20th Anniversary: And This We Celebrate?

It was the Beatles who gave us the line, "it was 20 years ago today, Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play...." That was an anniversary worth remembering. Here at LCC, next Friday will mark 20 years since this facility was opened and the administration is going all out to celebrate. How odd, they want to celebrate a place where 1 out of 3 offenders ends up cycling back in to the system within the first 12 months of release; they want to celebrate a facility that costs Virginia taxpayers over $27 million each year to house, clothe, feed, and not much else; approximately 1000 offenders, most of which have been through the system at least once before. They want to celebrate their successes, except there are no matrix to measure success.

You know how things run around here--the worst building on the compound is the "re-entry" building. The guys are off the chain and the staff will tell you they have little control over how things run. The state spends over $100k on an "evidence Based" manager of reentry who is regularly cussed out by the residents of his re-entry pod because he isn't a straight shooter. The re-entry programs--which the state spent millions on to a private contractor--are long on touchy-feely “clap for the word of the day" and short on actual drug and alcohol programs and work skills necessary to succeed.

Participants in re-entry can miss school; their re-entry programs are "that important" to the offender's overall "success." Really? Every study done suggests offenders (at least 50% of whom lack even a high school diploma) need more education, more training in real skills for living outside of ere.

But that doesn't matter. See DOC operates as an independent body; there is little government oversight over control. No one, it seems, is looking at the massive expenditures in money and manpower wasted throughout the system. And before you say, "these guys deserve it," LCC is not a high security facility. Most of Virginia's prisons are level 1 and level 2 which means the vast majority of the men (and women at other spots) are within 5 years of release.
Where is the oversight? Where is the independent audit and control? Where is the real effort at "corrections"? It certainly isn't here.

Know why all these prisons are around? Because Bill Clinton, facing public embarrassment and scorn sold his soul to the Gingrich controlled congress and signed the Prison Litigation Reform Act. In it, the Feds gave billions in block grants to the states to build more prisons. And the states did just that. Only it backfired because the fed money dried up, incarceration rates went through the roof and the system became even more bloated and corrupt. Both Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich admit today they erred; both now are advocates of criminal justice overhaul.

Anniversary celebration? Celebrate this--entire generations of low income, low educated citizens are cycling through the system and nothing being done in here is either making you safer or correcting the problem. You want punishment, that's fine. But the ramifications of a corrupt system that overwhelmingly punishes
and fails to rehabilitate is anger, bitterness and the likelihood that once released you'll be back.

"Happy" anniversary--hardly. Those folks who live out here know the real score--no other businesses want to locate near the prison. And the staff? They've been busy taking employee surveys to understand why morale is so bad and attrition is so high. Instead of an anniversary celebration perhaps there should be a wake.

Education, Not Incarceration

THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN IN FEBRUARY, 2015.

 

            “Every dollar spent on prison education saves five dollars in corrections expenditures.” That was the conclusion drawn in a 2014 released meta-analysis study conducted by the Rand Corporation. Sentencing a person to prison does more to undermine one’s employability than any other factor. Is it any wonder 65% of released offenders re-offend within 3 years. Inmates are twice as likely to lack a high school education as the general population.

            In the words of Vivian D. Nixon, Executive director of College and Community fellowship in New York,

            “Every felony conviction … quite literally results in a life sentence.”

            Education – and only education breaks the cycle of repeat offenses. Earn a bachelor’s degree in prison and the recidivism rate drops to 5.6%. Earn a master’s and the rate is less than 1%. No less a conservative spokesman than former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich said the following:

            “Prisoners should be provided free education in order to reduce crime and recidivism.”

            And yet education – particularly higher-educated – is the red-headed stepchild of the prison system. At this facility every man in our college program pays his own way – tuition – the same rate charged to students on the street. No other inmates in Virginia pay for the “privilege” of improving their chances for success on the street. Not even one state dollar is invested in the college program here, yet millions annually go into “re-entry” programs with no provable record of success. The commonwealth spent millions on a “software” package – “Compass,” a 120 plus question/survey to determine an offenders risk of re-offending. Meanwhile a nationally recognized program for offenders our “Campus within Walls” program is treated with both benign neglect and outright contempt by those in charge here.

