End of an Era: No more reading glasses for those who cannot afford them.

I woke up on a day that carries a lot of momentum here in the United States of America, and checked my messages here at Blessington. I saw this:

Blessington Chaplaincy Services
Reading Glasses:
The reading glasses ministry will expire after January, 2025. If you are indigent and need reading glasses, please make your request known to Chaplaincy Services. We will make every effort to attain a pair of reading glasses for you! After January 31, 2025, we will no longer be issuing glasses, due to high demand and cost. We thank the Lord for allowing us to bless all the indigent individuals with reading glasses for the last five and a half years!

I saw this, and it made me sad.

There are a lot of people here who receive no monetary support from beyond the wires. These are people who often do not qualify for new or replacement prescription eyewear for any number of reasons, such as...

• It has not been three years since their last eye exam.
• It has not been three years since they were last issued eyewear at no cost to the recipient.
• There is no optometrist or opthalmologist available to see and examine patients.

I know that last bullet point well, though I am not an indigent individual at this time. It took the better part of a year, a camp transfer, and some grievances to get seen for an eye exam somewhere.
Dr. Pullgood (not his actual name) was nice, though! He's a traveling eye doctor who comes to Blessington a couple of days per month and tries to see as many justice-impacted individuals as he can.
I finally had a prescription to replace my unavailable glasses from the free world after 10 months in prison and 5 months in gaol.
It was then a trek to get eyeglasses that do not interfere with the hearing instruments I was issued -- nearly a half year from there.

That said, the other option is reading glasses, which have to be purchased on our quarterly non-food packages. Internally, we get a one week shot at placing an order at the start of a quarter; after that, we rely on our loved ones beyond the wire to place an order.
We pay a $7.95 ordering fee plus taxes on anything ordered, either here at the camp, or through you all who place orders for us. Limit one order of one pair per quarter.
Right now, a pair of reading glasses would set us back close to $20.00, if I remember what they were going for.

Yet in the free world, a pair of reading glasses typically goes for a quarter of that. Sure, they're cheap plastic lenses, plastic frame, no protective coatings... but that's all they give to prisoners anyway!

Aah, my fiefdom for several boxes of a thousand pairs of reading glasses, assorted strengths and sizes.

Why?

Because with that reading glasses ministry gone, people who cannot afford reading glasses and don't qualify for prescription glasses will suffer, forced to use the logical aftermarket of inmate-to-inmate exchanges to meet a need. The high demand comes from a combination of poor hardware durability, lousy hardware availability for prescription choices, and the massive gaps between exams that leave deteriorating eyesight unchecked, changing the vision needs of the individual.

This equates to the potential that someone may find themselves trading chicken dinner tray after chicken dinner tray for a set of +1.50 reading glasses so they can read their sacred book or a piece of mail.

I see this as not a good thing.

Remember: most of our jobs do not pay anything beyond the gain time we earn. Therefore, the status of indigent exists, where we are powerless to positively steer our outcomes. Those of us who insist on doing positive things are swarmed by those who see a system that won't do right and won't do right in turn.
After all, Garbage In, Garbage Out is how a system works; wouldn't it be better to pour some good in, instead?

🤔

Oh, wait. Logic in the state of Florida is punishable by law. /s