Shut It Down

            Back in my other life, I had a number of Johnny Cash albums and CDs in my music collection. Cash, “The Man in Black” was not just a country musician; he was a pop culture icon and his story – his rise, fall, and resurrection – was the stuff of Hollywood (“I Walk the Line with Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon). Cash would perform inside some of America’s worst prisons. It was because he knew what it was like behind bars. He’d been there. He had a conviction on his record – possession of pills – and he did time. He never forgot.

            My favorite Johnny Cash album was one he recorded live from California’s notorious San Quentin Prison. During the show, he told the inmates he wrote a song about the prison. A line in that song came to the other night:

            “San Quentin may you rot and burn in hell

            May your walls fall and may I live to tell”

            I thought of those words as I watched Virginia’s Governor announce the closing of Powhatan Correction Center. My buddy DC smiled when he heard the news. He had been in there, in the hated “M building” solitary lock up over top of the boiler room. “F – that place,” was all he said. I nodded in agreement. “Shut it down,” I thought. “Do the right thing, Governor and shut most of this bloated corrupt system down.”

            That was my visceral reaction. See I was at Powhatan; I saw what a pile of rubble it is; I saw what the true meaning of oxymoron is – calling a place a “correctional center” when no “correcting” is contemplated by the process; how “receiving” and “classification” and “counseling” are terms which mean absolutely nothing positive or constructive in DOC jargon.

            I saw how low custody offenders were put in cells with high custody, anti-social, violent predators. I saw how obviously mentally ill offenders were overmedicated – that was medical care for DOC at Powhatan Receiving. I saw the packs of young gang bangers have virtual control of stairwells while officers hung near the booth. I saw fights, and beatings, and worse. It all made me question my notion of humanity; it made me question my notion of fair justice; at times it made me question my sanity.

            There was one day. I had received the final decree of divorce. For weeks I’d help out hope that somehow she would find it in her heart to forgive me and remember what was so long ago. That wasn’t to be. And the prison – like so much of its ineptitude – lost my legal mail and it sat in an office for over three weeks until it was delivered to me (“sign here”) at 3:15 am in my dark, rank cell.

            Like dozens of other days, I lay there and was convinced I needed to give up. Nothing would give me back what I’d lost. No amount of atonement would be sufficient. I made it outside for rec, and in my prison jumper and Velcro sneakers. I began running 1/10 of a mile laps around the dirt track. “This isn’t right,” I kept saying to myself. And I began to get angry – angry at all that was transpiring, all the hypocrisy that was prevalent in “corrections.” “Punish me?” I thought. I’ve punished myself by losing family, friends, social status. “Correct me?” I was a decent, compassionate, loving man who broke the law and I deserved prison, but this was beyond “justice.” I vowed then and there that I was better than that place and I would overcome what was dealt to me.

            I remembered that day and I muttered under my breath “Fuck Powhatan,” and I didn’t really care that 500 DOC employees were being laid off from this bloated, inept, money-sucking department. Like I said, that was my visceral reaction.

            But here’s the other side: First, there are a lot of decent people who work for DOC. I have met many men and women officers who are honest and treat those behind bars with dignity and respect. For all the bad in this corrupt, politicized system, the vast majority of officers I’ve met have always treated me (and others) fairly.

            Those men and women are losing their jobs because they were sold a false bill of goods by dishonest politicians who told them prison expansion (1) made their communities safer and (2) was a realistic economic plan for disadvantaged, rural Virginia’s arrogance about its “tough on crime” approach. Prisons – for the most part – don’t deter crime, nor are they a cost-effective means of dealing with most lawbreakers.

            Second, there are some who need prison. I have met men who are evil. They lack basic empathy, basic humanity. You see it in their eyes. They would kill you (or do something far worse) and never blink. They are, as my friend DC says, heart – dead sociopaths. They must be segregated from society.

            So the Governor announced cuts to DOC. I hope and pray more are on the way and this Governor has the courage to institute real prison reform in the Commonwealth. There are better answers than just locking people up. That is neither justice nor corrections. There must be real economic investment in Southside Virginia, not low-skilled, low-wage prison jobs.

            “San Quentin may you rot and burn in hell

            May your walls fall and may I live to tell …”

            Ol’ Johnny Cash understood. Yeah, I smiled a little bit when I heard they were shutting a few prisons down. And I hummed Cash’s song as I walked around the compound.

