hep-C. And it's handing down this capital sentence not even for any serious reason -- simply for someone having an anger-management problem or an addiction problem, both of which are actually treatable disorders, not crimes.
Gov. Wolf, to his credit, has put a moratorium on executions in Pennsylvania, and yet here he is allowing the state's prison system, in effect, to condemn to death inmates who have active Hepatitis-C cases by denying them available medicines that could cure their disease -- a disease which they may well have actually contracted while in prison.
There is only one word for what is happening here: barbaric.
DAVE LINDORFF is a member of ThisCantBeHappening!, the independent, uncompromised, five-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative news site. His work, and that of colleagues JOHN GRANT, JESS GUH, GARY LINDORFF, ALFREDO LOPEZ, LINN WASHINGTON, JR. and the late CHARLES M. YOUNG, can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net
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