            The “dedicated housing unit,” a dorm specifically mandated for use by college participants, is the fullest building on the compound. While bed space sits empty in every other building here, those in charge continue to use beds in this building as a dumping zone. Recent surveys of our students indicated the noise and distractions from the non-college residents are the single greatest impediment to success in class.

            Makes you wonder, or maybe it doesn’t. Education, a college education, is the ticket out. What does that tell you about the goals of those in charge?

            It is time for the Department of Corrections to get behind the one program that will reduce recidivism and that will give these men a fighting chance of success after release.

 

Newt Knows

Two weeks ago dozens of conservatives gathered in Washington, DC to assert that they are at the forefront of the prison reform movement. As former House Speaker Newt Gingrich noted, conservatives now realized that their drive in the 1980s and 1990s for long prison terms had the “unexpected consequences” of imprisoning too many non-violent offenders.

            Many in attendance at the conference credited to the late Chuck Colson for inspiring them to push for prison reform. Colson, known as the “hatchet man” for the Nixon Administration during Watergate, served time in a federal prison. He had a “Damascus Epiphany” while awaiting sentencing. His conversion allowed him to see the waste – in both money and lives – that prison is for all but the sociopaths who need to be segregated from society. Colson used his experiences as the basis for starting the group “Prison Fellowship,” a faith-based non-profit organization which has shown remarkable success in changing inmate’s lives.

            Colson wrote and spoke extensively about the evil lurking within America’s prisons (he did so before the advent of blogs!). What he witnessed convinced him that Christians must speak out about excessive punishment, waste, and despair evident “behind the walls.” This wasn’t limited to high-security prisons. Even low-custody, “soft” facilities, operate in a repressive manner. Prisons destroy. And, for so many behind bars who have known nothing but failure and disappointment, it leads only to anger, and bitterness and more failure.

            Newt and his conservative brethren know America can do better. Mr. Colson knew God expected more from us. Irony is defined as an event or result that is the opposite of what is expected. My life these past six years, meets that definition. Like Mr. Colson, I had an epiphany about my entire outlook while sitting alone in a jail cell. And like Mr. Colson, I realized all the assumption I spouted, all the things that motivated me, were false. Something else mattered.

            I don’t know if I would have come to that realization years earlier if it would have saved my marriage. I only know that I wasn’t willing to see it until, until that day in that cell.

            I think that helps explain the likes of Newt and Jeb, Edwin and Richard, and the hundreds of other “conservatives” who know now what they didn’t know then. Mr. Colson, thank you.

Rethinking Justice

As I sit here this week, one week from the college graduation for our first class of IT certification students, during the same week this nation celebrated a national holiday to honor an icon of the civil rights movement, I thought of Dr. King’s prescient words, “Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.”  Powerful words; words that should give every American, every Virginian pause, and decide “is it time we rethink our view of justice?”

Early last week former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour was viciously berated in the media and by political opponents for issuing executive pardons to “murderers and rapists” on his last day in office.  The fact that the U.S. Constitution gives the president and the Mississippi Constitution (and Virginia’s as well) gives the governor the power to modify, amend, or commute any sentence, any conviction, was lost on the critics.  The fact that 189 of the 215 felons pardoned were already out of prison and living in their communities was also lost on the critics.

News pundits blathered on and on misstating facts to suit their ratings drive.

Barbour refused to be baited into the debate.  Instead, he released a statement.  In part, it said the following:

“I am very comfortable with the decisions I made…All this is consistent with the powers given the governor by our constitution…

 My wife and I are evangelical Christians.  Most Mississippians profess to be Christian of some type.  Christianity teaches us forgiveness and second chances.  I believe in second chances and I try hard to be forgiving.   The historic power of gubernatorial clemency is rooted in the Christian idea of giving second chances.  I’m not saying I’ll be perfect, that no one who received clemency will ever do anything wrong.  I’m not infallible, and no one else is.  But I’m very comfortable and totally at peace with these pardons.”

