I must address the Feb. 7 letter to the editor from Tina Goodpasture about spending on prisons and not on education.
First she states how many perils a prison officer faces on the job. I can’t find a law anywhere that states that a certain percentage of the population has to work as a prison guard or police officer. They work there because that is what they want to do for a living. She talks about officers being subjected to prisoners with AIDS and tuberculosis. She doesn’t say that if a guard gets sick, the guard has to pay their own medical bills. A prisoner gets free medical care, compliments of the taxpayer.
It cost the taxpayer an average of $80,000 a year to keep a prisoner on death row. That would pay two starting teachers’ salaries for a year.
If the court system would start hanging these criminals on death row in a timely manner, how much would that save the taxpayer? Sometimes it takes 25 years to execute a murderer. That is where our school money is going. Prisoners contribute nothing to our economy.
I do admire anyone who is a police officer. I could not be one. I could not arrest a person for a crime, then offer them a lawyer to get them out of it.
If a criminal gets 20 years for a crime, he gets the following perks at the taxpayers’ expense:
He gets a warm place to sleep. He doesn’t have to worry about high electric bills, or buy heating oil to keep his family warm.
He gets three nutritonal meals a day. He doesn’t pay taxes. He gets free medical care, compliments of the taxpayer. He doesn’t even have to pay a deductable on health insurance. He gets free TV, a library and exercise room.
He even gets occasional conjugal visits from his wife or girlfriend. What a deal, and all at the taxpayers expense.
By the way, didn’t they used to hang a man for stealing horses?
R.H. “Buck” Simpson
Marion, Va.
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