One would think that when you go to jail, luxuries like PlayStation and Xbox would have to be left behind, but quite often in the UK, video games are finding their way into prisons, sometimes on the British taxpayer's dime. A recent audit of the Prison Service found that it had spent £221,726 (almost $432,000) on consoles and video games for prisoners. Most of the roughly 13,000 consoles found in the country's jails were paid for by the inmates themselves, but 1,700 were purchased with taxpayer money. The program has turned into a bit of a scandal and officials are already taking steps to quell the furor. Spending on video games and consoles for prisoners has been frozen and all titles rated for 18 and older only have been removed. The revelation that hundreds of thousands of pounds have been spent on entertainment at a time when rehabilitation programs in prisons are struggling for funding has many up in arms. As one British Justice said "Offenders should be learning and preparing for the world of work, not idly playing Grand Theft Auto and preparing to return to crime." http://www.switched.com/2008/08/07/u-k-tax-payers-buying-playstations-for-prisoners/
Of course, the other extreme is many state prisons in the USA that pay their prisoners only 60 cents per hour (minimum wage regulations do not apply in prison), and where prisoners have to buy every single thing out of their own pockets, except for the bare necessities. In one woman's prison, where disposible razor blades are banned, the women were issued cheap electric razors, many of which burned out within the first few months. The warden refused to replace any of them, and the women must pay for new electric razors out of their own pocket or become hairy- a humiliating indignity. Don't get me wrong, I think prisoners should be humiliated. But for some of these prisoners who do not have any outside savings of their own, and who are only able to earn 10 dollars per month, many of whom will remain in prison for over 15 years, this just seems cruel.
