Update: Live

In prior blogs I’ve written about a young, bright black IT student named “Live” who was leader of a “blood” gang sect.  He was a funny, personable young guy who was too tied into gang life.  It led to his departure from this facility and removal from the program.  I liked him, though I knew from conversations with him he was ruthless and cold blooded.  Gang trumped even his own kids.  He was expected to lead, and he met expectations.

This week, the Richmond Times Dispatch reported that “Live” was in Federal custody in a maximum security facility.  Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli announced they had intercepted instructions to his “loyal soldiers” to “take out” a few disloyal members.  Gang activity in Richmond is on the increase.  Live’s crew is notorious for their brutality.

In all likelihood, the multi-count indictment will lead to Live spending much of the rest of his life behind bars.  It’s a shame really.  Much like the fictitious Michael Corleone of “Godfather” fame realized, it’s easier getting in the life than getting out.  I’m left to wonder, what might Live become?  A veterinarian (his dream)? Or, an aging gang banger, living and ultimately dying, in prison?  I wonder.

The Visit

Last Monday our “Campus within Walls” hosted the Chief Deputy of the Virginia Secretary of Education.  We’d expected the Secretary to be here.  “She had a commitment arise from the budget conference” we were told.  And our initial reaction was one of disappointment.  We thought it was just another example of our program, and in particular the work the instructors and aides do, just getting lip service from Richmond.  Especially for the aides, this is a thankless job.  We’re paid 45 cents per hour and many of us are devoting 60, 70 and sometimes 80 hours each week helping guys with their assignments.  Yet, we are only allowed credit for 50 hours each week.  Nothing we do gets us closer to release.  Virginia doesn’t provide extraordinary good time, even when you’re helping make possible the Governor’s vision for successful re-entry.

So, our initial reaction to the visit was muted.  We were, we thought, the “red-headed” step child again.  But then the Deputy Director engaged us and, to our pleasant surprise, things were better than we’d hoped.

The Deputy Director was a school principal before becoming the second in command at the Department of Education.  He spoke at length with the aides as he sat in our Excel class.  He talked candidly with our instructor.  He asked well reasoned questions and was genuinely impressed by the efforts of the men and the instructors.  “I’ve never been inside a prison before”, he told us on the way over to tour our building.  “I never imagined it would be like this.”

The building tour:  the warden, the assistant warden, the president of the Community College and our principal led our Richmond VIPs over to our “dorm”.  Our IT instructor, Ms. T – the most dedicated faculty member I know to this program – asked me to escort her over to see the building.  “I’ve always wondered how you guys do it, the conditions you live under”, she told me as we walked over.  Then she slowed and asked, “Will it make me cry?”  I laughed.  “No more than it makes me cry every day.”  And they all came in and saw the 96 bunks and gray paint and Ms. T leaned over to me and said, “I’ll never forget that first view when I walked in.”

And there were pictures.  All of us photographed by the Education Department’s photographer with the warden, the assistant warden, our teacher, our principal; all of us aides standing with the Deputy Director in front of our building, in front of our sign, “Campus Within Walls…A Learning Community”.

“I’ll be back”, the Deputy Director told us.  “And I’ll bring the Secretary.”  And our principal was thrilled.  She told me the next day that visit will mean more for our program, for our future, than we can imagine.  “The Governor will hear what we’re doing.  Things will change.  Wait and see Larry.”

I hope she is right.  I hope all this matters.  I hope the visit is the start of a new way for the Governor and politicians to view what’s going on in here and not just another pass through photo op.  Only time will tell.  And the aides all have plenty of that …time.

Raising Caine

As usual, what happens in prison in the name of “justice” turns out to be a caricature of everything wrong with calling this place a “corrections” center.  The people who run this place, the people in charge of the Department of Corrections, cut corners, use threats of investigation and going to “the hole” to intimidate, and daily break the very rules they put in place to comply with constitutionally dictated minimum standards of conduct.  It’s all done in the name of corrections. It’s all done in the name of justice.  And, it’s all done wrong.

On Wednesday, “Caine” – named for his dealership expertise in powdery substance – was led out of the building in handcuffs and taken to the hole.  He’s under investigation for “inciting a riot”.  Next to murder or sexual assault, no charge in prison is as serious as inciting a riot.  But, inciting a riot doesn’t mean mayhem.  No, in prison-speak inciting a riot means attempting to organize any collective action on the part of the inmate population.

Inmates are prohibited from organizing.  There can be no petitions for redress of grievances; no hunger strikes, sit downs, work stoppages, collective requests to the administration.  Anyone caught engaging in that behavior is subject to immediate “isolation confinement”, having your good time taken, and seeing your security level raised to “max”.  In short, you end up at Red Onion (Virginia’s notorious level 6 Max security prison). 

