Here's a comment from Jack Sanders, which was posted to the Pottstown Patch Facebook page:

"More money for the beast. When (and I do mean WHEN) incarceration goes private, these new larger prisons will be sold cheaply and crest mass amounts of wealth for the investors.
Why put the money to education when fewer educated people go to prison? If there are less prisoners, there is less money for the owners.
The whole situation is sick.
Bully for these protesters!"

Don't these people have better things to do? If they had normal jobs and families, they wouldn't have time for this nonsense!

Most people have better things to do than sit in cages in jails, yet our system's reliance on mandatory sentencing rather than addressing root causes of issues forces much more than a morning's worth of protest time to be wasted in their lives. The issue is prisons, not the protestors.

So they want these criminals in the community? What is the purpose of this, more crime? Don't we have enough. Roy is correct, get a job and become a productive member of the community instead of being counter-productive.

This project is to replace the 80 year old prison.

Solidarity, stop the prisons.

Blah blah blah blah blah blababa blah blah blah blababa blah.

i am in complete agreement w these protestors....our wonderful gov corbett has allotted 400 million of our hard earned tax dollars to house these criminals, and provide them w a free education, computers and recreation etc, etc at our expense...it and he are a disgrace..

lets hear it for the actiists...kudos...its a disgrace that corbett allotted 400 million to house these criminals....he should lose his job.........i am in complete agreement with their protest.

Lynne I value and also hold what I read as your desire for folks to have access to work and to be active community members. Unfortunately, imprisonment, and the perpetuation of prisons disrupts all those values -- while not actually addressing any of the *causes* of crime. A prison sentence takes someone away from their family and community, and makes it much harder to get a job after someone is out. Why not spend the money on education and job training and anti-violence programs in the first place?

In 2010 the US passed the two million mark of prison population. That number leads the world by no small margin. Do you realize the cost of a year in jail exceeds the cost of a year in college? Who benefits from "three strikes your out"? The time is long past to take a fresh look at the war on drugs and other ways the federal government is killing our country. We all suffer daily from the effects of the nanny state and we alone hold the power to halt its progress. Where is the voice of reason? Of common sense? The prison system is broken and needs a rethink and so does the federal government.

How do you know how many people are in prison in China??, Iran?, Russia?? Our population has doubled since the 1950's. What is the # as a percentage of population?? Maybe if we enforced the death penalty, the number would go down. There are many reasons why the prison population has risen. Not all those in jail are victims of the drug laws. In today's society, you really have to repeat offenses many times to end up in jail. Stop it with the education, job training and feel good programs. Most of these people are just plain bad. If you think not, I'm sure there are programs where you can take some into your home as a half-way house. Put your mouth is where our money is!!

"Human Rights Watch Thursday published its annual World Report, in which it lays out a pointed critique of the U.S. prison system. The enormous prison population — the largest in the world at 1.6million — “partly reflects harsh sentencing practices contrary to international law,” notes the report." http://www.salon.com/2013/01/31/human_rights_watch_decries_u_s_prison_system/