General Assembly Update

Once again the Virginia General Assembly is considering a number of bills that will directly affect inmates. But inmates are the one minority it’s OK to mistreat. As pointed out in the book The New Jim Crow, prison inmates today are the last discriminated class in America, akin to the black struggle against injustice in the segregated, Jim Crow era south. Michelle Alexander, the author, is a radical. She believes mass incarceration is as morally repugnant as apartheid.



This year the General Assembly will consider giving inmates additional “earned good time” days each month. The fact that we sit here and hope an additional five, seven or even ten days a month could be earned to the paltry 4.5 days currently on the books should tell you how desperate the prison population is for any relief.


I repeat something I have stated more than once in this blog: Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote 150 years ago that “a society is judged by how it treats its prisoners”.


Virginia has a moral imperative to ease the length of prison sentences and ensure prisons are humane. The Commonwealth, the country as a whole, risks moral bankruptcy unless prison reform becomes a reality.


The General Assembly has a clear choice. They can be just, be honorable, act morally or continue with business as usual.