In the Red

This blog was written in October, 2014            

So the Governor announces last week that the budget is a mess (quote: “We can’t continue to rely on the Federal Government …” Beautiful!) and DOC – the state’s most bloated, inefficient, and largest department – will bear the brunt of the cuts. Less than three days later, the DOC’s Director, Harold Clarke, announces that the budget for inmate medical care is $43 million in the red. Big surprise? It shouldn’t be. See, one of the effects of tougher, longer sentences is that you’re locking up a whole lot of people for a whole lot of years; people who had poor health care before conviction; people who were on the fringe of the American dream. And Virginia’s prosecutors and Judges, with arrogance and smug self-righteousness, pile dozens of years on these schmoos – most of whom lack proper education, proper health care, proper housing and employment opportunities – and puff their chests and say “we’re making our communities safer.” Yeah right.

            $43 million in the red. DOC knows that almost half those behind bars have legitimately diagnosed mental disorders. DOC’s answer? Load these men and women with high doses of psychotropic drugs with side effects such as liver damage and suicidal thoughts. Let them check in with an overworked psychiatrist via “video” conference for five minutes each three or four months.

            “Hello. How are you? Any problems? See you in May.”

            Incarcerated persons have drug addiction issues, which leads to higher rates of Hep C inside the fences versus society at large. Drug addicts willing to smoke or shoot up anything for the high have bad dental hygiene, blood disorders, psychiatric abnormalities. Diabetes is rampant inside prison and yet the diet fed behind bars is high in starches and carbs (hey, it’s cheap!).

            $43 million in the red. By the time an offender reaches 65, he will cost the taxpayers over $75,000 per year to house and maintain him. Statistics show that inmates over 50 have the lowest recidivism rates. Yet, Virginia lets no one go early. The state has both geriatric and medical release available yet Governors from both parties refuse to use it (McDonnell, in his last year in office, granted 3 medical paroles). DOC maintains one facility – Deerfield for the aged and chronically infirmed. 1,000 men housed there with a substantial number biding their time until they die. Think I’m kidding? Look at the number who die each year at Deerfield; look at the number suffering Alzheimer’s and dementia and cardiac disease.

            $43 million in the red. That doesn’t include the number of inmates who need heart transplants, kidney and liver transplants. DOC operates and maintains Marion, a psychiatric prison for the criminally insane. The cost for each person there exceeds $100,000 per year. And I wonder, as I see 75-year-old men using walkers to get around here, how incapacitated must you be to get sent to Deerfield? I see men babbling incoherently. I know max security at Red Onion has over 700 of the state’s worst, including many with psychopathic tendencies, and they don’t qualify for Marion. And I wonder who’s in charge? Where’s the logic, the structure, the organization to any of this because, candidly, DOC may stand for “damnable old cluster-fuck.”

            $43 million in the red. Then Governor McDonnell at his inauguration touted a new approach to corrections. Re-entry – returning men and women back to their communities after they “paid their debt to society” – became a linchpin of his administration with much fanfare and ado he brought in Harold Clarke, the then director of Massachusetts’s DOC. New buzzwords popped up inside prisons: “healing environment,” and “re-entry matrix,” and “thinking for a change.” But, like the old line goes, “if you put lipstick on a pig it’s still a pig.”

            “Healing environment” – yeah right. Prison is prison. Most of the folks in charge don’t give a rat’s ass for the notion of healing. Prisons are still dirty, backward, unhealthy (and at a lot of locations, unsafe) places. And Clarke? He came in touting his Christian upbringing, his “mission” to change prisoner’s lives. Clarke has proven to be a snake-oil salesman. His only mission, it appears, is to self-promote. I wonder Mr. Clarke what Jesus would say about your tenure as DOC chief? I wonder how Jesus would run DOC? Instead of Jesus, perhaps Mr. Clarke should ponder these words from Bob Dylan –

            “All the money you make will never buy back your soul.”

            $43 million in the red. Re-entry is a colossal failure and DOC knows it. The initial recidivism numbers show that offenders going through the program actually reoffend at a higher rate. Why? Because success outside is built on (1) employability and (2) family connections. Education – higher education – reduces recidivism not the inane crap they do with “word of the day” and “thinking reports.”