Rainy Saturday Observations

I was all set to go run, clear my head, breathe deep and think and feel and “13” – the C/O in charge of movement whose job it is to stand in the middle of the boulevard and radio in and out of the buildings – he let me know, “there’s a storm moving in, no morning rec.” No morning rec. No 5 or 6 mile run to loosen up from a week on the weight pile trying to do “cross fit” with guys half my age. Prison is schedule; schedule is everything. You organize and discipline yourself or you and your mind turn to mash potatoes …

I’m sitting here and listening to the rain pelt the dorm building roof and it’s rhythmic and entrancing and I feel, for just a second at least, that I’m not in here. I have Johnny Cash playing in the CD player; he’s singing “Long Black Veil” and the peddle drum matches the “thwap” of the rain: “Nobody knows, nobody sees, nobody knows but me …” Damn Johnny made great music. He did time; his life was a mess and then, well then God saw fit to tell Johnny “You don’t have to fight anymore. You don’t have to carry all that anger and guilt and pain anymore,” and he was free.

Funny the things you see in here when you scan the building. Seventy men; seventy stories, some worse than others. DC, he’s become the “bird man” of Lunenburg. A few months ago, not even sure why, but he decided a few small birds needed crumbs of bread. Now I see him heading to our ball court with a quart and a half bowl full of breadcrumbs. Twice each day he goes out and feeds dozens of birds, and two small field mice who now venture close.

He’s tearing up bread – I can’t even tell how many slices he’s pulled out of the chow hall this morning – and I’m laughing because he’s so damn precise with his efforts: crust off first (“I shred that between my palms main man!”); then small cube-like pieces. His cut is awash in bread scraps; crumbs flying everywhere; he’s oblivious, focused only on the bread. 

Guys, young mostly – but hey, in here anyone below 40 is considered young – don’t have a clue how you do laundry. There’s a guy jamming everything he has – 3 jeans, 3 blue shirts, sheets, blankets – into the washer and he’s measuring out boxed “All” detergent. Problem is, we buy “All” in one-load boxes and that half of box sprinkled on tap of a non-agitating load of clothes won’t clean anything. “Should I add some shampoo?” he asks.

Look guys, here are a couple of simple rules. First when you use the bathroom you wash your hands (you’d be surprised how many in here don’t bring soap into the bathroom). The shower is for your bathing, not washing your tees and boxers. Second, laundry. You need detergent to clean your clothes. And, washers are built around the principle of agitation and then spin. Don’t over fill. And whatever you do, don’t put your washcloths and towels straight from the shower and throw them in the dryer!

I watch these guys. They don’t know how to make a bed, do a load of laundry, wash a dish, or keep themselves clean. I think we need “life skills” classes. You want to be a “grown ass” man (a favorite inmate expression) then learn to live independently! Institutionalization – you get comfortable letting the institution take care of you. They do. Frankly, it’s easy for them if they can provide for you. You lose your self-respect. You forget everything comes at a price.

Three sex offenders, all white middle-aged guys who in a prior life and without their warped predilections, could have lived in my neighborhood – carry on; they “know more” than anyone. I find myself angry watching these three guys because there’s an undercurrent of racial and economic superiority in their demeanor. None of them will admit to any wrong doing; all “misunderstandings.” Sure those kids (yup, all child sex offenders) asked to be touched and photographed.

What’s the issue? Seems the school has a rule: No sex offenders can work in “academia.” These three all have degrees. The young guys in here can’t stand them – they’re arrogant and abrasive (funny, but at higher levels child sex-offenders don’t behave that way; they become “cell rats”). Me? I work every college class – 3 new ones starting in a week with female faculty who know they can trust me and know there won’t be any crap in the classroom. I read a piece a few weeks ago about “hearing” when God calls you to your vocation. I understand that now.

There is redemption in suffering and atoning. These three don’t get that. They feel persecuted, wronged. Their wives still visit; their lives “outside” still exist (except for that little “registration” requirement!) and yet they feel that they are the victims. I don’t get the mindset …

Rain still falling. There’s a whiff of mackerel in the air. It’s 10:00 am and this guy is microwaving pouch mackerel. “I need 30 grams of protein,” he’ll tell anyone who’ll listen. Health and fitness are big topics yet guys don’t know the first thing about anatomy, physiology, kinesiology. The other day I ran a 6:45 mile – smoked past four young muscle-bound guys half my age. “How’d you do that?” Iggy asked me. “Know your body. Forget 600-pound squats. Get your cardio right. Stretch.

Mumford & Sons on the CD player. Great acoustic music. Dylanesque with their lyrics. They sing, 

“It seems that all my bridges have been burnt

But you say that’s exactly how this grace thing works

It’s not the long walk home that will change this heart

But the welcome I receive with the restart.”

And the rain keeps falling and I feel great. I’m six years in. I lost everything and found so much more. Should I feel this good? I don’t think that judge who sent me here expected this. I don’t think anyone did.

