Governor McDonnell touted a $500 million surplus, except,
he forgot to tell people he failed to meet the payment requirements to the
Virginia Retirement System. There is no
surplus. VRS is almost $17 billion underfunded
and the Commonwealth still has an IOU outstanding to VRS for the prior year’s
budget debacle. And McDonnell has the
brass set to go on CNN as a “possible VP” nominee and tout Virginia’s economic
well-being.
A pox on both their houses!
As “The Economist” noted in an OpEd piece on March 19, 2011:
“…despite all the rhetoric from the tea partiers, big
government is not just the fault of the self-interested bureaucrats and leftist
politicians. Conservative voters…have
kept on demanding the state do more…the right has built prisons, announced wars
on drugs and terror, and indulged generals, farmers, and policemen…”
What we have seen in the recent economic unraveling is that
everything costs. And the bill for
America’s love affair with “tough on crime” mass incarceration policy has come
due. Governor McDonnell can lead or he
can step aside. But, the time for change
is now.
As states such as Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Kentucky have
realized, there are more effective and less expensive ways to handle most
non-violent offenders. These states are
employing alternatives to sending someone convicted of a crime to prison. They utilize home incarceration and day
center reporting versus prison.
This isn’t a “bleeding heart liberal” approach. Conservatives such as former Reagan Attorney
General Ed Meese, drug czar William Bennett, Newt Gingrich and anti-tax
advocate Grover Norquist are pushing for prison reform.
Where is Virginia in this discussion? Not even involved. Virginia will spend $25,000 to keep me housed
in a low level facility this year and the costs continue to climb. I am unable to pay restitution for my
embezzlement while in here; I do not pay taxes; I do not help raise my youngest
son. Three years I’ve spent behind
bars. If Bob McDonnell was really the
politician he claims to be, he’d look at my situation and the thousands like
it. He’d let us “do our time” outside
the walls; working, making restitution, being productive citizens.
As the "Sentencing Project" reported recently, lawmakers in
Kansas, Michigan, New Jersey and New York adopted significant policy changes to
reduce prison populations.
“In each of these state a range of policy changes were
adopted, including sentencing reforms, alternatives for ‘prison-bound’ people,
reducing time served in prison, addressing parole release rates and reducing
revocations”
23 states have made significant changes in the way sentences
are handed out and the length of time an inmate serves – Virginia is not one of
those 23.
Bob McDonnell and the Virginia General Assembly can make a
difference. $1 billion a year to house
40,000 inmates is enough reason to try. They
need to enact a real “earned good time credit” system that aggressively rewards
inmates who seek to change and improve.
Early release should not just be a goal, but the mission of corrections.
Virginia can no longer afford to do nothing. Virginia needs real solutions, not “creative”
accounting. The economic realities that
showed their true colors this summer prove that government must make smart
choices. No longer can the U.S. with 5
percent of the world’s population, keep 25 percent of the world’s inmates
behind bars.
Perhaps Governor McDonnell will finally get it.
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