            $43 million in the red. That number will get worse. Every bill comes due and Virginia’s DOC bill – years of corruption and ineptitude – is in the mail. What it will take is a good ass kicking. The mission for DOC has to be to incarcerate the worst; use community corrections and restorative justice principles for most nonviolent offenses; and, invest in education, job training, and health care.

            $43 million in the red. Hey Virginia, it’s time to ask Harold to pay the bill.

Heroin – 2014, Part 2

            A few weeks back I wrote a blog about the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman, which was caused by a heroin overdose. And my blog editor – a woman whose opinion I value a great deal – let me know I sounded “pretty harsh.” And I was. I was frustrated that “the news” was making a huge deal out of Hoffman’s tragic death while each day thousands of other men and women OD, a fair number die, and little or no attention is paid to it.

            And I pointed out in the piece that I knew little about the drug subculture. In my sheltered prior life, there were no heroin, or crack, or crystal meth addicts. There was drinking and we all knew the stay-at-home moms with the anti-depressants, but that was it.

            Then I got arrested. I saw young kids – eighteen, nineteen year olds – with track marks up and down their arms and legs. I met thirty year-olds Hep C positive from needle sharing. I saw and smelled guys cooking down crack, dissolving crystal meth, snorting heroin – all this I experienced behind bars. And, I saw a young kid – a heroin junkie – detox.

            It made me realize I knew nothing about drug use. My preconceived notions were all garbage. No one uses – or for that matter drinks excessively – because they enjoy it or they’re happy. No, the scourge of all those chemical enhancers is you use them because you can’t face your life. And soon that crutch, that dulling sensation takes over and destroys you.

            Heroin is rampant on this compound. There’s a young kid, a few beds down from me, who uses at least once a week, maybe twice. Fifty dollars gets you a chapstick cap full of heroin. He snorts it, then drifts off for the next six hours or so. The crazy thing is, he’s been “randomly” urine tested. But, guys in here know how to flush their systems with gallons of water. Unless the test is very sensitive – which these aren’t – you can beat it.

            The young kid gets high – just like he did on the street (that’s what he’s in for). Then, he goes to a weekly NA meeting – part of his “treatment” plan.

            He’s not alone. There are dozens of guys getting high every day here – pills, coke, weed, and heroin. And it keeps coming in. Every few weeks they’ll be an OD scare. They threaten with lockdowns. But, they can’t stop the drugs from coming in; they can’t stop the guys from using.

            Harsh? Maybe I was a little caustic about Mr. Hoffman. But, why don’t we care so much about all the addicts who are out there? Why do we send them – the poor ones at least – to prison? And why can’t we see the true reasons behind drug use?

            I’ve talked to the young kid a couple of times and he just laughs. “I got this,” he’ll say. I somehow think Mr. Hoffman thought the same thing.

The Woodrum Effect

Shortly after the beginning of the New Year, Virginia’s General Assembly will reconvene and address a host of budget amendments to the 2012-2014 budget recently proposed by the Governor.  This country, this state, is at a fiscal crossroads.   As a nation, we take in roughly two trillion dollars each year in revenue which is meant to fund the complete operation of the government.  Unfortunately, operating the behemoth known as the Federal bureaucracy costs over three trillion dollars annually.  Simple math tells us we are spending our way into destruction.

Virginia politicians, regardless of party, can be counted on to tell the voters how this state is run so much better.  Virginia has a surplus; Virginia has low unemployment and low taxes.  What these politicians neglect to tell the citizenry is that per capita, Virginia enjoys unparalleled access to Federal largesse.  This state receives vast amounts of Federal dollars through a huge Defense Department footprint in the Commonwealth and our geographic nearness to Washington, DC.  Other states’ tax dollars find their way to Virginia.  We “get” more than we give.

The second oversight is Virginia’s retirement system.  It is currently only funded at slightly more than sixty-five percent of the required dollars.  The Commonwealth has placed “IOU’s” in VRS.  “We’re good for it”, they’ll tell you in Richmond.  Tell that to the millions of retirees in Greece, Spain and a host of other near bankrupt countries.

Spending outpaces revenues. No amount of creative government accounting can slow the inevitable crash of this state’s, this nation’s, economic engine into the wall of debt.  But, this isn’t about macro-economics (though the irony isn’t lost on me that I, and thousands of other “white collar” criminals are in prison for just the sorts of shady accounting and “borrowing” that get politicians reelected), it is about the cost of prison, a cost that is continuing to grow in both the dollars spent and the damage done to Virginia families.