Haley Barbour, a conservative Republican Governor from the heart of the old South made such a simple yet profound case for justice, real justice.  Governor McDonnell would do well to heed the words of Dr. King and Mr. Barbour.  Unfortunately, Virginia’s Governor appears either incapable or unwilling to do what is right.

In a recent story in the Washington Post, Virginia DOC came under scrutiny for its use of solitary confinement.  The Post reported that 44 states and the Federal Bureau of Prisons use solitary confinement yet Virginia – holding almost 2,000 inmates of its 40,000 prisoner population in isolation – accounts for a “sizeable share of the estimated 25,000 people in solitary” around the nation (almost 10%).

And what was Governor McDonnell’s response when this issue was brought to his attention during a recent interview?  He said he was unaware of the complaints.

He then went further, stating “People behind bars have civil rights…”  That’s true, Governor McDonnell.  Yet the prison system you oversee daily violates the rights of those behind bars.  Justice is not an eye for an eye.  Justice does not mean giving the state the power to put an offender in a gladiatorial nightmare with rape, extortion, murder and mayhem circulating around.

As I have noted numerous times in this blog, Virginia’s prison system is a cataclysmic failure.  Justice demands something better. 

Justice it seems is coming to Georgia where its current Governor has proposed sweeping prison reform.

Governor Deal, another Republican, noted that Georgia now spends more than $1 billion a year on state prisons and has seen its inmate population double in the past 20 years (sound familiar, Virginia?).  The state, he argues simply cannot afford to keep the current sentencing regime.  “We’re at a point in time where the necessity for doing something has gotten so big that to turn our head and pretend the problem does not exist is not responsible government.”  I wonder if Governor McDonnell is listening.

In a commission study conducted on behalf of Governor Deal it was found that in Georgia, 60% of the prison admissions represented drug and property offenders; not murderers, rapists or armed robbers.  Simply put, public safety isn’t being enhanced by current sentencing.

The Georgia legislature will vote on changes to save money by using alternatives to prison for non-violent offenders.  Make non-violent offenders accountable but allow them to remain out of prison, taking care of their kids and paying their taxes.  Justice, it appears, is coming to Georgia.

All around the South – South and North Carolina, Kentucky, Texas, Mississippi and Georgia – conservatives, many who are evangelical Christians, are leading the push for a new justice paradigm.  And these politicians’ ranks are growing with GOP candidate Newt Gingrich and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush supporting massive prison overhaul.  And where is Governor McDonnell?  Where is Virginia in this debate?

President Obama recently made news with his last official act in 2011 – signing the National Defense Authorization Act.  This law contains a highly controversial, and suspect, clause which allows the military to indefinitely detain terror suspects, including American citizens arrested in the United States, without charge.

Two retired four-star Marine generals joined GOP Candidate Ron Paul and numerous civil rights organizations to denounce the law, deeming it “misguided and unnecessary” and a threat to America’s constitutionally protected right to due process.  Justice.  The founding fathers included terms such as due process having survived a tyrannical regime who used arrest and detention to stifle dissent.  Protections against unreasonable searches, cruel and inhumane punishment, and the right to trial with counsel, all arose because these men lived, bled and died under the thumb of a corrupt, unjust government.

That some 225 years later this nation must still debate issues of basic, fundamental justice is indeed astounding.  “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  Dr. King knew well.  The time for rethinking justice is upon us.  Justice – mercy, forgiveness – must flow.

Bob Dylan was right.  The times, they are a changin.  Virginia and Governor McDonnell can lead like Governors Barbour and Deal and states like Georgia and Mississippi.  Justice is not mere enforcement of harsh laws.

If I Could Vote

If I could vote, I’d be solidly, proudly casting my ballot for either Newt Gingrich or Ron Paul.  I’d even consider Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman.  I know, they’re all Republicans.  That’s not why.  Those four men have all expressed support for prison reform.

