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Letters to the Editor

Joe Paterno’s record

With his 409th victory on Oct. 29 against the University of Illinois, Penn State Coach Joe Paterno broke the winning football record of the late coach Eddie Robinson of Grambling State University.

For years Robinson had stood apart among Division 1 colleges with his 408 victories and the number of players he sent to the National Football league.

Mind you, he did this as an African American coach, under the socio-economic constraints placed on a state supported historically black university in rural Louisiana beginning in 1941 until his retirement in 1997.

I wonder if the scandal that led to the firing of Joe Paterno was known before he broke Robinson’s record, and, if so, was it intentionally held back.

David
Via e-mail

Pregnant women in prison

We appreciate Roth’s well-written piece (“Can prisons take care of pregnant women?” Bay State Banner, Nov. 10, 2011) on pregnant women who are incarcerated. It touches on the numerous challenges faced by these mothers-to-be, and since this topic is one of the three main areas of our work — making Texas jails safer and more humane — we put this on the front page of our website texasjailproject.org.

The treatment of incarcerated women, especially those unfortunate enough to find themselves pregnant inside the jail or prison, is a national problem that the Texas Jail Project has been dealing with since the day we started up in 2006.

Everything Roth says in this excellent piece is true, even to the part about personnel failing to recognize the signs of labor and women “giving birth locked in their cells without any assistance.”

Diana
Texas Jail Project