Virginia has a unique piece of legislation called the Woodrum Amendment.  Passed during this state’s orgy of spending on corrections (all done with Federal grants since dried up), it required that any change in the criminal code or any capital building program for DOC which would lead to an increase in the inmate population in the succeeding six years had to be funded with real dollars in year one.  The hope was that politicians wouldn’t play games:  You want to say you’re tough on crime, fund it. 

Unfortunately, the Woodrum Amendment has now become just another economic footnote.  Language is included in all criminal justice bills under the guise of complying with the amendment’s requirements.  For example, one budget amendment currently pending seeks to change the definition of “computer network” to include smart phones and tablets when dealing with child sexual solicitation.  This is a needed change, but the Governor has only budgeted $50,000 for the fiscal year 2014 increased prison cost.  At $25,000 per inmate, is he only expecting two incarcerations in the entire year?  Woodrum means nothing.

More significantly, the Governor proposes to amend the 2012-2014 budget to include $14.3 million to open River North Prison in Grayson County.  This is a political hot potato.  Grayson County has a higher than average unemployment rate.  Locals have repeatedly called on the Governor to open the prison (it currently sits vacant and unused).  At the same time that McDonnell has announced plans to finally open the facility, he has advised DOC that he is considering an additional round of prison closings (juvenile centers have already been told they are shutting down) and officers have been advised there is no longer overtime available (funny how much disgruntled officers will tell you).

There’s more.  The Governor has also asked for $10 million to “reduce exposure from not selling Brunswick prison”.  Brunswick was closed in 2009.  It and six to ten other facilities sit vacant in rural counties with high unemployment, and ever increasing hopelessness.  Meanwhile, the remaining prisons house more and more inmates as dollars dry up for programs that actually rehabilitate.

It now costs over $25,000 per year to keep a person incarcerated in a Virginia prison.  There are thousands of DOC inmates awaiting transfer from local jails to DOC custody (local jails are paid by the state to temporarily house DOC inmates).  DOC is at approximately 125% of capacity.  Facilities such as this one built to house 800, routinely hold more than 1000.

The system is straining under the ever increasing cost for inmate medical care.  At our facility, there is over a six month wait for teeth cleanings as the dental contract provider has been unable to replace the dental hygienist.  More inmates are aging, requiring more medical care for chronic conditions.  The increase in needle drug use outside has led to an explosion in hepatitis and HIV cases behind the wire.  MRSA and other infections routinely breakout in Virginia’s prisons.

Meanwhile, Governor McDonnell visits Greensville Correction Center (home to the state’s death chamber) to tout his re-entry initiative.  He applauds the college program yet neglects to say that not one dollar of state money is used in any Virginia prison college program (even more shocking is the fact that a college degree earned in prison does more to break the cycle of recidivism than any other rehabilitative program).  And, DOC spending continues to stay above one billion dollars annually.

As in prior years, a few brave legislators will propose dramatic changes to Virginia’s prison paradigm.  They will propose increasing earned good time credits for those inmates who actively attend programs and seek education.  These few legislators will propose new sentencing initiatives that keep many, but not the violent offenders, out of prison.  And, sentence changes will be suggested that bear some relationship to the severity of the crime.

I would suggest one more change.  Give the Woodrum Amendment more teeth.  A cost benefit analysis should be required for every nonviolent inmate sentenced to prison.  Alternative sentences work effectively, especially with property and financial crimes.   The state should no longer be allowed to operate facilities above capacity without providing meaningful treatment.

Over the holidays, I have received many personal wishes of support from people I’ve met during my stay here and who stood by me following my arrest.  I have been heartened to read one uniform thought:  “Why do we allow politicians to do this?”

I approach 2013 with more optimism than ever since my arrest.  As the writer of “Amazing Grace” declared, “I once was blind, but now I see”.  There is hope.  The times, “they are a changin”.  I started this posting dealing with economic realities.  I end it with faith.  The economic uncertainties of 2012 will lead to courageous political will in Richmond in 2013.