Newt Gingrich is a founding member of “Right on Crime” a conservative advocacy group calling for fewer prisons, shorter sentences and lower incarceration rates.  They focus on reducing recidivism through a “cost-effective criminal justice system”.  They seek less imprisonment and strategies that emphasize restitution, work and treatment. 

In a policy statement, Right on Crime set out:  “one way to save money is reduce our reliance on prisons which serve a critical role by incapacitating dangerous offenders and career criminals but are not the solution for every type of offender… [an] unintended consequence of [prison’] is hardening many non-violent low risk offenders and making them worse than when they entered.”

That it is conservative Republicans pushing prison reform while the nation’s first “black” President has done little to nothing to seek such reform is an irony inmates are still coming to grips with.  If for no other reason than my own excessively long sentence, I am hoping for a GOP landslide in 2012.

New “old way” to do things

Ms. S, a petite 40-something black woman, walked in our building Wednesday and announced “I am your unit manager.  Everything that happens in the building goes through me.”  Unit manager?  The old heads just laughed.  “We had unit managers in the 70’s and the 90’s”, they said.

Why is it that Virginia keeps recycling the same tired, unsuccessful ideas from the past?  They didn’t work then, they won’t work now.

As I’ve written before, Governor McDonnell and DOC Director Clarke must get creative and daring in dealing with prisons.

Two good places to start are with the recommendations expressed by “Right on Crime” a conservative think tank with support from the likes of Newt Gingrich, Ed Meese and Grover Norquist.  Longer sentences don’t work.  Reinstituting tired ideas like “unit managers” in prison buildings won’t work.  Real prison reform is needed. 

Then there is research by Professor Philip Cook of Duke and Jens Ludwig of Chicago whose research on controlling crime through reducing prison sentences is both cost effective and innovative.

It’s time for Virginia to get some new ideas in corrections.

The Cost of Doing Nothing

I watched with mixed emotions as the country went through the seizures of defaulting on the national debt.  Part of me was deeply amused.  Every cable news outlet had their “breaking news” and a countdown clock to debt Armageddon.  Both parties – and the president as well – played simple, false sound bites.  The “Tea Party” pushed demagoguery to a new limit.  Ah America, “God shed His grace on thee.”  And Virginia’s Governor?  He did more creative bookkeeping than I did to land myself in prison.

Governor McDonnell touted a $500 million surplus, except, he forgot to tell people he failed to meet the payment requirements to the Virginia Retirement System.  There is no surplus.  VRS is almost $17 billion underfunded and the Commonwealth still has an IOU outstanding to VRS for the prior year’s budget debacle.  And McDonnell has the brass set to go on CNN as a “possible VP” nominee and tout Virginia’s economic well-being.

A pox on both their houses!  As “The Economist” noted in an OpEd piece on March 19, 2011: 

“…despite all the rhetoric from the tea partiers, big government is not just the fault of the self-interested bureaucrats and leftist politicians.  Conservative voters…have kept on demanding the state do more…the right has built prisons, announced wars on drugs and terror, and indulged generals, farmers, and policemen…”

What we have seen in the recent economic unraveling is that everything costs.  And the bill for America’s love affair with “tough on crime” mass incarceration policy has come due.  Governor McDonnell can lead or he can step aside.  But, the time for change is now.

As states such as Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Kentucky have realized, there are more effective and less expensive ways to handle most non-violent offenders.  These states are employing alternatives to sending someone convicted of a crime to prison.  They utilize home incarceration and day center reporting versus prison.

This isn’t a “bleeding heart liberal” approach.  Conservatives such as former Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese, drug czar William Bennett, Newt Gingrich and anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist are pushing for prison reform.

Where is Virginia in this discussion?  Not even involved.  Virginia will spend $25,000 to keep me housed in a low level facility this year and the costs continue to climb.  I am unable to pay restitution for my embezzlement while in here; I do not pay taxes; I do not help raise my youngest son.  Three years I’ve spent behind bars.  If Bob McDonnell was really the politician he claims to be, he’d look at my situation and the thousands like it.  He’d let us “do our time” outside the walls; working, making restitution, being productive citizens.