So what did Caine do to incite a riot?  In January, the Warden sent out a memorandum announcing that inmates were no longer permitted to own weight lifting gloves.  “All gloves must be shipped home through property or disciplinary charges will follow.”  So Caine did the right thing.  He filed a grievance.  In it, he noted that the Constitution does not allow property to be taken by the Government “without due process granted and just compensation paid” (sounds like a lawyer wrote that doesn’t it?).  Caine pointed out that DOC’s own regulations require it to compensate an inmate when property legitimately purchased is later ruled contraband.

Thirty days after every inmate mailed their gloves home without compensation, the Warden found in Caine’s favor.  He was reimbursed.

Caine realized no one else had been paid.  So, he had a contact make dozens of copies of the grievance decision with his name blacked out.  And, he gave copies to guys in every building.  And just like that inmates around the compound began to request reimbursement.

“Where’d you get the copies?” they asked him as they were going through his stuff and hauling him away.  Making copies, you see, is also prohibited.  Information is power.  Information exposes the reality of this disgustingly pathetic, failed system.

Later that afternoon, I was assisting our computer class when the investigators came through.  They went back to the school office and pulled Craig in.  “You making copies for people?”  Of course Craig wasn’t.  Neither he, nor I, would jeopardize what we’re doing at the school.  Still, the heat Craig felt was real.  Get guys to snitch, tie the school in, ruin the educational opportunities being related.  It happens all the time.  It’s a constant battle.  Ignorance drives most of the criminal behavior evidenced by the inmate population.  Ignorance is job security for the rank and file who work at DOC.

As I write this Caine sits in isolation.  He’ll be fine.  He’s done twelve years already.  He knows in a week or two he’ll be back in college classes.  He didn’t incite a riot.

The same day Todd received his “update sheet”.  Update sheets are the summary of our annual review.  They are based on a 100 point scale.  Hold a job?  20 points.  Have a vocational/treatment plan and meet the terms?  40 points .  Stay infraction free?  40 points.  Everything included in the annual review, including the setting and awarding of security level and good time earning level is controlled by a department operating procedure, DOP 830.3.  Prisons may not arbitrarily act for or against any prisoner; that is a fundamental tenet of the law.  Depriving a man (or woman) of their freedom does not give the government carte blanche to do anything they want.  DOC must follow due process and 830.3 sets out specifically what must be done.

But rules are regularly ignored and violated by the administration.  In Todd’s case, last March he received two charges:  one a 200 series charge for crossing a restricted line.  The second charge was for taking an onion from the chow hall.  This was always considered a series 200 contraband charge until two days before Todd was caught.  Then, it was elevated to a 100 series “stealing charge” (question:  how do you steal food off your tray?).

So Todd wore two charges.  And 830.3 specifically states that a 200 series charge leads to a 10 point deduction and a nonviolent 100 series charge leads to a 20 point deduction.  And 830.3 further states you must have 85 points (minimum) to earn full good time (4.5 days per month).  70 points to 85 and you earn 3 days per month.  Under 60, no earned good time.

So Todd works all year; he becomes a certified dog handler; he completes the IT program with honors and becomes A+ certified (a national IT certification); and, he gets admitted to a four-year Virginia university on his release.

But, his counselor and the administration change his good time level.  They don’t deduct 30 points based on his charges as DOP 830.3 requires.  No, they deduct 50 points.  Why?  The counselor told him, “we’re not gonna give you full credit for school because you pulled these charges.”  That’s not what 830.3 says.  Their response?  You’ll have to make Richmond tell us.”

Ironic isn’t it.  Governor McDonnell tells the press “inmates have civil rights” then his corrections department personnel act in illegal ways to “manage” the facilities.  Disrespect for their own rules breeds disrespect in the inmate population.  It’s time people outside demand better from those paid to enforce the law and guard the rights of citizens, even the incarcerated.  It’s time to “raise caine” for real justice, even in the prisons.

Empty

Easter, 2012.  Another “new” season and yet, so much this year is like the last three Easters.  All of them spent incarcerated; all of them spent removed from what I knew, what I cherished.

Each year as Easter approached I’d try and find meaning, try and understand why, why was I going through this, why had I lost so much, where was the loving God I prayed to each day in the midst of struggle?  On a simple level, I knew I was guilty.  I was paying the price, serving the sentence, imposed by a legitimate court following my guilty plea for the theft of two million dollars.  And, I knew I deserved to be punished.  I knew all along I was breaking the law.  I knew I’d lose my wife and friends.  I knew it all.  Yet, the punishment was worse than expected.  The swiftness and finality of rejection beyond what I could imagine.  I was paying more than a just price for my conduct.

