DOC Tidbits

THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN IN NOVEMBER, 2014.

             Seems like every time you turn the news on, DOC is a lead story. This week, Virginia’s death row inmates have a suit pending (at the U.S 4^th circuit sitting in Richmond) alleging their treatment is “cruel and unusual” in violation of the US Constitution. Now, hearing the term “cruel and unusual” you would think the case (already lost at trial level by DOC) would involve their death sentences. Nope. It seems, in its arbitrary way, DOC was faced with a lawsuit by one death row inmate over access to visits and other privileges. After losing that suit, DOC granted that one inmate the privileges sued for. But then, inexplicably, DOC denied those privileges to other death row inmates leading to this lawsuit.

            “We don’t comment on pending litigation,” said DOC spokesman Larry Traylor. Perhaps, you should. Perhaps it’s time you explain to Virginia’s taxpayers the millions spent each year defending inmate lawsuits DOC continues to lose. Perhaps the DOC Director should be called to account for the money wasted, the lives lost, and the complete ineptitude and mismanagement he oversees. Nah. That would leave me less to write about.

            Not to be outdone, a judge in Chesterfield County released a convicted child-sex abuser (a minister convicted of having improper sexual contact with two minor female family members) on home incarceration pending sentencing in January. He’s facing 99 years yet the judge let him go home with an ankle monitor. I wonder how many young, black kids using drugs get post-conviction release while awaiting sentencing. How about guilty-plea embezzling lawyers? It’s unheard of, yet this judge decided it was appropriate in this case. Makes you wonder.

            Finally, as I write this 3 more men here with serious medical problems are being ignored. What is the response from each of their families? Call the ACLU in Richmond (the Fluvanna women’s suit against DOC for negligent medical care is set for December 5^th) and hire counsel.

            And so it goes with DOC and the criminal justice system.

 

Another Investigation

They raided the shop Thursday morning. Both investigators, the Major (in street clothes) and a half dozen COs walked into the furniture shop and took all six office workers into custody. All six have – change that, “had” – access to computers. Wednesday night on a “tip” (i.e. an inmate dropped a note) a factory worker in 1A was shook down. In his possession were notebooks full of parley slips. And, the slips were all typeset. There were hundreds of tickets for NBA and NHL play-offs, NASCAR, and Major League Baseball. The guy had an OTB operation running out of his locker.

            They took him into custody and he did what an inmate is never supposed to do: he told on his business associates. Those associates were all the computer guys at the factory. Now they’re all together in the hole.

            The hole. There’s a lot going on in DOC right now about solitary confinement. Virginia has been under the watchful gaze of church groups, Amnesty International, and the ACLU for its liberal use of solitary confinement. These groups, supported by scientific and medical research have argued that solitary confinement for long stretches causes long-term psychological harm. For some sociopathic, violent inmates, solitary confinement is the only option. For most, however, the hole is pure punishment.

            Most guys in here will puff their chests and tell you that you haven’t done “real time” until you’ve (1) been to a “major” (a high custody facility) and (2) been to the “hole.” I did my 4 ½ months in receiving with the psychotic murderers, and rapists, and child predators; I witnessed firsthand the packs of gang bangers robbing, rolling, and beating other inmates; I saw the after-effects of stabbings and rapes; I did enough “time” to meet test #1. I have no desire to notch, as a completed goal, item #2.

            The same day the VCE shop guys got locked up I had to walk over to 7 building. No, I wasn’t “in trouble.” I was delivering worksheets and a test to one of our college guys sitting in the hole for dirty urine. The warden allows guys doing their hole time to stay up on their classwork – provided it’s on paper; no hardback books allowed in solitary.

            My buddy DC, once one of the most notorious convicts in the Virginia prison system, pulled over a dozen straight years in solitary. There were times, he told me, when he thought he was losing his mind. Being alone in a small confined space begins to play tricks with your mental state. Doing hole time back then was serious. There weren’t cameras anywhere. Officers would come along at different times and pop your cell door and beat on you. DC was a boxer; he got his shots in, but six on one and he usually came up short.

            The hole today is different. You get outside once a day (weather permitting) for rec. You’re put in a “dog kennel,” a twelve by twelve fended-in enclosure, just enough room to walk around, do some calisthenics, and get some fresh air. Every three days you get walked down the hall to the shower.

            Where the hole gets you now is the idleness. You aren’t allowed any electronics – no TV, no radio or CDs. Books are limited; stamps, envelopes, and paper and pen if you already possess them. You give up all your commissary – food and hygiene products – and live on the 3 trays they give you plus small tubes of toothpaste, a state toothbrush, and bar soap. You sit in a cell, with no view of the world and no sounds, and you sleep, you sleep the days away.

