Stop firing of legal aid prisoner

By Sehu Kessa Saa Tabansi

Revolutionary greetings to all the workers worldwide!

When does being a laborer and doing right become the wrong thing to do? The answer is, apparently, when you are a prisoner working inside a prison law library in Pennsylvania.

In the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, prisoner work, if you can even call it that, pays as low as $0.17 per hour (six hours a day, five days a week), and as high as $0.42 per hour (eight hours a day, five days a week). Anybody can do that math and see that the money is not the reason why incarcerated men, women and children work.

Some people in life simply enjoy being of assistance to other people, regardless of compensation. Also, some people are excellent at their profession and take genuine pleasure in it.

Such is the sad case of Mr. Jules Jetté, a middle-aged French-Canadian man who has dedicated his legal knowledge to explaining the law’s complex intricacies to a large variety of prisoners, including the illiterate, mentally challenged, emotionally disturbed, juveniles, elderly, handicapped and many more. Now, he himself is in need of help!

Mr. Jetté, who has been incarcerated at State Correctional Institution Houtzdale for over 15 years and who has worked faithfully as a legal aid worker for his fellow prisoners daily for nine years, is now facing job removal.

That’s right, I said job removal — for being of selfless service to others. What other reason would the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections have for removing him from his position of service to prisoners? Mr. Jetté has not had any misconduct reports as a prisoner his entire time here, no exaggeration. He does not even have any negative block card (housing unit) reports at all, which is something very hard to do under imprisonment for any length of time.

Sadly, the Department of Corrections does not care about the work Mr. Jetté does. Quite a few prisoners that benefit from Mr. Jetté’s self-taught legal knowledge have attested to his good character and effective service. However, SCI Houtzdale’s security office has taken notice of prisoners’ improved success rate in court with Mr. Jetté’s help, and are now retaliating against him and those of us who support him.

The public, whose taxes go to fund the prisons, including prisoner (poverty) wages, have a right to know what is going on here. [U.S.] America is supposed to guarantee equal protection under the law and access to the courts. Yet thousands of prisoners are abandoned by Pennsylvania lawyers, have had ineffective lawyers, or have been barred from being heard in courts (a “jurisdictional bar”).

That is where Mr. Jetté comes in: Where there are already scarce legal resources for prisoners at SCI Houtzdale, the administration wants to remove him. Both Mr. Jetté and all those prisoners that will be affected by his job removal are desperately in urgent need of individual workers and labor unions to flood the governor’s and DOC secretary’s offices with letters, faxes, emails and phone calls voicing concerns and outrage over the plans to remove a prisoner employee from a job that he has been working for nine years with perfect behavior and work effort.

In solidarity with Mr. Jetté, contact:

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf:
Phone: 717-787-2500
Fax: 717-772-8284

Mail: Office of the Governor,
508 Main Capitol Building, Harrisburg, PA 17120

Online: https://www.governor.pa.gov/contact/

PA Department of Corrections Secretary John Wetzel

Email: ra-crpadocsecretary@pa.gov

DOC Phone: 717-728-2573

SCI Houtzdale Phone: 814-378-1000 (address calls to Barry Smith)

Sample email or letter message: Please do not allow SCI Houtzdale to fire inmate legal aid worker Jules Jetté! The service he provides, for which he is severely underpaid, is of great assistance to inmates who wish to exercise their constitutional right to redress of grievances in the courts. Save Mr. Jetté!