“You were a lawyer once, right?” The question caught me by surprise. A new “resident” of our building; big burly, country fellow with a Carolina twang and broad toothy smile. He leaned in. “My pen pal, a nice Christian girl in South Carolina reads your blog.” What? I laugh. I started this blog four years ago to document publicly what I was writing in the cells of the jail and receiving unit. I accept full responsibility for every word. I’ve pissed people off at times; I’ve whined and moaned; but I write, I keep writing every day. Why? Because I thought, what seems so long ago, that maybe – just maybe – this journey would someday matter to someone: my sons; my friends; the woman I loved and lost.

I thought, back then, if I wrote I would be steeled and courageous in whatever I faced, even I thought I couldn’t do this; I could never redeem myself. I wrote and I have had guys threaten me and curse me and officers find the blog and tell me to back off (and once, an assistant U.S. attorney read it and said, “you’re a pretty good writer.”) I wrote, I write, because I have a story and I think of Victor Hugo who said, “If a soul is left in the darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.” The writing brings the light. 

It’s raining and I write because even on a slow, rainy Saturday, this matters. The men in here, so many of them anyway, matter to me. I write so I’ll never forget – good or bad – this. 

“Love it will not betray you

Dismay or enslave you, it will set you free

Be more like the man you were meant to be”

Who you were meant to be. I tell the young guys who daily gather around my cot that idea. Mumford & Sons put it to music. “Be;” “Live;” the words fall like rain…. 

Closing Time

A major DOC announcement hit the airwaves on the noon news today:  “Virginia DOC has announced the closing of its Mecklenburg Prison and Receiving Unit”.  The closing stung another rural Southside Virginia county already weighed down by an unemployment rate above the state average and prospects of real business and industry moving there hovering between slim and none.

Mecklenburg Prison, a facility opened in the late 1970’s with much political fanfare (the then Governor attended its opening) announcing it to be “the most secure prison in America.”  Less than four years later, the notorious Briley brothers – cold blooded rapist/killers from Richmond – and four others executed a daring escape and ran up and down the east coast causing terror and fear each day of their escape.  That escape, from a prison Virginia’s political class sold as being secure, represents the utter failure of the Commonwealth’s corrections’ philosophy.  The end of its dismal life is not as a secure facility for Virginia’s most incorrigible offenders.  No, it is as a dumping ground – a “receiving center”, is emblematic of all that is wrong with Virginia’s bloated, unsustainable corrections apparatus.

I write this blog with some ambivalence.  After all, three hundred Southside Virginia residents arrived at work today and learned – less than two weeks before Christmas – that they will have no jobs.  I feel for those men and women – and their families, even as I wonder how they morally justify working in a place that treats fellow people – many of whom are not a threat to the community – in such vile, degrading ways.

Almost every politician since George Allen (up to our current Governor and members of the Virginia General Assembly) has lied to and betrayed the voters of the Commonwealth.  They’ve told voters they were safer with extraordinary harsh sentencing and abysmal prison conditions.  They’ve told voters the Commonwealth could afford one out of every eight dollars going to corrections – over $1 billion annually – all the while they lined their own pockets and the pockets of selected crony prison enterprises.

They told rural Virginia communities that a prison in their neighborhood would generate jobs and growth.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Prisons do not generate jobs nor do they create or foster an atmosphere for new businesses.  Study after study has concluded prisons have the opposite effect.  Companies don’t move to towns with prisons.

Still, the lies go on.  Where is the courageous politician who will stand up and say “Virginia needs sentence reform?  We have close to 30,000 nonviolent, low custody offenders in prison and we need to let them out.”  Where is the courageous politician who will propose real work training, education and treatment programs for the incarcerated?

Southside Virginia’s prison communities will continue to suffer high unemployment and high dropout and poverty rates until courageous politicians admit we need less incarcerated persons and more money going to rural areas for education and business development. 

My friend DC was one of the initial 19 “incorrigible inmates” who populated Mecklenburg.  That he wasn’t part of the Briley escape was due to his awareness that they’d all eventually be caught.  He saw stabbings, beatings, rapes, and murders during his time there.  At one point he testified on behalf of the inmates during a 1983 prisoner civil rights case before Senior Federal Judge Robert Merhige, Jr. in Richmond.  His recitation of beatings and abuse at the hands of officers so impressed the Judge that he immediately ordered the U.S. Attorney to investigate.  “If you see a corrections officer lay a hand on any prisoner you get word to me”, the Judge told DC from the bench.

Mecklenburg is closing.  There are almost twenty other prisons holding low custody inmates that can also be closed.  All it takes is some honesty and courage from Virginia’s politicians.