            One of our other college students, “Wes” was back there for fifteen days at the beginning of April. He came out ten pounds thinner (he only weighed 160 to begin with). What did he do? He typed a sexually charged letter to his girlfriend on a work computer. They found it, fired him, threw him out of the college building, and left him sitting in the hole for over two weeks.

            Every week you see guys with officers in tow pushing carts with all their belongings toward “7.” It’s a long walk with 900 pairs of eyes fixed on you. No matter what guys tell you about toughness and “manning” up, it isn’t fun.

            There’s no honor in prison on either side. The officers – many of them anyway – are as dirty and corrupt as those they’re paid to police. We have a new investigator who is busy locking guys up; all the while, we know about the tobacco he used to sneak in and the furniture he had built – for free.

            And then there are the inmates. Most end up getting caught due to their own stupidity and arrogance. “Cubby” – he was using heroin two to three times a week. Wes – he forgot to put a stamp on his envelope. The letter came back, was opened, read, and Wes was walking to “7.” The shop workers – they used their work computers to run book even knowing that they watch every keystroke.

            Investigation? This isn’t the Warren Commission at work. We, collectively, are our own worst enemies. So the gambling and the drugs, the store boxes and the Google numbers, the guys who run the hustles change but the hustles keep going and the officers, running their own hustles, keep playing along. Another week, another investigation, and a few more in the hole.

You Can't Spell it without D-O-C

You can’t spell “department outsourcing” without DOC. We learned that again this week when memos were posted from the central office advising that on October 1, 2013 facilities will no longer accept money orders for deposits to inmate accounts. All funds sent in after that date will have to be mailed to either “JPay” at a Florida lockbox address or submitted electronically to JPay.

            

Who is JPay? It’s a stock company that’s part of the prison-industrial complex. Companies like JPay perform significant parts of DOC’s prison operation. They receive millions in fees from the states and the families of the incarcerated to handle many of the day to day functions inside prison. States will tell you its more cost effective. That would be a lie.

           

Like much that is wrong with the current state of government, so is DOC’s reliance on private contractors to handle prison-related work. The state prosecutes a person and then sentences a person to time in prison. The state is solely and wholly responsible for the inmate’s care and upkeep. Remember, it takes extraordinary effort to deprive a person of their God-given rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

           

But, in their rush to be tough on crime, politicians lie to the public about the true cost of depriving a man or woman of their freedom. In Virginia, it costs an average of almost $30,000 per year, per inmate. And the process is labor intensive. Add to that the condition of many of the inmates. A significant portion of the inmate population suffers from psychological disease or disorders. Take my bunkmate “Thomas.” “Thomas” suffers from schizophrenia. Every two weeks he gets an injection of Halcion, a very strong anti-psychotic drug to keep the “voices” still. By day twelve (of his fourteen day shot cycle) he begins to hear the voices again. Shot day and he is in full blown psychosis. The shot brings him back.

            

Mornings and evenings Thomas takes pills to assist him with his mental disease. Miss a day and he’s a mess. Thomas isn’t an aberration in here. He is one of perhaps two hundred men who daily take psychotropic meds.

            

Should prison be used to house the mentally ill? That’s another day’s blog. But, DOC has outsourced medical care inside prison. And, the medical care is abysmal. Medications routinely run out. The on-site physician serves as a “gate keeper.” He and he alone, decides who gets to see a specialist. That explains why young men with burst appendixes are returned to the building (only to be rushed later to the hospital); why cardiac distress is misdiagnosed until a massive heart attack occurs; and why cancer is not diagnosed until stage three or four.

            

Companies bid on the medical care. The goal is to see as many patients as possible, as quickly as possible, without sending them to a specialist. Under that arrangement quality medical care is sacrificed. Worse, the state still pays. Medical costs for inmates have grown dramatically since DOC began outsourcing care.

           

Back to the JPay money order issue. Here’s the socio-economic “reality” of prison life: most inmates come from lower socio-economic classes. America is a very class conscious society, contrary to what the politicians tell you. Poor people get poor legal advice; poor legal advice lands you in prison.

            

One of the main determiners of success post release is a support network of family and friends. Many of the incarcerated from poor families receive money: a twenty dollar money order here or there to buy hygiene products and stamps, or food. That little bit of money helps them survive in here. They lack the education – or skills – to earn forty-five cents an hour (top wage inside). They work part-time cleaning jobs at twenty-seven cents an hour, or ten dollars a month. Try buying deodorant, toothpaste, soap, and a razor on ten dollars. Try buying laundry detergent so your clothes don’t stink.