I have felt so alone, so abandoned, rejected, and betrayed that no one, I feared could comprehend the depth of my suffering.  I would cry out, over and over at night alone in a stank cell, “help me, God.  Please help me.”  And my tears, my pleas would fall on deaf ears.  Everything I had feared my whole life, everything I believed about myself, that no one did love me, that everyone was dependent on me giving them something or they would abandon me, proved true.  It was, on more than one occasion almost too painful to bear.

On more than one occasion, especially in that first year of living in a jail cell with no physical contact with friends or family other than the all too infrequent thirty-minute “how are you doing?” through Plexiglas, I actively planned my own death.  Death, I believed, was better than prison, divorce, rejection.  I was empty.  Nothing could change my circumstances.  It is the worst position to be in.  Hopelessness kills.

Each year, as the Lenten season began, I vowed to renew.  I’d sacrifice some silly pleasure and devote myself to meditation and prayer.  I’d try and meet God halfway, try and understand what all of this meant, try and hope when every rational fiber in me said hope is gone.  Easter would arrive; I’d hear the words from my years of church attendance ring in my head.  “The Lord is Risen”, and the rote response, “He is Risen indeed”, and I would wait expectantly for the miracle to unfold.  I wanted, I craved that “come thou long expected Jesus” moment, the one that would restore me to family and friends.  It never came.

Tough.  Painful.  Lonely.  Survivable?  I wasn’t sure.  I cried to God, I argued with Him; I tried everything I knew and then I concluded nothing I could offer or promise would matter.   My life was beyond my control.  The only decision I really had to make was, do I hope or do I just go on. 

I thought of a man in Texas as I tried to figure out what to do.  He served over fifteen years in a Texas prison, convicted of murdering his wife.  He told anyone who would listen he wasn’t the killer.  He loved his wife, he told the jury.  But the evidence, the prosecution argued, was overwhelming.  It was cold-blooded murder.  Life in prison was his destiny. 

I heard Michael Morton speak about his time in maximum security, how close he came to breaking.  There was the time his son turned twelve and wrote him and announced “I don’t want to visit anymore”.  And the pain from that letter seared his heart.  It got worse.  At seventeen, his son wrote again.  “I’m going to be adopted” by the family raising him.  He was changing his name.  “My heart broke”, Morton said.  He gave up.

Then a miracle happened.  The Innocence Project heard about his case.  They petitioned the court to examine the prosecution’s file and discovered evidence exonerating Morton that was withheld at trial.  And then DNA evidence proved conclusively Morton was not the killer.  Another man, already doing life in Texas for murder, had killed his wife.

Michael Morton walked out of prison a free man.  But, he wasn’t truly free until he was able to forgive all those people who put him in that hell, all those people who abandoned him.  Nothing he went through made sense and yet, in God’s infinite wisdom it all made sense.  He had survived the valley, stared into the abyss, and was made whole.  More importantly, Michael Morton found peace.  He mattered and what he’d gone through mattered.

This Lenten season I embarked on another time of renewal and spiritual cleansing.  I gave up potato chips – my weakness in here, and coffee.   Each morning I began with reading one or two Psalms and an Old and New Testament lesson.  Ironically, three times I read Psalm 77, a Psalm of crying out to a silent God and then finding strength remembering His prior amazing deeds.

More ironically, I read the story of Joseph, sold into slavery, imprisoned for thirteen years, and then he saved both Egypt and the Israelites.  “You intended it for evil, but God intended it for good.”  I read the Exodus story.  God heard the cries of His people and sent Moses, a murderer of an Egyptian, abandoned by his own people, to go and announce to Pharaoh, “God says, Let my people go.”

And I listened as I prayed waiting for God to tell me what this all means.  I heard silence, but the silence gave me comfort.  I cried out some nights, I hurt, I was lonely, but somehow each morning the silence sustained me.  Did anyone know what I was going through?  Did anyone care?  I read the Gospels and saw it, the suffering, the rejection.  His twelve most trusted friends; one betrays him, ten run and hide, afraid for their own lives; only one – John – shows up at his execution.  He knew what I felt.  He knows what I’m going through.  He is with me.

This morning I awoke to a cloudless Easter morning.  I went out and ran.  Over and over I heard the words from the Gospel of Luke, “and they went to the tomb and it was empty.  And the angel of the Lord said, “He is not here.  He is Risen.”  I thought about that empty tomb.  I thought about all I’d been through these past four years.  And I realized I’d never felt closer to God than I did this morning.

I don’t know what tomorrow will bring.  I don’t know when this trial will end or what will be in my future.  I know what I pray for each day.  There is hope in suffering; there is hope in emptiness.  “The tomb is empty.”  There is hope.