Mouse Tales

It got cold here last week, colder than it’s been all fall and winter.  And Lunenburg, like so many other prisons Virginia built during the heyday “money to burn” days of the ‘90s, when “lock em all up” was the mantra, is smack dab in the middle of nowhere.

Virginia State Government sold a number of rural Virginia counties on the idea that putting a prison in your county would generate enormous financial benefits.  Instead of real efforts to attract businesses and improve public services and schools, these counties bought the state’s line and watched as prison after prison went up in little crossroad burgs and villes across the Commonwealth.  But, unlike “Field of Dreams”, after they built it, the only things that came were the hundreds and thousands of convicted felons.  Those who were drug users brought their Hepatitis C and HIV and dozens of other diseases.  Twenty percent brought serious psychiatric and mental health disorders.  And the communities:  They stayed the same:  poor, higher unemployment, higher dropout rates than the metro areas. 

But this isn’t an “I told you so blog”.  I feel empathy for the small towns and rural counties.  I only wish the politicians in Richmond would be honest with them.  Anyway, this is a story about a mouse; and, there’s another story told me by a friend/college student named – coincidentally, “Mouse”.

So it got cold here, real cold.  And Lunenburg is built in the middle of nothing but swampy, low lying fields with acres of hardwood surrounding it.  The place is overrun with field mice.  Going to chow at night you see dozens scurrying across the walks.  The hawks fly overhead looking for that one slow mouse to grab.

The mice, meanwhile, huddle up against the buildings and wait, wait for the door to pop so they can run into the heat and food of the building.  While 4A is a dump to us, to a field mouse it’s a garden, a Garden of Eden.

But, we all know what happened in the Garden of Eden:  Adam and Eve were put out.  And so it goes with the field mice.  Last week, three times we’d see a mouse scurry across the ceiling beams, or out of a sloppy guy’s locker.  The mice take us all in rather nonchalantly.  Not so with some of the hardened cons in here.  I’ve seen “grown ass” men squeal like little girls when a tiny field mouse would run by.  And the female officers?  Couldn’t get ‘em out of the booth while a mouse was loose.

I’m happy to report all three mice were captured and all three were freed.  After all, even convicts, maybe especially convicts, know all God’s creatures deserve to be free.
Then there’s my friend “Mouse”, a pip-squeak little guy I’ve written about before.   Mouse is going home in 60 days, home with an Associate’s degree and admission already to a four year Virginia University.

Mouse used to smoke a lot of weed – before his current ten year bid.  He found a great job, but the employer required a urine sample.  He knew his was dirty, so he asked his fiancé.  “It was cold Larry, real cold, and I’d left it in the car.”  His solution?  Stop at a convenience store and heat the sample in the microwave.

“I left it in too long.  It almost boiled.”  He was headed to work and couldn’t turn in a scorching hot sample so he paced back and forth at the lab facility allowing everyone else to go before him.  Going into the restroom, he poured the sample into the lab container.

“Are you feeling alright sir?” the nurse accepting the sample asked.  “Why you must be burning up.  Your sample is very warm.”

Two weeks pass at work and Mouse is suddenly called into the HR office.  “We have to let you go.”  “Why?” Mouse asked.  “We know you used someone else’s sample.”  Mouse thought for a moment then decided to carry the story forward.

“I can’t believe you’re accusing me of that”, he said with indignation and offense.

“Perhaps we’re being too hasty”, the HR director said. “Oh.  Congratulations.”

“I have the job?” Mouse said.  “No.  You’re expecting.”

I can’t make stuff like this up!

Tattoos, and Pies, and Bunks, Oh My!

The new warden has gotten off to a lousy start. In only three weeks time, he’s managed to throw the compound in turmoil. Inmates and officers alike are “out of their square” (prison slang for “stressed”). Who would have thought a short, skinny, older white guy could cause such unease in so little time? He is, I concluded, like the Wizard in Dorothy’s travel to Oz. He is our Wizard of DOC.



“What has he done?” Two significant changes that are reverberating around the compound are being implemented on his watch. First, he has relocked the rec yards. For the past year inmates have enjoyed relatively easy movement from building ball courts to the large yards. On the eastside, guys moved freely between the ball courts on buildings 4, 5 and 6. You could come out on rec call, stretch on the ball court, head to the track or weight pile, get your workout in and then head back to your building. Or, if you lived in building 4 you could go to building 6 for a pick-up game of hoops.


