The Problem is Here

A man I admire recently retired. He came from humble circumstances, a blue-collar family in New Jersey. He was the first in his family to go to college using his basketball skills to gain a scholarship. He turned that opportunity into a vocation. He earned additional degrees, became a basketball coach to team after team of inner-city black kids, and eventually rose to the level of college President. And he never forgot; he never forgot that education could lift even the most impoverished. There was a second lesson he knew from his life of hard knocks: you can’t ever quit. No matter how badly the odds seem against you, you don’t quit. You play on.

            This man’s mission, his passion, became delivering education to those normally not given easy access. As long as he was president, the underclasses, the disadvantaged, the disconnected, would have a chance to go to college. He even included the incarcerated. “They want to punish you. They want you to suffer. All the talk about corrections, about punishment fitting the crime, isn’t what’s behind this. You get your degrees. You leave here and be the men I know you can be. You don’t quit; you show them.”

            I listened as this remarkable man spoke to a hushed classroom full of students, our students “here,” in this place. It was his vision that started and moved this program forward. It always was an uphill battle. No state money; no public support; no assistance from the powers that be in Richmond; even worse treatment from some of the officers who work here. After all, successful offenders don’t reoffend. Less prisoners means less prisons which means less guard jobs.

            We had a young woman involved in the college program this summer. She’s a visiting scholar from a liberal arts college on the west coast and she read about “here” and wanted to see it for herself. And as she sat in the classes and listened to the discussions and read their words she wanted to let the world know that this matters; in here matters; these men and their lives and their futures matter.

            I was interviewed the other day by this young scholar. She remarked how across the board the students “look up” to me.” They respect you and have great affinity for you,” she said. And, I choked up and told her about my failure as a father and how I came here and was asked to join this program to teach, and tutor, and mentor and how the judge and all those who judged me and sent me away to suffer and rue what had become of my life had failed. I turned 55 the week before and I told her I kept hearing David’s words in Psalm 37.

            “I have been young, and now am old;

            Yet, I have not seen the righteous forsaken,

            Nor his descendants begging bread …   

                     ‘

            There was a professor working in here this summer. She is conservative, Republican, a Fox News watcher. And her experiences in here have, as she told the class, caused her to look at what she took as Gospel; there are consequences for a wrong, but should the consequences never cease? Should you pay forever? That’s the problem in “here” and every time someone from out there comes in they see it.

            I was like that professor. I never met a Republican, a conservative, I didn’t like. And I was sure I knew everything about right and wrong; life wasn’t hued, it was black and white.

            “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord

            And He delights in his way.

            Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down;

            For the Lord upholds him with His hand.”

            The professor wants to return to teach here again because this matters. She’s right. As I told the young scholar interviewing me, I thought I was being sent to prison to suffer and die ashamed. Instead I’ve learned to live.

            Here are a few facts from around the country to consider. It costs a student $37,000 for tuition at Princeton; it costs New Jersey $44,000 to keep a person in a state prison for one year. Think Virginia’s any different? Instate tuition averages $14,000. It costs the commonwealth $26,000 per year for an inmate in one of its prisons.

            California has to most people in prison and in college. If the state emptied every prison and sent every released person to college it would save $7 billion a year.

            The United States has far and away the highest incarceration rate in the world. If the incarceration rates of individual states are compared with other nations you would see that 36 states and the District of Columbia have incarceration rates higher than that of Cuba, the next highest nation. Yes, Virginia is in that group of 36.

            Law Professor Michelle Alexander, author of the controversial treatise, “Mass Incarceration: The New Jim Crow” recently penned an op-ed piece for Sojourner.  In it she quotes the research of Harvard Professor Kaia Stern (Dr. Stern specializes in prison education and is also an ordained minister. She also visited this facility a few years ago in preparation for a new text she was writing: “Voices from American Prisons: Faith, Education, and Healing.”) Alexander wrote:

“The system of mass incarceration is rotten to its core. As Dr. Kaia Stern eloquently explains in her book … the quintupling of our prison population in a few short decades and the relegation of tens of millions of people to permanent second-class status is a reflection of the fact that we in the United States are captive to a “spirit of punishment.” She writes, “there is no more pressing human rights, issue, no more urgent spiritual crossroads or threat to democracy than the current penal crisis.”

            Both Stern and Alexander speak the truth. America cannot nor will not ever be, that “shining city” on the hill Ronald Reagan so eloquently spoke of (borrowing from John’s Revelation) until the soul of this country burns for righteousness and mercy – two tenets at the foundation of our Judeo Christian parentage which are ignored “here.”

            I have never met a young student who has told me “I am innocent.” No, they tell me they did the crime; they accept punishment. But consequences for one’s actions must have a termination date. And a remorseful, rehabilitated man – or woman – must be allowed to live free and be welcomes back to society.

