By Jimmy Iakovos
In 2022 there were forty suicides within Georgia’s oppressive prison system. Futility of effort, neglectful abuse, and abandonment of hope in a system of slavery has taken a grim toll. Add to the suicides another thirty confirmed murders and 169 “other” deaths for a total of 239 human deaths in the last calendar year. Judging by the lack of effort to make changes in the system, that number is acceptable.
News media talking heads do not even opine that another death in prison is sad before moving on to news of more crimes having been reported and of mass arrests being conducted to recreate safe neighborhoods. The overall thought being planted in the mind of the citizen, “It’s the person in prison’s own fault. They asked for it.” The “they” you are picturing in your mind, if the propaganda machine has accomplished its task, are the gangs Governor Kemp has his police army arresting in great number for the crimes of living in the wrong place, going to the wrong schools and abandoning their families to earn the money needed to live above the level of mere survival. The prisons are always bulging at the seams with our poor under the heading of some mostly victimless crime or another.
Euthanasia is the age old fiscal correct solution to the snowball effect of arresting masses of people, convicting them of victimless crimes, and keeping them longer to be tough on crime–rather than smarter than crime–versus the exorbitant price of enslaving human beings until they are too old to run. For the past three years there have been allowed thirty murders per year inside the Georgia prisons. The new Department of Corrections Commissioner. Tyrone Oliver, commenting on the state of the system he was just appointed head of said, “But thirty [homicides] out of 50,000 [incarcerated people], from a percentage standpoint, relatively speaking… I know it sounds bad. But it’s not as bad when you look at the population we’re dealing with.” That is blatantly stating that some human beings are of lesser value than others. There is no ignoring the genocidal implications of such a mentality.
There was an incredible increase of deaths under the guidance of recently departed DOC Commissioner, Timothy Ward. Specifically, before Ward, there were twenty-eight prisoner murders over a span of three years. During his reign that total was bested annually. This same Timothy Ward once led the Tactical Squads responsible for quelling riots. Controlling prisoners was his specialty, yet he chose not to when put in charge. Ward’s role in a propaganda film about Georgia’s prisons produced for the National Geographic Channel while he was still a prison warden, just a couple of years before his rise to the top, is reminiscent of dictators throughout the world smiling for the press.
Ward has been rewarded by Governor Kemp for the job he did in Corrections; he now holds one of the five most powerful, judicially untouchable positions in the State as a member of the Board of Pardons and Paroles, determining which of the 50,000 prisoners gets out alive. That appointment only makes sense when truthfully the horrendous result of his management was the one desired by the Governor’s political party. 169 human beings died in prison (officially Paroled to Death) for reasons other than murder or suicide. All of those could not have been heart attacks or accidents. An unknown yet unacceptable number of fragile men and women were being held in a $1.8 billion a year prison system when they could have been allowed the hospice care of family members.
Instead they are kept in prison because their last breath benefits the ends of justice. It is difficult to estimate the cost of housing aging slaves unto death due to the “tough on crime,” Life Without Parole sentences for children and long mandatory minimum sentences that are essentially death sentences for middle age arrestees. This acceptable number of deaths serves to normalize for the public that prisons euthanize people by neglecting their physical and mental health care.
There is a growing murmur among lifers with possible parole (who rarely are allowed parole anyway) to volunteer for the death penalty. Compared to being found dead hanging in a shower stall, overdosed on a beautifully waxed floor, or just shamefully emancipated in solitary cells labeled infirmaries, to leave this plane of existence with any measure of decorum is an attractive option. Thus far no requests for converting Life into Death sentences have been acknowledged or responded to. Letters to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole are state secrets, not readily available for review.
“The death count doesn’t seem very high compared to the population,” to paraphrase the reported opinion of the newest Prison Commissioner, Tyrone Oliver. The reports on the news are already becoming ho-hum to the public more concerned with trying to make ends meet. New crematoriums, when constructed near prison facilities, will be applauded for adding jobs. Why endure the cost of transporting the dead all that way when each region can have its own oven to dispose of the bodies unclaimed by family members who are financially unable to have the body of a loved one returned for local burial. Small cardboard boxes of token ashes can be mailed bulk rate to the next of kin on record. “Here’s your mother, brother, sister, father. Sorry for your loss. You’ll have to sign for the box please, thank you.”