In the 1970’s the late, great Johnny Cash performed inside California’s notorious San Quentin Prison.  Cash himself was a convicted felon and did prison time.  He knew the inhumanity of the prison system.  That night, he sang a song he wrote about San Quentin.  The inmates – black, white, Hispanic – erupted in cheers.  He sang “San Quentin, may you rot and burn in hell…”

Everytime the news announces a Virginia prison closing I think of Mr. Cash.  Its closing time for Mecklenburg.  May it rot and burn in hell.

At Least This Isn't California

About a week ago, a riot broke out at California’s Folsom Prison (think “the Man in Black”, Johnny Cash) on a handball court. When it was over about 250 inmates were injured or charged with fighting. California has 155,000 men and women incarcerated in a system only built to house half that many. They are currently operating under a Federal Court order to release 40,000 inmates in the next 18 months to reduce their inmate population to 137% of bed capacity [Note: the inmate lawsuit over this issue took the Federal Courts 10 years to finally order the mass release. For eight years California operated under a consent order to either release or build more prisons. Oh yeah, they have a $19 billion budget shortfall so they can’t afford to build any new prisons.]



Things are so bad with California prison medical care that “Governor Aahnold” agreed by consent order to spend $150 million immediately to improve medical care for inmates when faced with “an alarmingly high rate of deaths of inmates due to poor care and suicide”.


At least Virginia doesn’t have the problems California has. Really? Last Friday, August 27th, one inmate was stabbed to death and three others seriously injured at the level 4 Nottoway Correction Center.


At Greensville, a massive 3,000 inmate prison holding level 2 and 3 inmates, since January two inmates have been murdered and one committed suicide. And, at Red Onion prison – the Commonwealth’s Super Max facility – two inmates have been murdered – by the same inmate.


But forget that. After all, those guys are felons. They deserve what happens to them (I wonder how many people dare say that while they’re sitting in their church pews on Sunday morning). Instead, think about the cost.


According to Virginia’s State Government website, there are approximately 38,900 inmates serving time in Virginia’s prisons. That does not include another 5,000 with DOC numbers awaiting transfer to a DOC facility who are sitting in regional jails, overcrowding them. The DOC website announces “fortunately, we don’t yet have an overcrowding problem”.


I guess it depends on how you define “overcrowding”. Having bunks sitting in fire lanes must not meet DOC’s definition of overcrowding. Having 200 inmates being watched by two officers must not meet their definition either. And, I guess being so understaffed that COs at Nottoway couldn’t search for “shanks” isn’t overcrowding, at least according to DOC’s spokesman, Larry Traylor.


Still not convinced, consider the other costs. As former Lt. Governor (and now head of Prison Ministries) Mark Earley recently said: “Virginia spends more than $1.1 billion annually on its prisons”. That’s more than is spent on education or healthcare in the Commonwealth.


Then there are the legal costs. In between filing lawsuits challenging the new federal health care plan, or going after a University of Virginia Professor who conducts research on global warming for fraud, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is responsible for defending DOC in a myriad of cases.


Each year, inmates file thousands of Habeas Corpus petitions in an attempt to get their sentences reviewed. Each case requires an Assistant Attorney General (and support staff) to defend the legitimacy of the incarceration.


Each year thousands of other suits are filed by inmates over violations of constitutional rights, such as religious freedom. Injured inmates or inmates denied adequate medical care sue.


Then, there are the major lawsuits brought by or on behalf of inmates. Currently, Troutman Sanders (a major Richmond law firm) is providing counsel to eleven inmates who have been denied parole (guys locked up pre-1994 are still parole eligible).


The National Lawyer’s Guild filed suit against DOC for refusing to allow inmates to order a legal self-help book. Prison Legal News filed a similar lawsuit over censorships of their paper, a monthly compilation of cases around the country involving inmates and prisons.


On September 2nd, U.S. District Court Judge James Turk, sitting in Roanoke, found “laughable” the Attorney General’s argument in an inmate censorship suit. In that case, the inmate sued because Augusta Correction Center refused him access, under Operating Procedure 803.2, to literary classics such as James Joyce’s Ulysses, DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Nabokov’s Lolita (all three books appear on various “100 Must Read Books”). The reason for denying access to these books according to the Attorney General? Inmates read these books for the sex scenes depicted in them, then “barter” the books for goods and services.


The Judge – not a bleeding heart, a no-nonsense conservative – found the policy unconstitutional censorship. DOC has dozens of rules that are selectively enforced and/or vague and nonsensical that lead to litigation. Imagine the dollars Virginia taxpayers spend just on legal costs alone. Add that to the $1.1 billion annual budget and you start talking about “real money”.


In this case, Virginia DOC is well on the road to copying its neighbor to the west. Soon Virginians will be able to paraphrase President Kennedy’s famous words. When it comes to prisons, Virginians can say: “Ich bin ein Californian”.