            “Here” is a leper colony. “Here” are criminals and dredges of society; losers; drug addicts; thieves, murderers. And I can’t help but remember the Gospel writers over and over as they told the stories of Jesus. It was these untouchables who the Lord cared for, and ate with, and forgave. You may not want to know what goes on in “here,” but I can assure you Jesus is here. He is with the disadvantaged, the discouraged, the disenfranchised.

            Political courage. We lack leaders with political courage who will tell you that what I write is true: prisons are failing; punishment does not fit the crime. April 4, 1968, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered in Memphis, Tennessee. Inner cities around the nation erupted as news of the assassination spread.

            Senator Robert Kennedy, Democratic candidate for President, was in downtown Indianapolis. Against the advice and wishes of his staff and Indianapolis police (who couldn’t “guarantee” his safety), Kennedy left the hotel and went to the worst housing project in the city. He stood on a car and spoke about pain in the loss of a great leader; he listened as black citizens expressed their dismay and anger, and then he quoted the Greek philosopher Aeschylus: “Excruciating pain leads to greater wisdom.” Indianapolis – unlike almost every other urban center in America that night – remained calm. Political courage.

            The problem is “here.” Prison doesn’t rehabilitate anyone. Prison doesn’t make you more likely to follow the law. And while some violent sociopaths must remain forever separated from society, for the vast majority sentenced, their time behind bars and their treatment after release destroys more lives than are changed. In spite of that, young men in the college program here believe if they just get their degree they can overcome. Even with the odds stacked against them from a society which talks of “second chances” almost with a sarcastic sneer, they believe.

            They believe because of men like Dr. John who tells them not to quit. They believe because professors like Joan, Amy, Joy, Allie, and Anne come out here and treat them like scholars, not felons. They believe because it is in the human DNA to overcome, overcome where they came from, what they did and what is in “here.”

            The great African-American writer James Baldwin wrote a letter to his nephew that became a major portion of his great 1942 book, The Fire Next Time. It was a book of cathartic anger at a white society that continued to place blacks in second-class status. Often, I return to his remarkable words as a holder of the “Scarlet F” (felon). For six years I have held a front row seat to “here.” Instead of destroying me, this place and my God’s intervention have opened my eyes. I read Baldwin’s words and I know in spite of “here” these men will overcome.

            “For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what it must become. It will be hard, but you come from sturdy, peasant stock, men who picked cotton and dammed rivers and built railroads, and in the teeth of the most terrifying odds, achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity. You come from a long line of great poets since Homer. One of them said, The very time I thought I was lost My dungeon shook and my chains fell off ...”

State of Human Nature

It is a very dreary Tuesday in January and the Virginia General Assembly is in session.  I was off work today – Adult Basic Education placement testing was being conducted – and it poured.  They finally called rec and in a cold January rain I went outside to run and blow off steam.  News from the General Assembly was not good for felons.  I needed to get my thoughts together.  And, like so many other times when things just didn’t seem to make sense, I went out to run.

A little background.  “BP”, “before prison” that is, I thought I had a pretty good understanding of human nature.  I confidently told myself and others that I understood people.  It was easy to see the world in black and white, right versus wrong, good versus evil.  And, I had an opinion and knew what was correct about almost anything.

Then came jail, and divorce, and prison.  I found myself at one of Virginia DOC’s receiving facilities in the hot, humid days of August.  For almost five months I stayed there and I survived – barely.  I saw things in that stew of violence, filth, and despair that forever altered my self-aggrandizing sense of my knowledge of human nature.

One day, I sat locked in my cell; the temperature reached over 100°; even the roaches and ants who invaded my eight by eight rat hole moved slower.  I watched in horror as above me, on the third tier some sixty feet above the concrete floor below, a man dangled.  His legs and arms were wrapped tightly around the metal railing as he was repeatedly punched and kicked by two other men who were intent on seeing him fall to this death.

No officer was in sight.  It was not the first beating I’d seen at that place and as I processed the scene I couldn’t help but think I was in hell.  And, I wondered, does anyone really care.

Each night at the receiving center, as I lay down trying to fall asleep I would, in my prayers, tell God I couldn’t take anymore.  Yet somehow, I managed to get through the next day.  During those difficult nights there was a young inmate on the first floor.  He was mentally challenged.  Each night his medication would wear off and he would scream in the dark “Jesus help me.  I’m scared.”  His screams would be met with derision and laughter.

I carry those and literally hundreds of other stories like that with me.  What they taught me surprised me.  I came out of that experience convinced that the only saving we as human beings have from our most basic instincts is the capacity to show mercy and overcome evil with kindness.

