Another Closing?

THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN IN DECEMBER, 2014.

 

            The COs have been on edge the past few days. Rumors are circulating that another prison closing will be announced before Christmas. Given the age of the current facilities still in operation betting is on Buckingham or Nottoway, both level 3/4 prisons. I say “good.” The waste and mismanagement that permeates DOC is appalling. That so few know about it – or even care to understand it – is worse. Like regular German civilians who didn’t “want to know” what was going on behind the concentration camp fences, so too it seems are the vast majority of Virginians who choose to ignore the $1.2 billion annually spent to house 40,000 behind bars.

            As I’ve written repeatedly in these pages, Virginia’s prisons are run like self-contained fiefdoms. Department Operating Procedures put in place to provide uniform standards are arbitrarily enforced from facility to facility and inmate to inmate. Discipline and grievance procedures – created to provide constitutionally guaranteed due process rights, are ignored. It is virtually impossible for an inmate to prevail in a hearing where an officer has written a charge or where the facility has violated its own DOPs.

            It clearly is a tough time for DOC. A billion dollars is “real” money and probing eyes are beginning to look at how it’s spent by the prisons. And the easy answer for the director, his regional managers, and even the wardens themselves, is to cut back on the inmates: poorer food, less access to medical and programs, less rec, cutting back work hours and pay. But, those items are just small line items compared to the tens of millions spent on too many officers, counselors, and administrators who draw a check just for “watching.”

            It was reported in last week’s Washington Post that Texas’s prison reform efforts have yielded a “$3 billion savings.” Those efforts included sentence reductions, early release for nonviolent offenders, and more emphasis on community corrections. Great ideas all and yet Virginia DOC continues to ignore them and instead does the old “sweep in and close.”

            Virginia’s prison operation since the early ‘90s – when parole was abolished – has been built on a series of lies involving “tough on crime” slogans, the real cost of incarceration, and the effects these policies would have on crime rates and recidivism. Those lies are coming due and doors are being closed … and I say it’s about time.