The Sign

Inside this facility – correctional center, re-entry center, prison; the word changes almost weekly with the program emphasis shifting – every building looks the same.  There are six double-sided rectangular “dormitory” buildings and, with the exception of the number stenciled dead center, you can’t tell one from the other.

That’s the way prison is.  It’s about uniformity.  Everyone dresses alike – “blues”, shirts and jeans – and everyone eventually looks alike.  Whether intended or not, prison dehumanizes you.  Your seven digit “state number” matters more than anything.  It’s ironic, isn’t it?  To stop guys from re-offending, recommitting, you have to understand their individual stories.  Instead, they’re all lumped together.  And the failure rate rolls on.

Everything looks the same.  Everything feels the same until…last Thursday.  Thursday morning a huge sign went up on the front of our building.  In burgundy letters on a pure white background, a sign, the logo of the sponsoring Virginia Community College prominently displayed in the upper left corner.  It read:

Southside Virginia Community College

Campus within Walls

Our college dorm had an identity.

The Virginia Secretary of Education is visiting our college program Monday afternoon.  She wants to see what’s going on at Lunenburg.  That’s the reaction you get from government when something actually works.  See, Virginia has contributed exactly $0 to this program.  The idea for this campus came from Southside’s President who, coincidentally, is married to our principal.  These two people have devoted their lives to educating prisoners.  And Dr. and Mrs. C, they understood a college education destroys recidivism.

Dr. C sold this idea to skeptics at DOC and in the Governor’s office.  The state provided no money, no materials, nothing.  In fact, everyday at least one officer would push back against the college idea.  I still remember the day CO Newbill, sitting in the building, heard me conduct an English review class.  He called me over, “You’re wasting your time”, he said.  “These scumbags will be back.”  Simply put, that pissed me off.

And that’s the way things went until the Community College won a Bellwether Award about two months ago.  The Bellwether is the most prestigious award granted community colleges for excellence and innovation in their programs.  Southside won a Bellwether for the “Campus within Walls” initiative.  And then, everyone wanted to jump on board.

Governor McDonnell’s office put out a press release touting the Bellwether and then conveniently tied the program into his re-entry initiative.  The community college has been swamped by community colleges in other states asking “How do we start the same program?”  And Monday, Virginia’s Secretary of Education is coming.  She’s scheduled to participate in the computer class I assist.  

After that, there will be pictures in front of the sign:  The Secretary of Education, Dr. and Mrs. C, and the college aides.  Thursday, we had photos taken of us in front of the sign with the Warden, Assistant Warden and unit manager.  Everyone, it seems, wants in on the sign.

Thursday night as I was falling asleep I was trying to figure out what it all meant.  This week marked another birthday I missed of my older son.  I haven’t heard from either of my sons in almost 3 ½ years.  And my ex?  She’s moved on to a new life.  Friends have fallen by the wayside.  In truth, without the hectic schedule of this college program, I think the loneliness and emptiness would overwhelm me.

“What does it mean, God?”  And then I remember Lunenburg wasn’t even on my list of prisons when I was at the receiving unit.  I wasn’t supposed to come here.  Yet, I did.  And two days after my arrival, I was hired as an academic aide in the school.  Thirty days later, I was given permission to start a creative writing class.  Five months later Mrs. C called me in, told me about the grant and asked me to head up the academic aides.

Was it a sign?  Albert Einstein said, “God uses coincidences to remain anonymous.”  Coincidences are nothing more than signs.  And signs matter, sometimes more than we realize. 

Failure and ...

This was a difficult week for me.  There were a fair number of reasons for that.  Some, I’m exploring in a piece I’m writing.  Some, I’m ignoring.  But, in the midst of my personal circumstances there were some issues affecting guys in the program now and one guy who left that made me question if it all matters.

Ms. C let me know late in the week that one of our released graduates (seven have left; four more go in April; four more in May) was back in custody.  “John” went AWOL from Goodwill his second day out.  Within a week he was picked up by police passed out on the side of the road. He was high on crack.  He’d spent less than a week out of here before he fell back into his drug addiction.

When I met John as a student in our program he was almost five years into his fourth trip to prison; thirty-eight years old and four bids.  He’d spent a total of eighteen years locked up, all in three to five year trips.  And it all was because of drugs.  Well, drugs were what he turned to help him deal with the pain of a failed, fractured life.

Four times during his year in school John quit.  “I can’t do this shit”, he’d announce.  Four times I cajoled him, berated him, uplifted him to keep going.  “You can do this”, I’d tell him.  “Show these bastards you can do this.”  And he made it.  At graduation he had no one there.  His family had moved on long before.  He asked to take a picture with me.  In it, he’s grinning.  He told me graduating was his first real accomplishment in life.

