Election Day, Part 2

This may surprise you, but our college dorm is abuzz about the upcoming election.  Debates are watched, ads analyzed, and the candidates’ positions on various issues studied.  Even without the right to vote, men in this building are following the election.

I’ve paid particular attention to the Virginia race for U.S. Senate putting two former Virginia Governors – George Allen and Tim Kaine – in a bruising battle with repercussions for party control of the senate.  The campaign has been expensive, bare knuckles brawling with little regard by either man for the truth.  Both men are mere caricatures of their parties.  And, as with most political campaigns these days, truth and decency are casualties of polling success.

Both men have stretched the truth in their efforts to seek election.  But one whopper stands out.  In a series of ads George Allen continually reminds Virginians as Governor “he ended parole”.  We all expect politicians to play mental gymnastics with the truth.  Allen, however, is an Olympic gold medal winner.  The truth is, by Allen going along with and pushing the legislature toward truth in sentencing with the abolishment of parole, he did significant financial damage to Virginia that is and will continue to affect this state without massive prison and sentencing reform.

In the early 1990s the Federal government approached the states with a too good to be true deal.  Enact “truth in sentencing” laws which require convicted felons to serve 85% of the sentence imposed and Federal grants will cover the cost of prison expansion.  “Free Federal money” most states thought and across the nation legislatures fell in lock step.  In Virginia, George Allen seized on the opportunity.  “Tough on crime, No parole” became rallying cries for his campaign.  His slogans carried the day and soon Virginia’s General Assembly voted to abolish parole.

And soon after his term was underway, Governor Allen engaged his Department of Corrections chief to begin ramping up prison construction.  Like drunken revelers on a pub crawl, the legislators lined up, all eager to prove they too were tough on crime.  In less than ten years new prisons opened in a dozen communities around the Commonwealth, many of them in rural pockets where employment opportunities lagged.

Virginia went from a state with around 9,000 inmates to over four times that many, reaching almost 40,000 in 2009.  DOC became the state’s largest department employing over 13,000.  And the cost?  Soon Virginia was spending over $1 billion dollars annually to operate its prison system.  One out of every 8 general fund dollars was going to prisons.

The Federal grant money stopped, but Virginia’s costs didn’t.  Politicians were afraid to admit they’d made a mistake.  George Allen?  He kept smiling and distorting his record.  Fact is, locking more people up for longer sentences has nothing to do with the crime rate.  Fact also is, Virginia’s released inmates reoffended at the same rate at before.

But change did come.  For one thing, the economy began to tank.  Virginia couldn’t afford everything the politicians promised.  While millions were being directed to DOC, real spending on Virginia’s colleges actually decreased.  Transportation projects were put on hold.  “Creative accounting” on the state retirement system let people believe the Commonwealth had a balanced budget.

First Tim Kaine, then Bob McDonnell, realized Virginia couldn’t sustain its gulag prison system. They began to shut them down devastating rural Virginia counties who had come to rely on the prison gravy train for economic sustenance.

And the inmates?  There were crowded into fewer prisons with fewer officers making the facilities less safe and less rehabilitative.  Inmates began suing and Virginia’s costs continued to climb (over $1.2 billion this year alone).  And George Allen continued to tout his record as Governor. 

Prison reform – sentencing reform – will occur.  The states realize it. You can’t keep locking people up.  There are cheaper, more effective alternatives.

I can’t vote – I’m an incarcerated felon.  But if I could, I’d vote for the candidate who is honest with me about the real cost of Virginia’s love affair with prisons.  They cost too much financially and in the lives they destroy.  George Allen isn’t that politician.