The Wizard ended all that. Only building 4 guys can be on building 4’s court. Want to run? Head to the track and be locked out of the ball court until the next rec call when an officer has to come out and unlock the gate.


Why did he do this (and make movement more restricted than even at a higher level facility)? He’s short-staffed and the staff he has makes Saddam Hussein’s Revolutionary Guard look like Green Berets. The prison lacks sufficient staff to adequately patrol the rec yards. The yards (east and west side) are observed by one officer each sitting in a tower.


As I’ve written before, they don’t have sufficient staff to run the facility. Many days rec is called late because there aren’t enough officers to spare any for the towers. And the officers that do work here? They could film a season of “The Biggest Loser” with the present staff.


The vast (no pun intended) majority of officers on duty here are morbidly obese. We have one Sergeant (“Cheeseburger”) who is so large he can’t use the officers’ commodes. The staff is overweight, sloppy and dominated by African-American females who talk trash and have trash talked to them.


DOC sells the notion to the public that their prisons are highly secure. It is because the inmates themselves lack the motivation to react that keeps the lid on this place. This staff of officers are out of shape, unprofessional, poorly-trained, predominately female; they would lose control of this facility in a few moments if the inmates ever got angry enough.


Rec is the one bit of time guys feel some, albeit small, freedom of movement. The Wizard, in the words of one guy, “f’d” that up.


The Wizard also decided there’s way too much food leaving the chow hall and too many tattoos being done. Inmates are known to sneak fruit and vegetables out of chow. Technically, all food must be consumed in the chow hall. For a long time officers looked the other way when an inmate would grab an apple or an onion and put them in their pocket. The Wizard had other ideas. Officers are now patting down almost everyone leaving chow. Caught with food and you are written a series 100 charge. Series 100? Taking an apple is treated the same as murder or sexual assault (in the past, if a charge was issued, it was a series 200 charge).


Dozens of charges have been written, yet every night the smell of onions, peppers and apples goes through the day room.


Then there are the new middle row bunks. As I’ve written before, the buildings are overcrowded. Some bunks are actually in the fire escape route. And, there are insufficient numbers of officers to patrol the buildings. The Wizard’s solution – replace the middle rows of bunks with bunks from the recently closed James River Correction Center (the Wizard’s former prison).


The James River bunks are lower (the guy on the bottom bunk can’t sit up in bed and can barely roll over) and have no bookshelves. They are closer together meaning guys lose even more floor space (our facility already fails to comply with both federal law and American Corrections Association guidelines on minimum square feet for inmates). The bunks also have the lockers in the cut meaning inmates no longer have access through any bunk cut but must now proceed up and down the aisles.


Why’d he do this? He claims to cut down on the tattoo business prevalent in the buildings. Now, he claims the booth officer will be able to see the entire floor. No need to actually put an officer on the floor.


What the Wizard doesn’t want you to know is that under his watch at JRCC; drugs, tobacco, and cell phones were everywhere. That compound was off the chain. Heh Wiz, it’s not the bunks, it’s the staff!


What’s the result of the bunk switch? The tattoo artists are working like crazy and making a ton of money. Four guys in our building had full back tats done this week. Money ($300 to $500 for backs and arms) is pouring out of here and to the “artists” families. And, on a compound already riddled with Hepatitis C, the likelihood of new infected inmates grows each day.


So, in only three short weeks the Wiz has made his presence known. Which leads me to “Johnny Appleseed” a/k/a “Lil D”. Lil D is a great baker. Using crushed pineapple cream cookies and either apples or sweet potatoes from the kitchen he makes delicious home-made pies four nights a week. With about $10.00 of ingredients, he sells pies for $1.50. Most nights he makes $30.00.


The pies are amazing! The entire dayroom smells of apples and cinnamon. How does he get the apples or sweet potatoes? Right from the kitchen under the eyes of the staff (a number of whom have been known to eat one of his pies). Guys love Lil D’s pies because for the few moments you’re enjoying it, you’re not in this environment. You’re in a kitchen surrounded by family eating dessert.


In the “Wizard of Oz”, when Dorothy met the Wizard, she soon realizes he was just a little man. His entire rep was built with smoke and mirrors. It’s kind of the same thing with the people in charge at DOC.