Two weeks ago I saw him leaving breakfast.  He was headed for the front gate.  He called out to me.  “I’m getting out.”  But, he didn’t look happy.  No, he looked scared, very scared.  I walked over to him and quietly said, “You can do this, John.  Be strong.  You can do this.”

But, he couldn’t.  And every night I’ve prayed for him just like I do about dozens of other guys in here and people on the outside who have walked away from me.  Drugs, I’ve learned, are terrible, terrible things.  And so is self-loathing.  I turned to my modern language Bible, to the Beatitudes.  It began simply “you’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope….”  I couldn’t help but think of John.

That evening, a young student named “Fifty” came back from English early.  I cornered him as soon as he came in.  “I’m quitting Larry”, he told me.  “I can’t do it.  I got too much on me.”  He then proceeded to tell me that he’d been called to medical that afternoon.  He’d tested positive for TB (the entire compound is tested annually).  When he explained he’d had false positives before, he was told “go on meds for nine months or go to isolation”.

“Fifty, you can’t quit.  Do you know what happens to young, black men who go to prison?  This is your life, Fifty.  College is all that will keep you out of here.”  I was in his face and I was pleading with him.  He put his head down.  “I’m not gonna quit, Larry.  I know I need this.”

DC and Jay heard my conversation.  They both have told me in the past I wear my emotions on my sleeve for these guys.  DC even told me he felt for me being in here.  “Guys like you Larry.  You do things out of love, fear, whatever.  You do them and you know their wrong ad you think you deserve what you get.  You don’t deserve this.”  I hate this place and I hate what it does to so many of these guys.  It’s a vicious cycle and you have to be strong to break out.  John couldn’t.

We had a failure.  Statistically, it’s going to happen.  The men in this program all register high for recidivism.  Many have baggage – drug and alcohol abuse, screwed up family situations, they lack education and job skills.  They’ve been told they don’t matter.  They’re expected to fail.

And in the middle of it is me.  I feel lousy, but they don’t know it.  They see me joking around, laughing, and they think “he’s got it all together”.  They don’t know how I ask God every night to tell me what it means.  They don’t see the failure I see in myself.

So, I pray about John and all the other struggling souls in here.  And I check on Fifty and make sure he’s alright.  And, I remember that no man is a total failure.  Dr. King said, “Every man is somebody because he is a child of God”.  What does it all mean?  I wish I knew.

Goin' to the Dogs

Lunenburg has a unique training program involving homeless dogs and inmates.  Sixteen men and eight dogs reside together in two-man/one dog cells.  An additional 20 men are engaged in classroom studies learning about dog training, grooming, health and the business of dog care.

Lunenburg’s “dog program” produces a rare prison result.  It successfully trains abandoned and discarded dogs for adoption.  The dogs are adopted by families up and down the East Coast.  Almost every month one of the dogs “graduate” and goes home with a family.  I’ve been in the program building when the two men turn their dog over.  I’ve seen the joy in the children’s faces as they pet and admire their new dog.  And, I’ve seen the bittersweet realization on the men’s faces that “their dog” is moving on.

These men live with their dogs.  Every walk – at 5:00 am or 11:00 pm – is their responsibility.  Every day for the six to nine months the animal is with them is devoted to training their dog.  And the dogs?  They are recognized and petted, and played with, and talked to by everyone on the compound.

The dogs bring a sense of normalcy to this place. And ironically, because these dogs are all “throwaways”, animals abandoned, and neglected, and abused who were scooped up by the local Humane Society many times on the verge of death, there is a natural kinship with those in here who also were cast out by society.  The dogs matter to the men in here.  The dogs matter to the families who adopt them.

But the program, no matter how successful, brings controversy.  Victims’ rights groups will frequently ask, “Why are murderers allowed to have pets?”  They fail to realize the rehabilitative benefits from the program, the fact that the men working with the dogs learn responsibility and empathy, that failure to meet the standards set for the program leads to the men’s dismissal from the program and a loss of good time.  And they don’t see that without the dog program these dogs would be euthanized.

So Lunenburg goes to the dogs and as bad as prison is, the “dog days” make it easier to manage.  They may be mutts and throwaways, but so are the dogs.  And if the dogs can be trained and remade into wonderful members of a family, then so can their trainers.

The "F" Word

Words matter.  No doubt about it.  Words paint mental pictures for us.  They can sway our emotions, feeling heartbreak, joy or blinding anger.  Words are important.  And, many times it is the simplest words that carry the most power.  Think of Moses in Exodus, who asked God “who should I say sent me?”  Exodus records God’s simple, yet powerful words, “I am”. 