The Virginia General Assembly.  Governor Robert McDonnell proposed that Virginia join forty-eight other states in automatically restoring voting rights to nonviolent felons upon completion of their sentences.  Currently, only Kentucky and Virginia deny felons automatic restoration of rights.  Less than a week after the conservative Republican Governor surprised political watchers on both sides of the aisle with his proposal, the Republican controlled House of Delegates rejected the Governor’s plea.

I accept that reasonable people can have different opinions on the application of punishment for crimes.  But, comments made by various Republican Delegates showed a complete lack of understanding of the nature of imprisonment and the failure of Virginia’s corrections paradigm.

Prisons do not correct.  They are horrible places.  And, for the vast majority of inmates, a stay in prison does more harm than good.  No legislator should pass judgment on the merits of any released felon until they’ve witnessed firsthand what passes for incarceration.

Each year, inmates are murdered, raped, beaten and extorted, all under the eyes of the officers charged with creating a safe, rehabilitative and humane environment.  Each year, the Department of Corrections receives over one billion dollars to mostly house the incarcerated in horrendous conditions.  No matter what you think of their crimes, they are still human beings who deserve basic human decency.

Place a man or woman in prison, deprive them of basic freedoms, subject them to violence, filth and then expect that they will magically transform – not hardly.  Then, on release tell them they are not welcomed back to society except as second-class citizens denied the right to vote and subject to warrantless searches.  It is a toxic mix destined for failure.

The General Assembly, the citizens of Virginia, can do better.  Dostoevsky understood it.   A society is judged by its treatment of its prisoners.  More importantly, people of faith are called to show compassion, mercy, and forgiveness even to those who harm us.  That is real corrections.  That’s what’s lacking in the current debate in Richmond.

Dear Anonymous

I received a print copy of your 10/20 response to a recent blog about a “typical” week here.  I’ve been busy teaching my own class (yes, they’ve given me some independence to get guys ready for the GED!) and thinking about the election, but your comments deserve a response.

First, I appreciate you reading my blog.  When I started it two and a half years ago, my goal was to connect – in some way – with the outside world.  Too often, prison – with its security apparatus and “scarlet letter” understanding that “bad people are behind the fence” – isolates and alienates those incarcerated.  Simply put, we forget what its like out there.  Twenty-four seven we are watched and cared for.  We lose connection with decision making and those things that should matter in your daily life.

Compounding that, most people locked up come from less than desirable lives.  Drug and alcohol abuse, broken homes, poverty, lack of education, lack of stable employment, the list of social ills that most of the incarcerated have lived through is enough to teach graduate level sociology.  And I don’t say that to make excuses for people’s decisions. But, until we as a nation have the collective will to – as the words of the U.S. Constitution so eloquently state it, “provide for the general welfare” – tackle the manifest despair in poor, broken families, we will fail as a nation.  That’s not a Republican or Democrat idea.  If anything, it’s part of my faith journey.  “Am I my brother’s keeper?”  After four and a half years in here, the answer is a heartfelt “yes”.

As for your boyfriend not “sharing” the world in here, I understand that and I hope you do to.  I’ve noted and told self described “tough guys” in here that they aren’t so tough.  Many men refuse to admit they’re scared, or lonely, or just tired and ready to quit.  In here, that is a sign of weakness.  And too often weakness will get you in trouble.  I have something that counters the toughest.  From the day I was arrested inmates knew I’ been a lawyer, knew I had multiple degrees.  Knowledge, education trumps all the rest.  They fear that their ignorance will be exposed.

Your boyfriend keeps you from the “real” prison because, frankly, it’s not pretty.  For most, it is nothing but a waste of time and money.  And sometimes inmates behave in ways they know are wrong.  Getting by, getting along, sometimes is the best approach.

James Lee Burke is one of my favorite American authors.  He understands broken men better than many.  In one novel his protagonist said “the bravest and most loyal and loving people in the world seldom have heroic physical characteristics or the aura of saints.”

I love those words.  They remind me that you can be decent even in a depressed place like this, and love, friendship and loyalty can survive even prison.  I know that in my own life.  I am blessed to have a wonderful group of friends “outside” who have loved and upheld me in the worst of days.

As for your generous comments about my ex, I have a certain sad ambivalence about my divorce.  At some point in this past four and a half years, I had my “Lt. Dan” moment.  I yelled at God and demanded to know why, why was my punishment worse than my sin?  And it hit me.  God is sovereign.  He knows more than I ever will.  And if I truly have faith I have to accept the divorce, the rejection, the loss, as part of His plan to make me to be what He sees.

I hurt, I ache over the loss.  Fact is, I will always love her.  But, it’s OK.  In this – as in every part of this journey I realize I’m not alone and there are amazing lessons – and stories – for me.