            

JPay charges three dollars on the first $50.00 sent in. There’s another three dollars on each fifty thereafter. For a family with limited financial means, those surcharges for the “privilege” of maintaining connection with your family behind bars, is a hardship. Unfortunately, it’s like that a lot in here. Phone rates are outrageous with huge kickbacks (aka commissions) being paid back to the states.

           

Companies in the prison-industrial complex make huge profits. They use those profits to contribute to political candidate campaigns who then vote in more sweetheart contracts. Meanwhile, the poor bleed more dollars; the taxpayers see more money wasted, money that could be used for better schools and better futures for the children of this state and nation.

            

Diverse groups, from the National Council of Churches and the ACLU to the “Right on Crime” organization and Grover Norquist’s tax reform group have united in their desire to see prison reform become a reality. For too many politicians, however, it’s easier to sign contracts with private contractors to carry out the basic responsibilities the state bears when it convicts and incarcerates a person.

            

Outsourcing prison functions is economic voodoo. It is also morally corrupt. It hides the true cost of sending a man or woman to prison. It increases the likelihood that a released felon will re-offend. Virginia DOC’s outsourced JPay plan is just another in a series of underhanded attempts by the department to sustain that which is unsustainable: $1.2 billion each year.

            

The actual cost of each outsourced contract should be publicly disclosed by DOC. And, no contract should be permitted that results in increased fees for the family and friends of those behind bars trying to stay in touch with inmates. Finally, companies under contract with state government agencies should be prohibited from providing “gifts” to politicians. Somehow I think if all that was implemented you’d see less outsourced contracts and less men and women behind bars.

Prison Stories

A couple of recent newspaper and magazine pieces about the current state of “corrections” around the country jumped out at me. I recently read “Chicken Soup for the Prisoner’s Soul” and was deeply moved by so many of the stories represented there. But, I found the following cautionary quote each of us must consider when we approve of the status quo with incarceration:



“Does society understand what they create in the men they wear down by time? The whole concept of punishment seems to teach offenders how to effectively not be part of society, the unmaking of a man.”


Prisons do more to perpetuate crime than they do to rehabilitate. Money is spent on housing and holding instead of educating and rehabilitating.


Ohio recently began exploring an overhaul of its criminal justice system. As the Columbus Dispatch recently reported, Ohio’s 1996 enactment of “Truth in Sentencing Law” led to an exponential growth in the number of inmates and the cost to hold them. Ohio is now 33% over capacity and unable to sustain current prison funding requirements. In 2008, 10,000 convicted felons went to prison in Ohio on property and drug offenses at a cost of $189 million. “Few received rehabilitative treatment while in prison.” As the chief sponsor of a bill calling for sentence reform, Republican Bill Seitz said:


“You can’t fit 10 pounds in a 5 pound bag. That’s what we’ve been trying to do in Ohio. The time for talk is over. No more sticking our heads in the sand.”


Supporters of the change are as varied as Conservative Republican John Kasich and the ACLU.


Virginia, at 164% capacity according to DOC’s own spokesman (here’s a hint: if DOC finally admits to a capacity problem, it is probably higher than what they’ve admitted), has the same “Truth in Sentencing Law” as Ohio. Where is Virginia’s courageous conservative Republican Governor on this? Governor McDonnell talks a great deal about his faith. Perhaps now is the time for him to put his faith in action.


The San Francisco Chronicle reported that California, in a move to close its $60 billion budget deficit, slashed rehabilitation programs for prisoners. The budget cuts included planned layoffs of 850 academic and vocational instructors in the prison system. At the same time, California continues to violate a court mandated release of inmates from its prisons due to the unconstitutional conditions inmates have been living under.


And, in another case involving California’s Corrections Department, it was reported corrections officers are the primary conduit for up to 10,000 cell phones finding their way into inmates’ hands. Even Charles Manson has had two cell phones in the last four years.


So, the people employed to watch the “criminals” are themselves lawbreakers, being paid up to $1000 by inmates for a phone. One officer made $150,000 in cash in one year transporting phones into the prison. His punishment? He was terminated from employment. California does not prosecute guards who bring phones in for a fee.


It was reported Governor McDonnell and the Virginia General Assembly failed to properly fund regional jails (coincidentally, it is by using the regional jails that DOC keeps 3800 inmates housed rather than further taxing its already overcrowded prisons by moving them to DOC facilities).


McDonnell assured Sheriffs who are facing staff layoffs themselves that the shortfall will be addressed. Governor McDonnell, in the words of the Ohio Representative, “you can’t fit 10 pounds in a 5 pound bag.”


And finally, Mike Vick visited a Florida prison the other day with his mentor, Tony Dungy, to speak with the inmates. While there he said one of the most profound things I’ve ever read:


“If I was standing outside a prison two years ago with what I know now, and you gave me the choice of going in and changing my life or staying out and continuing to live the life I was living, I’d go in…I needed the change. God gave me a timeout.”