Hemingway once wrote a six word short story.  You can’t help but be moved by his words, “For sale.  Baby shoes.  Brand new.”  What, we wonder, is the story of the baby?  Why are the shoes for sale?  And our minds suddenly envision a grieving couple looking at an empty crib.  Baby blankets and sleepers and diapers folded neatly on the dresser.  But there is no child.  The baby has died.

Words matter.  Woody Guthrie soulfully singing “This land was made for you and me”.  Bob Dylan hoarsely calling out “The answer is blowin in the wind”.  Dr. King in his soulful, rich baritone calling forth “Free at last.  Free at last.  Thank God Almighty.  Free at last.”  Yes, words matter.

Words can lift up or bring down.  Perhaps that’s why both Solomon and James focused some attention on taming the tongue.  From my own life I know I have a gift for words.  Yet my gift can be a demon.  Too often I have said things in anger, in haste and hurt those near me.  Words are powerful.  Words can create or destroy.

Words.  For the young boy struggling with his sexual identity being called “fag” tears at his soul.  For the young learning disabled girl called “retard” her heart aches.  She feels loneliness and shame.  Words are a sword that cuts and slashes the fabric of our being.

I hear all kinds of words in here.  Each day is a cacophony of expletives.  I’ve heard every imaginable word to describe every race, every ethnicity.  And, I’ve heard words of hope, of longing, of regret, of comfort.

There is one word, the “F” word that matters most to the 2.3 million men and women in America’s prisons.  That word is “Felon” and the stigma and stain it carries does as much as anything to define which released person succeeds or fails.

As Margaret Love, former US Pardon Attorney recently noted,

“Felon is an ugly label that confirms the debased status that accompanies conviction.  It identifies a person as belonging to a class outside many protections of the law, someone who can be freely discriminated against, someone who exists at the margins of society…a legal outlaw and social outcast.  No passage of time,” she says, “or record of good works can erase the mark of Cain.”

Love notes that labeling a person convicted of a crime as a “felon” for life survives even “forgiveness”.  It is, she argues, an unhelpful label for people who have paid their debt to society.  It is also deeply unfair.

Until the late 20^th century prison, criminal justice was seen as a temporary period.  You broke the law, you went to jail.  But, upon your release you returned home.  However, in the last three decades America, under the dual mantras of “war on crime” and “tough on crime” made an industry out of penology.  And the law expanded with literally hundreds and thousands of new crimes created for social behaviors.  Punishment became key and what better way to punish than make a person wear the scarlet “F” for the rest of their life.  As scholar Nora Demleitner has pointed out, using the label “felon” creates a state of internal exile for those wearing the mark.  Today that label applies to more than 20 million Americans.

Labeling those who have paid their debt to society is directly contrary to the expressed goals and efforts to reduce the number of people in prison, and encourage those who are to rehabilitate and then re-enter society as productive citizens.  And, it mocks the myth of America as a land of second chances.

“Felon” arouses a sense of fear and loathing in “law-abiding” citizens.  Who would want to live – or work – with a “felon”?  In Virginia the fact that one is a felon can be used to deny a person employment and access to many grants, loans and benefits programs.  It shouldn’t be that way.  Love correctly argues that it is time to scrap the word “felon” and the equally reprehensible word “offender”.

In Virginia, over 90% of those currently behind bars will be released.  Governor McDonnell has correctly noted that any recidivism is too much recidivism.  He has made re-entry of released prisoners a cornerstone of his administration’s agenda.  But, it is idle words if the stigma of “felon” remains.

Words matter.   So do actions.  It is time to lay to rest “felon” from this nation’s lexicon.

In Black and White

As opposed to most white Americans, I live in an integrated world.  Our “learning community” – the “Campus within Walls” is just over 50% white and just under 50% black.  Those percentages are an anomaly in prison where almost 70% of the inmates are African Americans.  One of the eye opening parts of my prison experience has been coming face to face with my preconceptions, my prejudices, about race. I’ve written about it before.  I live it every day.  I’ve learned quite a bit in four years.  First, that for the vast majority of whites, we haven’t a clue what it means to be black in America.  Second, that the vast majority of Black Americans don’t hate us should come as a pleasant surprise.  And third, that race continues to define and damage this country and will do so until we come to grips with it.

I write this as race again rears its ugly head with the news of the shooting of a 17 year-old black teenager by the name of Trayvon Martin (in Sanford, Florida).  His death was senseless.  That the shooter remains free should concern every parent.  When President Obama – a man I don’t often agree with – said “If I had a son he would look like Trayvon Martin”, he spoke from the heart.  Unfortunately, in America, race matters.  Whether “driving while black” or walking back from a convenient market with skittles and an ice tea “while black” it is tough, sometimes deadly to be black in America.

A few weeks ago during a visit, a relative leaned in and whispered to me “Obama hates white people”.  How do you know that?  I asked, realizing the President’s own mother is white.  “It was on the internet”, came the reply.