As the "Sentencing Project" reported recently, lawmakers in Kansas, Michigan, New Jersey and New York adopted significant policy changes to reduce prison populations.

“In each of these state a range of policy changes were adopted, including sentencing reforms, alternatives for ‘prison-bound’ people, reducing time served in prison, addressing parole release rates and reducing revocations”

23 states have made significant changes in the way sentences are handed out and the length of time an inmate serves – Virginia is not one of those 23.

Bob McDonnell and the Virginia General Assembly can make a difference.  $1 billion a year to house 40,000 inmates is enough reason to try.  They need to enact a real “earned good time credit” system that aggressively rewards inmates who seek to change and improve.  Early release should not just be a goal, but the mission of corrections.

Virginia can no longer afford to do nothing.  Virginia needs real solutions, not “creative” accounting.  The economic realities that showed their true colors this summer prove that government must make smart choices.  No longer can the U.S. with 5 percent of the world’s population, keep 25 percent of the world’s inmates behind bars.

Perhaps Governor McDonnell will finally get it.

Strange Bedfellows

I was sent a copy of the recently released NAACP report calling for a change in current incarceration policies. The report appropriately titled “Misplaced Priorities: Over Incarcerate, Under Educate” (http://naacp.3cdn.net/01d6f368edbe135234_bq0m68x5h.pdf)  is a scathing indictment of America’s love affair with prisons. What was truly ironic is who is standing with the NAACP and their clarion call for reform. Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform – a conservative advocacy group – stood directly behind NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous as he presented the report. Republican Presidential hopeful and former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich sent a letter of support. What would bring such diverse parties together? Sadly, it is the growing realization that this nation’s prison system is failing. They say politics makes strange bedfellows. Perhaps justice requires even stranger ones.



The NAACP report is eye opening for its simple, direct message. They call the current system the “prison industrial complex”. That is quite an apt name for a system nationwide that costs almost $70 billion per year to maintain. As I’ve pointed out before, the lucrative sweetheart contracts given by state DOC’s to conglomerates like Keefe and Global Tel Link line private pockets at the expense of taxpayers, inmates and their families alike.


As the recent Pew Center Study (http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedFiles/Pew_State_of_Recidivism.pdf)  showed, increased spending and incarceration rates have done nothing to reduce recidivism. In fact, the opposite has happened. Shortly after the Pew Study was released, Virginia began touting the fact that “sixteen years after banning parole, Virginia has defied the nation’s unshakably high recidivism level…”


The story reported that Virginia’s 2007 recidivism rate (for inmates released three years earlier) was 28.3 percent versus a national rate of 43.3 percent. Buried just below that “amazing statistic”, attributable to Virginia’s unjust denial of early release to model inmates, was this fact, “the rate has edged up slightly since 2000”. In other words, the rate was lower just after parole was abolished. Sounds to me like the trend is going the wrong way.


As the Washington Post noted in an editorial on April 18, the “NAACP report…is the most recent to argue convincingly that public safety can be preserved and tax dollars saved with smarter policies…Individuals must be held accountable for breaking the law, and in many cases, especially those involving violent offenses, imprisonment is the best way to protect public safety…But the levels of incarceration are financially unsustainable and in many instances counterproductive…”


The “radical proposals” the NAACP came up with that are supported by all these conservatives include shortening prison terms (recommendation # 8) and increasing parole release rates (recommendation # 9). Ironically, at the recently completed session of the General Assembly, Delegate Donald McEachin’s proposed bill to give Virginia inmates enrolled in vocational or educational programs (and the classroom aides) ten days of earned good time credit (versus the current 4 ½) never made it out of committee.


Sadly, it appears that the NAACP report, along with all the other evidence being compiled to show that prison reform is needed is falling on deaf ears here in Virginia.