Keep reading.  Keep the faith.  And, thanks for your comments.

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.

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.

God Bless Justice Stevens

I have a friend in here – “Cali” (from Los Angeles) who I’ve been working with the past few months. Cali is three years into a twenty-six year sentence. You would expect that to receive that many years Cali must have murdered someone in cold blood or abused and violated children. If you thought that, you’d be wrong. Cali received that extremely harsh sentence for (1) intent to distribute marijuana, and (2) conspiracy to distribute.



He and a co-defendant were staying at a hotel near Virginia Beach in two rooms reserved by a local friend. The rooms were at opposite ends of the hall. In one room (the co-defendant’s) twelve pounds of weed were found. In Cali’s room $200,000 in cash.


I could write a legal brief on the problems with Cali’s prosecution (in fact, I did): the prosecution’s star witness was the hotel manager, a woman who was an admitted drug user and was paid a percentage of the cash taken from Cali’s room (under drug forfeiture statutes); the false statements contained in the police request for issuance of a search warrant, or the fact that no evidence was introduced that the cash in Cali’s possession came from drug sales (in fact, there was no evidence of any drug sales). For my purposes here, I’ll assume everything the police did was “by the book”.


But, was justice served? Cali’s co-defendant took a plea and got, hold on, three years. He’s already out. Cali on the other hand, has twenty-three more years to go for the exact same charges.


My experience in meeting guys like Cali in here has awakened me to a stark reality. For a country that professes to believe “in justice for all”, we fall terribly short of the mark. That’s where Justice John Paul Stevens comes in.


The 92 year old Stevens recently retired from service as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court ending a tenure as the third longest serving Justice in history. Justice Stevens, a moderate Republican appointed by President Ford soon found himself relegated to being a leading dissenter as the court swung even more to the right.


Stevens believed in “justice for all”. His life was built around that concept and for good reason. Stevens was raised in a prosperous Chicago family. His father built the largest hotel in the city. When Stevens was twelve, his father was arrested and convicted of embezzlement. Eventually his father’s conviction was overturned on appeal.


“I knew my father was a good man. I also knew, even at that age that the system could be wrong.” It was at that point Stevens decided he wanted to be a judge to guarantee justice was done.


Stevens has taken some very unpopular positions in cases involving the accused, especially in post 9/11 America where the general consensus in society has become that security from terrorists is more important than the rule of the law.


In Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, he argued that terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay were held in U.S. custody on U.S. soil and, therefore, guaranteed minimal constitutional protection. In Padilla v. U.S., he argued that Padilla – a United States citizen arrested on terrorism allegations and detained in a military brig for four years without access to courts or lawyers and without formal charges being brought, had his fundamental 4th, 5th, 6th and 14th amendment rights violated.


Even for those accused of being terrorists, without the guarantee of constitutional protection, he argued, this nation could too easily slip into “rule by tyrants”. That is a very powerful, and courageous, and lonely stand for anyone in this age of fear.


I’ve lost my freedom. I’ve seen the power of the state used personally. Conspiracy theories run rampant in prisons. If you want to understand why, just look honestly at the criminal justice system. The government has a virtually unlimited budget to prosecute. In its quest to close crime investigations (notice I didn’t say “solve crimes and bring justice”); the government will make deals, use false evidence, lie, cheat, or steal its way to a conviction. Don’t believe me? Look at the number of convictions that are set aside each year for police or prosecutorial misconduct.


The system is overwhelmed. And, because the system has a human face, it is subject to the prejudices and personality ups and downs of the judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys. Fact is, most defendants don’t create a favorable impression. They’re paraded on TV or in the paper when arrested and the general perception is “they must be guilty or the police wouldn’t be after them”.


But, that perception is exactly opposite what our system is founded on. The founding fathers knew the dangers inherent in a government able to convict on a whim. They understood that the most fundamental, God given right of all, was the right to be free. Depriving someone of their personal freedom was recognized as tyranny. The safeguards to shield an individual from the power of the state were deep and significant.


Yet, somehow middle America has forgotten that. Somehow “law abiding” citizens believe those “technicalities” are just there to protect the criminals. They couldn’t be further from the truth.


Guys like Cali come into this soul breaking, meat grinder each and every day. Some are innocent, others guilty yet the punishment way too severe. For the vast majority of “good citizens” it doesn’t matter. Thank God for the courageous few, like Justice Stevens, who understand justice and freedom are too precious to be pushed aside by a society convinced that safety and security are just one prison, one conviction, from reality, those lone voices who remind us over and over there is no safe haven, no perfectly secure place without justice and freedom.


Thank you Justice Stevens for your courage, your compassion, your sense of justice.