Taxpayers are being duped by state Senator Nozzolio! It was his decision when he came into office in 1974, to take away the many jobs that for many years were done by inmates for 50 cents a day. He gave them instead to his voting constituency at hundreds of dollars per month!

A sampling of the types of jobs once done by inmates included: teacher, dental assistant, lab technician, nurse, mechanic, machinist (tool & dye), plumber, and electrician. There were once grading gangs who did all the paving, including the repairs and maintenance. Inmates were even the locksmiths. They were even paid to do “the count.” (Today these jobs are almost non-existent. If they do, they only pay 65 cents a day.)

My husband (James Moore) has been in prison since 1962 and held some of these same jobs. “All who had these jobs were a conscientious group of inmates,” he told me. (At the time of the Attica riot, he was working as head clerk in the prison hospital.)

When he transferred to Auburn Prison, he again ‘got one of the best paying jobs on the inside.' As “head clerk” he was paid $13.50 a day. For fifteen years he worked for the Industrial Superintendent, Mr. Lee Jewett, who in his evaluations called Jim an 'outstanding worker.' He also provided something he'd never done for any inmate, a letter to the parole board, recommending my husband's release. (Head clerk jobs for inmates no longer exist. Instead, highly paid civilians have them.)

Over the past three decades, the second fastest growing industry in the United States has been prisons. The fact that taxpayers in New York state are footing the bill for all the hundreds of high-paying jobs once done by inmates has definitely been a factor in our own state's sky-rocketing prison budget.

Joyce Hackett Smith-Moore

Moravia