YOUNG READER COMMENDS COVERAGE OF FEDERAL PRISON ATROCITIES IN FLORENCE

I would like to commend the Rocky Mountain News for reporting on the
"Cowboy Posse" and the Florence penitentiary. Prisons have become the
largest public housing structures for America's minority population, the
poor, the uneducated and the mentally and physically sick. Human suffering
sanctioned by those in power is routine in America's prison system.

Thousands there have never been convicted of anything, close to a million
are there for non-violent drug offenses. The hidden nature of prisons
relieves the public of any responsibility. "Lock 'em up and throw away the
key" is the applauded attitude toward prisoners even though 95 percent will
be released someday.

Colorado leads the nation in its rate of imprisoning women who are often
sexually and emotionally abused in prison. Seventy-five percent of these
women are mothers. Their children are five to six times more likely to
serve jail time. The pretense of prisons as places for rehabilitation must
be shed.

American prisons foster gangs, ruthlessness, insanity and human suffering.
The cold war military industrial complex has been replaced by the prison
industrial complex with a price tag of more than $500 million a year in
Colorado.

The "Cowboy Posse" is just one small example of the behavior informally
required of those who want to work in American prisons. Thank you for
breaking the silence about an institution that now competes with schools
for taxpayers' money. The Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center in
Boulder and Sen. Penfield Tate are working on legislation such as the Drug
Sentencing Reform & Prison Moratorium Bill SB 117 to alleviate some of the
glaring injustices in prisons. I hope we can work together so that young
people like me have career options other than prison guard or prisoner in
the future.

Ellen Feighny
Greeley