And it made me think of my own upbringing.  I grew up in an upper-middle income family in upstate New York who had zero black neighbors or friends.  My high school had one black student.  Our church, a 400 member Presbyterian congregation had one black couple.  I still remember cringing as a middle-schooler in the late ’60’s when my mom remarked once that Shirley “is a credit to her race.”  I wonder what that makes me, now a member of the tribe of felons?

My family moved to Raleigh in the 80’s when I was in law school.  They have no black neighbors, no black friends, no black church families.  They have never voted for a black candidate.  The only contact they have with Black America is when they go to the mall.  And if my mom sees young black men she instinctively clutches her purse and car keys. 

And I wonder, thinking about all that, why no young black man in prison has ever suggested to me “your family hates black people”.  White America, I am convinced, doesn’t understand what it means to be black in this country.

Here are some facts to ponder.  Roughly three out of four black children are born out of wedlock.  60% of all black males between 17 and 25 have a criminal record.  80% of black students don’t go beyond high school.  Four in ten don’t even graduate high school.  The dropout rate, the incarceration rate, the mortality rate, the poverty rate for black Americans is dramatically worse than for the white community. 

Those are just facts.  That doesn’t quantify the number of times blacks are stopped by the police for random pat downs, or the fact that while drug use is proportional in both the black and white communities, a young black caught with drugs will almost always end up in prison.  And the white?  Rehab and probation.

America is not a color-blind society, and it’s a shame, a national shame.  Trayvon Martins lies dead for one simple reason; he was a black teenager walking at night.  I hate saying that, but the truth sometimes isn’t pretty.

Prison is an amalgam of gang bangers, white supremacists, and the rest of us.  I thought when I was first locked up how wasteful and inane the entire gang culture was.  Then, I looked myself in the mirror.  Gangs are a reflection of the sick, pervasive race issues this nation still suffers from.  And it will get worse.  The N.O.I. – Nation of Islam, with their call for race separation and their revisionist history and illogical conclusions passing as “knowledge” grows by leaps and bounds each week behind these walls.  I hear the young black guys discussing their “elements of wisdom” and my heart breaks.  They are being fed falsehood upon falsehood.

Dr. King understood the dangers that lurked for America if we didn’t grasp our race problem.  We are not to judge “by the color of our skin”, but “by the content of our character”.  Those of us who believe in the Gospel of Jesus know well that “in Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew, male nor female, free nor slave”.

Trayvon Martin’s tragic death can be a chance for America to be something different, a nation not separated or defined by color.  Surely any parent can feel the pain his family must feel.  And that is as plain as black and white.

Play Ball !

It’s almost Spring.  In here, the seasons are controlled by the equipment on the rec yard.  You always know when summer turns to fall when the rec yard workers come out to install the soccer goals.   Soccer – at this prison anyway – is a fall and winter sport.

And Spring?  Spring arrives the day the yard workers come out on the field, take down those same goals and then drag the infield.  That’s right, just like outside, you know its Spring when you hear the sound of balls pinging off aluminum bats, you see guys playing long toss in the outfield and infield practice begins.  Spring hit last Sunday.  It’s time to play ball.

Our dorm is putting together a softball team – two teams actually.  Because our IT college students (40 guys) have night classes at least two nights a week and our day students (44 guys) have classes at least one night a week, we’ve built two teams.  I’m head coach, a role I’m excited about because I love baseball.  Baseball, you see, always reminds me that there’s hope.  No matter what happened the season before, Spring arrives and you start over.  It’s a new season, a new game, a new chance.

I thought about that the other night as I looked over our list of players:  twenty-two guys spanning the age and “bid time” brackets.  A fair number of our “players” will be heading home at the end of summer, their sentences completed.  For them, this Spring really is a new beginning.

And some of the other guys?  For “old heads” like DC and Saleem – and even Mike, down 19 years (though he’s only 34) – there will be parole hearings.  Those three are still part of the “old law”, pre-1995 when parole existed and inmates could earn “30 for 30”, meaning you only did – usually – 50% of your sentence (assuming you earned good time at the max level).  And they try not to think about the disingenuousness of the current parole board’s practices.  It’s Spring.  They each, deep down, carry hope that they will be part of the select few, 2% last year, who will be paroled.

Me?  This July 1^st I can petition the Governor for a conditional release, converting the rest of my time to supervised probation or house arrest.  And I have hope.  No matter how unlikely it appears, I have to have hope. I have to believe.  After all, it’s Spring.  It’s time to play ball.