In a Washington Post letter to the editor (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/window-dressing-in-virginia/2011/04/15/AFFX03vD_story.html) on April 15th, Vienna resident John Horejsi, a member of Governor McDonnell’s “Prisoner and Juvenile Re-entry Council” noted that of the numerous recommendations made by this group on issues addressing recidivism, parole, taxpayer costs, “only one…unfortunately, was presented to go forward.” He then said the following:


“There is widespread agreement that we, a group of citizens asked by the governor to serve, were perhaps no more than window dressing.”


Is Governor McDonnell just another politician using “tough on crime” sound bites to buy votes or is he courageous? The answer will be seen if he becomes a strange bedfellow of the NAACP report.

Just When I Thought You Couldn’t Get Any Dumber

One of my favorite movies of all time is the Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels comedy “Dumb & Dumber”. In one particularly absurd scene, Lloyd (Jim Carrey) having traded away the pair’s van for a moped to save money and fuel, comes rolling down a two lane highway where he meets back up with Harry (Jeff Daniels). Lloyd explains how he traded the van straight up for the moped. Harry then utters this amazing line:



“Just when I thought you couldn’t get any dumber . . . you go out an redeem yourself!”


That movie and that quote rolled through my mind as I read this morning’s Richmond Times Dispatch editorial praising then Governor Allen for implementing no parole.


http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2011/jan/18/TDOPIN01-results-ar-780195/

The editor then cites as “facts” a number of statistics that are contrary to DOC’s own data.


What was the main reason for his “love letter” to George Allen? Virginia has a brand new, $100 million prison in Grayson County sitting empty. Ipso facto (ain’t Latin a grand language) Virginia has plenty of bed space to lock up criminals. And, he concludes, Virginia’s inmate population actually shrunk 2.8% last year.


“Dumb & Dumber” should be the name of the Times-Dispatch editorial page.


Allow me to point out the facts for the editor. I would also challenge him to get off his ass and see what’s really going on in Virginia’s prisons.


In 1995, when then Governor Allen proposed, then signed, abolition of parole, there were approximately 9,600 inmates held by DOC. In 2010, there were approximately 37,000. That is a 400% growth in prison population in fifteen years. DOC’s budget exceeds $1 billion annually. The department employs over 13,000 people, the largest state agency in Virginia.


It costs Virginians approximately $25,000 per year to house an inmate. It costs about $25 million per year to operate a prison. Want to know why the new Grayson County prison isn’t being used? It’s money. Virginia can’t afford to operate more prisons. What the editor failed to recognize is that prisons drain money from other pressing needs, like education and medical care and help for the handicapped.


No less a conservative pundit than Newt Gingrich has spoken out about the excessive incarceration rate in the U.S. As this blog previously noted in his recent Op Ed piece in the Washington Post, contrary to what the editor wrote, states with aggressive parole and liberal release actually have seen greater reductions in crime.


If Allen was such a genius, why has the recidivism rate in Virginia remained relatively constant while the number of inmates and the cost to house them has skyrocketed? Good questions to ask Mr. Editor. It’s a shame you didn’t think of it.


Let me also say a brief word about the false statement the editor makes about “available beds”. Fact: Virginia’s prisons are overcrowded. Virginia fails to comply with ACA (American Correction Association) standards for inmates per officer and living space per inmate. In the dorm I live in, two officers (one in the booth and one on the floor) are responsible for 192 inmates. The standard is one officer for every 40 dorm inmates. Instead, 96 inmates are jammed into a building made for half that many with each man having less than ten square feet of living space, rather than the required 25.


Think it doesn’t matter? Tell that to the families of inmates murdered at Nottoway, Greensville and Red Onion prisons this year. Tell it to the thousands of inmates exposed to Hepatitis C and other diseases.


I challenge the editor to read DOC’s own December 2009 “Task Force Report on Nonviolent Offenders”.


http://www.justicefellowship.org/images/AlternativesforNonViolentOffendersReportfinal_3.pdf

Better yet, get off your ass and come out here and see the Virginia prison system in action.


I challenge the editor to invite George Allen to come with him and sit down with me and listen to what’s really going on in the “corrections” system. It ain’t pretty. In fact, it’s immoral and should be seen as an embarrassment to any semi-intelligent person.