I thought about Mike Vick’s words a great deal. Sometimes we don’t realize how blessed we are in our trials. It’s something I have to remind myself of every day. I’m not sure where I’d be right now if God hadn’t given me a timeout. The losses I’ve sustained have, at times, been unbearable. But learning to live righteously in this environment has been worth it. Mike Vick was right.

Jah Provides the Bread

Somewhere up above Bob Marley is smiling. For those that don’t know, Marley was for a time the most known reggae performer on the music scene. He brought reggae music into mainstream, middle class America. I still recall listening to Bob Marley and the Wailers sing “Rastaman Vibrations” and “No Woman, No Cry” on my stereo as a college freshman back in 1977.


His music was born of struggle and oppression, music from Jamaica and other Caribbean islands. It was exotic, rhythmic and spiritual.

Marley was a Rastafarian. Rastas, a quasi-Christian sect, consider former Ethiopian King Haile Selassie to be the Messiah restored. They also smoke marijuana religiously (sorry for the pun). Rastas also are known to wear their hair in long dreadlocks.

In 1999 Virginia DOC implemented a hair profile for inmates. Prior to that time inmates were allowed to wear their hair to any length. Facial hair, full beards, sideburns and goatees were permitted. DOC deemed long hair and beards a security risk. Inmates, they reasoned, could hide knives, razor blades or contraband in their hair. Inmates with full beards could escape their shave and make it difficult to track them down.

The new hair policy required hair to be kept close cut, above the collar, off the ears. All facial hair was prohibited except groomed mustaches.

A number of Rastafarian inmates objected. On religious grounds they refused to submit to cutting their dreadlocks. DOC responded as they typically do: the protesting Rastas were placed in solitary confinement until they agreed to cut their hair and comply.

1999 became 2000. 2000 became 2001. Each year came and went but eleven Rastas held to their protest. There had been more, but men were released, their sentences served, their dreadlocks still in place.

Eleven men, kept separate, deprived of many basic needs most take for granted: daily human contact, fresh air, daily showers, access to telephones. DOC’s goal was to break the Rastas. Their tool was isolation and deprivation.

Word went through DOC prisons about the Rastas. Inmates who didn’t know the name of the Governor knew of the Rasta 11. Other Rastafarians in the system shaved their heads (a practice followed until this day). The Rastas were heroes. They were “buckin the man” for Jah.

2005, the ACLU agreed to file suit on behalf of the Rastas. Meanwhile, one man died while in solitary. Ten remained. Ten continued to refuse to cut their hair.

What is your limit? How much will you endure for your religious convictions? I realized, as I learned of the Rastas early on in my prison stay, how truly courageous these men were. In my entire life of “freedom” I had never met anyone willing to risk it all on principle. My life had been one of compromise. “It’s not worth it!”

My friend “Black” is a Rasta leader. I’ve watched the Rastafarian community (it is a recognized “religion” according to DOC) continue on as their brothers remained “in the hole”.

In “No Woman, No Cry”, Bob Marley, in his haunting Jamaican accent sings

“Good friends we had
Good friends we lost along the way
In the great future
You can’t forget your past
So dry your tears I say.”

Then later in the song over and over he sings

“Everything’s gonna be alright
Everything’s gonna be alright.”

I often wonder what makes ordinary people do extraordinary things. What would make a young man run head long into enemy fire to rescue a friend? What would make Big S go to trial instead of pointing out the real defendant? What would make eleven Rastafarians accept the hole for years rather than cut their hair? What would make me sign everything I owned over to my wife?

Character is revealed, not when things are easiest, but when we have he the most to lose.

Thursday, November 18, 2010. The front page of the Richmond Times-Dispatch announced “Inmates Released From the Hole”. DOC gave in, surrendered, to ten dreadlock Rastafarian inmates. They were being released from solitary confined and transferred together to serve the remainder of their sentence in two-man cells with daily rec time at Keen Mountain Prison. They’ll be kept separate from the rest of the inmate population because the hair policy remains in force for all other inmates.

In a documentary about Marley’s life he is heard telling an interviewer “Jah provides the bread”. Jah, to the Rasta, is the name for God. It is a basic tenet of faith, whether you are Christian, Jewish, Muslim or Rastafarian, that “God provides”.

So often we think everything we have, everything we’ve accumulated is a direct result of our own hard work. We fail to understand that at our weakest we are truly strongest. No power can overcome Jah. Eleven years in solitary. Eleven years deprived. Eleven years Jah provided the bread.

I started playing a CD. Bob Marley’s singing “everything’s gonna be alright.” I can tell he’s smiling.