The other morning the paper reported that Governor McDonnell was on pace to restore more voting rights to convicted felons than any of his recent predecessors.  The article also noted he granted medical releases to two inmates.  I smiled when I read the short description of the older inmate from Salem who was pardoned after being diagnosed with terminal cancer of the bile duct.  See, that was the inmate whom I helped.  I drafted his petition.  He was able to pass away at home with his family beside him and I was part of that.  It’s Spring and things that didn’t make much sense during those long, cold winter days suddenly make sense.  There’s a reason – and a season – for everything.

A few weeks ago Lent began.  In my old life, my “free” life, I never gave much thought to Lent.  I didn’t “give up” anything.  I just went on as I was.  “AC” – after confinement – I took a different look at Lent.  Renewal, I figured, could come through sacrifice and discipline.  So each Spring (for the past four seasons of Lent) I’ve fasted, meditated and given something I enjoy up.  This year it’s been coffee and chips, my two favorite commissary purchases.

And giving them up has been fairly easy, just like engaging in 36 hour fasts.  It’s because I know Spring is here and Spring brings renewal, hope and life.

Our ball teams are excited about getting the season underway.  It’ll be a nice break from the three-a-day classes the guys have, a chance to get out in the fresh air and run and playball.  And all those things matter in here.  It all matters because time is the most painful part of prison and Spring brings hope and hope eases the pain of time.

Pardon Me

This past week the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported on the number of felons who have had their civil rights restored by Governor McDonnell.  This Governor, it appears, is on pace to exceed rights restoration for felons by his predecessors.  The Governor should be applauded for his efforts.  But, 300,000 Virginians still wear the scarlet letter “F” for felon and are denied their basic right to vote.

This isn’t about civil rights, perhaps it should be.  Suffice it to say, this Nation was founded on a principle that rights derive from God, not man. While society has an absolute right to legislate certain behavior and enforce a code with criminal penalties, Virginia is in the minority of states who do not automatically restore a felon’s civil rights at the conclusion of his (or her) sentence.   That Virginia stands out with such a hostile position on rights restoration is ironic given the Commonwealth’s history as the focal point of this Nation’s democracy and the home to revered figures such as Jefferson and Madison.

But that isn’t the point of this piece.  This is about the lack of political will by Governors to use their power to pardon.  Exercising that power is not without risk.  Former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour pardoned 200 present and former inmates on his last day in office and was publicly skewered, mostly by CNN talking head Anderson Cooper.  As an aside, I wonder if Cooper’s continuing interest in Barbour’s pardons is the result of Barbour being a Republican (Anderson said nothing when New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo (Democrat) released thousands to reduce his state’s huge budget deficit).

Barbour acted, as he said, out of a deep sense of “Christian faith” that everyone deserves a second chance.  That sentiment is shared by men such as former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee (R) who coincidentally is also an ordained Baptist Minister.

And the exercise of that power has historically been routinely used by Governors to manage prison populations, correct miscarriages of justice and to make far-reaching statements about our criminal justice system.  Somehow though, as the call for more religion in our society has grown, we have become a Nation using the criminal justice system solely for retribution.  The demand for longer, harsher sentencing, and the public’s indifference to the horrendous conditions in our Nation’s prisons, are completely devoid of the fundamental premises of Christianity which so many politicians and pundits espouse.

No less an authority than United States Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy along with the American Bar Association wisely recommended in 2004 that both the President and Governors “revitalize the clemency process”.  This plea has, it appears, fallen on deaf ears.

Virginia currently has as its Governor, Robert McDonnell, a graduate of Pat Robertson’s Regents University Law School, a school dedicated to the practice of law in keeping with the tenets of Christian faith.  McDonnell, during his election run, routinely spoke about his faith as he courted Evangelical voters.  Throughout his first two years in office he has spoken eloquently about his faith. 

And yet, McDonnell has done virtually nothing to alleviate overcrowding in Virginia’s prisons.  He has done virtually nothing to institute meaningful sentence and prison reform.  Last year he released two terminally ill inmates on conditional release so they could die at home with their families, just two.  Meanwhile, the number of inmates over the age of 50 has grown dramatically.

McDonnell’s parole board releases less than three percent of the inmates who appear before them, an abysmal number.  Inmates are all treated the same regardless of the efforts they show to be remorseful and rehabilitated.

I wonder how differently the growth of Christianity would have been if Jesus, when confronted by the lawyers holding the adulterous woman had said, “Give me the rock.  She broke the law.  She deserves to die.  No mercy.”

But, thankfully for all of us, that isn’t what He said, or did.  He set a high bar – for all of us.  We are called to show mercy.

Governors have that power.  It’s high time they use it.  Prison is supposed to create an atmosphere of rehabilitation and remorse, not a breeding ground for revenge and retribution.  Governor McDonnell can be a leader in the effort to bring real faith into the system.  Pardon me, Governor.  Isn’t that what our faith is all about?