In the New Year, I am committed to featuring many more voices from the inside on this blog. To kick off the year, here is a letter to the editor from a prisoner in Florida who is responding to this truly dumb and misinformed column.

Here is the letter by Jeffrey Ashten, Martin Correctional facility:

Letter: Life in prison in Florida is not Club Fed

I am a 48-year-old inmate at Martin Correctional, serving a life sentence for homicide, having been incarcerated since September 1988 and I would like to respond to Charles DeGarmo’s views on prisons versus senior care facilities (“Move seniors into prisons for better care”, Nov. 5) as his facts are a bit off the mark.

There are no free phones in prison, as all calls are collect. Computers are donated and used in limited/restricted access with no connection to any outside system. The televisions and computers, donated by church groups, are welcomed by the prison staff as they are utilized to control inmates.

I’ve yet to see in all my decades of incarceration an outdoor meditation garden. Perhaps Mr. DeGarmo means the times I zone out while repeatedly cutting the grass?

The only special meals here are for medical reasons. I am Jewish. I’ve yet to see a Kosher diet for long-term prisoners. (Short-term prisoners just received one this year for the first time. Federal law mandates it.)

As to food in prison, I invite Mr. DeGarmo to come dine with me on a diet that is 70 percent soy. (Not too good for health from what I see on my donated, collectively-shared TV.) He seems too willing to comment upon a situation of which he has no first-hand knowledge. Television and movies have glamorized “Club Fed.” I didn’t rate a federal sentence. In Florida, I assure you, there are no “Club Feds.”

It is ridiculous to compare senior care to that of prisoners. Seniors have rights that I don’t. They can vote for elected officials who could regulate better care for them. I can’t vote for a better jailer. If Mr. DeGarmo doesn’t like the system of warehousing prisoners, then he should put his efforts into finding a better way for criminal reform.