Neither the editor or Mr. Allen will take me up on my invitation. It’s far too easy to hide behind the fiction than face the facts.

School Days

College classes began this week. For the forty guys enrolled in the IT certification program it was trial by fire. I wasn’t sure how everyone would respond. This is a very course intensive program: 37 college credit hours (15 toward the general education requirements for an Associates degree, 22 in computer science) earned in 8 months. Approximately three-fourths of the participants have never taken a college class before. Now, they are taking four over an incredibly strenuous eight weeks



I’m the academic aide for English composition and American History. Besides my regular job duties working with GED students and teaching creative writing, I’m now sitting in on two three hour English classes, reviewing essay drafts, and tutoring on American History. By Friday, I had a head cold and was worn out.


This may surprise you, but these guys are working their butts off to succeed and with good reason. A college degree is the single most important deterrent to recidivism. Throw all your misconceptions out. These guys are more dedicated than the vast majority of college freshman going to a nice, sterile university on mom and dad’s check. The results, if they don’t succeed, are so painful that these guys collectively are pouring their hearts and souls into their work.


I may be worn out from reading and rereading essays explaining branches of government, but in many ways, I’ve never been more alive.


A few years ago a book came out called “Reading Lolita in Tehran”. The author recounted her efforts to educate young girls in Iran under the nose of the theocratic regime which was hell bent on controlling what its citizens were exposed to. The book pointed out the length people will go to to read and get an education.


This isn’t Tehran, but the conditions under which these men are attending college is a far cry from what occurs in the classrooms at some notable colleges and universities just a few miles from Lunenburg’s fences.


I wonder how many of the “professors” at those schools who bitterly complain about their course loads and nine month academic calendars could hold up under the academic conditions here.


It’s early Saturday morning and every table in the dayroom is packed with guys studying. A small group is gathered around the microwave discussing Thursday evening’s math worksheet. In front of my cut, five guys are nervously waiting for me to edit their essay drafts. This is not typical of a Lunenburg Saturday morning. Usually there are only five or ten of us out of bed before 11:30 am count. This morning the building is alive. No one is asleep. A few guys are outside working out. The rest are hitting the books.


Imagine attending a night class (6:30 to 9:30) where you aren’t allowed to leave for class until “count” has cleared. You then stand outside in the cold and rain waiting for your turn to enter the building and be patted down. Then, you go through the same process when class is over. Need to use the bathroom? Get permission.


In the math class, students need calculators to solve various trigonometric and exponential problems. They aren’t allowed to use calculators in the building. Any machine with memory capabilities is forbidden: “security risk”.


The instructor for the intro to economics class brought copies of the Wall Street Journal in for her students. They were to read the paper and answer worksheets about various sections. Chief of Security pulled the instructor aside and told her “no more papers”. Apparently, giving out papers is a form of fraternization.


Yet, these guys persist. There are 40 IT students, 47 associate degree students. Eighty-seven men on a compound of 1200 with three academic aides and a handful of dedicated teachers working with them.


Tehran doesn’t seem so far away. Still, they go to school. They try and earn their degree.


Some readers may wonder why they should care about inmates earning a degree. Forget the facts about recidivism. It costs $4,000 for a year of college in prison. It costs around $25,000 to house an inmate. The economics are so simple.


No less a commentator than Newt Gingrich endorsed dramatic prison reform. In a January 8th Washington Post Op Ed Gingrich wrote:


“We can no longer afford business as usual with prisons. The criminal justice system is broken and conservatives must lead the way in fixing it. . . It is time to fundamentally rethink how we treat and rehabilitate our prisoners.”


In Virginia, that means massive efforts at education and drug and alcohol counseling in the prisons and restoration of parole for almost all inmates. Make education a basis for earning parole.


In “Reading Lolita in Tehran” fear permeated every class meeting. Teachers feared a student making a slip of the tongue, leading to the school being raided by the police.


That fear should not exist for inmate students. Teachers should be free to exchange ideas – and newspapers – without risking the wrath of security. Education means too much to these men and the future of Virginia corrections. These school days matter.