Just A Date

I’ve been thinking about parole recently.  Funny that an idea like parole would pop into my head.  Parole, for those who don’t know, was abolished in 1995, swept away in the voter surge that propelled George Allen into the Virginia Governor’s mansion. Allen had a no lose campaign strategy. He lied to the voters and told them Richmond was too soft on lawbreakers. “Lock em up and throw away the keys,” was his mantra.

            In the surge that followed, Virginia did away with their parole system. No longer could a behaved inmate earn “30 for 30” (thirty days in plus thirty days early release). No longer could nonviolent felons given ten years come up for parole at the end of two. No, Virginia was going to get tough on crime. After January 1, 1996, if you were convicted of a felony – any felony – you served 85% minimum of your sentence.

            Allen and his political cronies painted anyone who disagreed with them as criminal coddlers. It became a period of politics by fear and smear, not a rational discussion of the actual ramifications of the abolishment of parole. In fifteen years, Virginia’s prison population ballooned from just under 10,000 to almost 40,000. With the increased population came increased spending: $25,000 per inmate. Suddenly the Department of Corrections was spending over $1 billion per year.

            And, you had to love how “fiscal conservatives” will deride Washington for runaway Federal spending yet give no thought to suckling at the Federal teat to pay for their whimsy. Allen – and his successors – paid for the construction of dozens of new dormitory-style “correctional centers” with Federal money. The Feds paid to build the prisons: the state taxpayers pay to maintain them and keep them running.

            The problem was, keeping men and women behind bars longer didn’t change the recidivism rate. People still re-offend after release in the same percentage they did in the days of parole because length of sentence has nothing to do with atonement, rehabilitation, and re-entry.

            The abolishment of parole has been a colossal failure in wasted dollars and wasted lives. If that was all this blog was about I would be through. But it’s not. There are still roughly 6,000 Virginia inmates under the “old law” (parole). Every year they come up for parole. And every year almost every one of them gets turned down. I know some of those men. They are not just inmate numbers and crime statistics but flesh and blood men. I’ve been thinking about them, and the Faustian bargain the state made when it abolished parole. They are men serving time in purgatory and I see how it warps their view of responsibility for their actions.

            Mike will be thirty-six this November. He’s been locked up for twenty-one years. Do the math. He was three months past his fifteenth birthday when he took a kitchen butcher knife and stabbed a neighbor teen to death. Mike isn’t some inner-city product of a crack-addict mom and gang-banger dad. Mike was a middle-class teen with divorced, white-collar parents.

            He was charged as an adult and faced first degree murder charges with life and no parole. He still remembers the day his mother came to see him at the jail. An entire pod had been cleared for him. Local law enforcement never had a case where a teen was facing murder one charges. His mother told him his attorneys had a deal that would avoid life. “Plead guilty to first degree murder and you’ll get fifty years. The most you’ll do is twenty-five. Behave and you’ll be out in twelve.”

            He took the deal. For the next year and a half, he sat isolated at a Virginia juvenile facility. DOC didn’t accept inmates under seventeen. Juvenile housing wasn’t built for murderers facing fifty years. Then, at seventeen they sent Mike to Southampton, a zoo of a prison where rape and stabbings were rampant.

            I don’t understand Mike. He and I work together. He is a bright guy, well read, well spoken. I don’t understand him because I can’t get my brain around his awful crime. That he underwent psychological evaluation before sentencing and was found to be “normal” causes me even more conflict. “Normal” teens don’t stab neighbors to death. But, this blog is about parole, and how we as a society decide who’s ready to leave prison and go on with their life.

            At sentencing, Mike was told by his judge behave and do the right things in prison and in twelve years you’ll make parole. Mike did that. But, Governor Allen and his successors changed the rules. When parole was abolished for crimes after January 1, 1996, guys already doing time under the old parole law faced a new board. This parole board ceased face to face meetings with inmates. This parole board reduced parole approvals to less than two percent per year. Mike has no expectation of release before 2018, his “mandatory” twenty-five year date.

            Here’s my conflict with the whole thing. How many years must a man serve for taking a life? Every year Mike goes up for parole, via video conference with a parole examiner. They see he’s charge free, see he works as a GED tutor, and see he’s enrolled in college (paying his own way. Murderers are excluded from most federal grant programs). Everything asked of him he does.

            Two weeks later, a letter from the board arrives. Parole is denied it says, due to the serious nature of the crime. Mike goes into a forty-eight hour funk. I feel for him. Mike can’t do anything to overcome what he did with that knife. But at the same time, I wonder about his victim’s family. Mike’s grown up inside prison. Over half his life has been spent behind bars. He came in a teenage. When he leaves, he’ll be over forty.

            But the boy he murdered, that boy never turned sixteen or eighteen. That boy never went to his prom or college. He never had a chance to fall in love. Mike missed all those things, but he still has time. His crime took that away from his victim. And the family, each time Mike comes up for parole they are notified. They are reminded their son is no more. How many years behind bars atones for the life that was taken? How can the family be made whole?

            That is the dilemma and the ultimate failure of America’s modern day “corrections” approach. In the “old” days, you killed, you raped, you robbed one too many banks, and society terminated you. Cull the herd. You do the crime, you die. It was an Old Testament approach. That victim’s family felt some satisfaction that revenge over their loss was meted out. But, dead is dead. And executing a man for the loss of your loved one doesn’t bring either back.

            The pendulum swung the other direction. Society began to ask if execution was ever justified in an open, democratic society. Execution is finality; we are a people of second chances. Victim’s families suffered. Their loss was permanent; they were denied justice. The offender meanwhile, languished for years in self-pity. There was no reflection, no remorse, no atonement, and ultimately no reconciliation.

            That that “new” approach was such a failure should have led to something better. But it didn’t. That approach is what drives Virginia’s corrections matrix today. Here is was you have: You have men like Mike who can never overcome the “serious nature of their crime,” yet who are told each year they are “parole eligible.” No amount of remorse, no amount of rehabilitation, will change the past. So he goes to his parole “hearing” and stares at a flat screen TV. The parole examiner, sitting in her living room never looks up from her laptop. She just runs through the same questions as the year before. “That’s it. Send in the next man.” Two weeks later, the denial letter arrives.

            Because of the way the system operates Mike – and hundreds of others just like him – will go home. His mandatory date is less than five years away. Is he remorseful? I don’t know. I do know that nothing he’s experiences these last twenty plus years has directed him to be remorseful, to take responsibility for the damage he’s done. The system isn’t built for that.

            And what of his victim’s family? Has Mike’s experience in here done anything to ease their loss? Does his release in 2013 – or 2018 – do anything to justify and repay them for the violent death of their son?

            Society maintains prisons to remove those who break the social contract from its midst. But there is another purpose built around rehabilitation and restoration. Ninety percent of those who find their way into prison will one day walkout and return to the communities they left. Will they rejoin society as atoned men and women who seek to live law abiding lives? Will their victims feel that justice was served?

            The American prison model has failed because neither of the rehabilitation purposes is met. It’s not about length of sentence, or abolishing parole, or any other catch phrases politicians employ to get elected. It’s about a change of heart, a change of mindset, remorse and ultimately mercy by the victim. That isn’t happening. Offenders sit in prison and watch their lives pass away. And, there is no real effort, no meaningful effort, to use that time constructively to alter that life. Whether they leave in two years or twenty, the system fails to prepare them. Release just becomes a date. And society is no better off.