Governor McDonnell’s budget is full of false promises and
misstatements. Just look at DOC
spending. The Governor’s budget proposal
indicates that there are plenty of beds available in DOC. “Numbers are down, bed space is up…” Yet, in 2013 and 2014 spending for DOC
increases…substantially.
Governor McDonnell has pronounced higher education spending
a major priority. In his budget remarks,
McDonnell details the dramatic rise in tuition costs for Virginia’s colleges
and universities and labels these costs unacceptable. Middle-class Virginia families are being
squeezed out of college opportunities due to the staggering cost of getting a
degree. “Something must be done”, he
argues. Good point.
So why then, does the Governor oversee and encourage a
prison-industrial complex that directly leads to increased public university
spending? I refer to VCE and their exclusive
sales arrangements with Virginia’s state university system.
VCE – “Virginia Corrections Enterprises” – operates
slave-wage factories (fifty-five to eighty cents an hour) where various
furniture and clothing are manufactured.
At Lunenburg, VCE manufactures furniture. Manufacture may overstate it. Pre-cut wood and plastic arrive here for
assembly. A crew of sewers and
upholsterers make cushions for the furniture.
These men work in deplorable conditions.
During the summer temperatures exceed 100°. There are no air-conditioning
or fans allowed. On job injury? The worker is suspended, without pay.
Who buys this furniture?
Virginia’s state-supported colleges and universities are required
to purchase their dorm furnishings and office furniture from VCE and VCE
charges substantially higher than market value.
In other words, the school could buy the same furniture from a private
manufacturer/seller at a substantially reduced price. State Government regulations requires excess
money be spent to buy from VCE. That’s
money that comes out of university budgets that could go for faculty, or
library needs, or scholarships; instead it props up a slave-like industry
system which cannot compete with the private sector.
How bad is the price gouging the universities endure? There are some furniture pieces this VCE
facility does not make. The local VCE
manager goes through private manufacturer catalogs to find what the school
needs. He then buys it, marks the price
up, and sells to the university.
Why does Virginia go through this charade? It’s simple.
Government – your elected representatives – don’t want you to know the
true cost of incarceration: $1.1 billion
this year and going up in each of the next two years. And, that doesn’t include the “hidden costs”,
those costs passed on to taxpayers through price-gouged purchase orders between
DOC industries and other state divisions.
Or the exorbitant legal fees generated by the Commonwealth to defend
arcane and in many cases illegal policies and procedures in place in Virginia
DOC facilities.
And it clearly doesn’t include the unreported costs
associated with 40,000 parents and children behind bars. How many children in the Commonwealth are
growing up in one-parent homes, living below the poverty line, in danger of
dropping out or falling into patterns of drug use and criminal behavior because
their fathers – or their mothers – are behind bars?
The real cost of Virginia’s love affair with incarceration
is staggering and there is nothing funny about the money spent and wasted or
the lives ruined by this state’s continuing lies about is corrections’
apparatus.
The Virginia General Assembly is now in session. It’s high time for a candid discussion about
this state’s failed corrections model.
It’s high time for prison reform.
The era of funny money is over.
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