The Senator's Son

A lot of attention was directed toward State Senator Creigh Deeds as Virginia’s new Governor – Terry McAuliffe – was sworn in. In less than one week, the outgoing Governor recognized Senator Deeds return to work during his farewell “State of the Commonwealth” address. Face it; Senator Deeds presents a compelling story. It is a story, unfortunately, that is widely ignored and swept under the proverbial rug except when violence erupts. Then – and only then – do we ask “why?” Why indeed.

            As everyone knows, shortly after Thanksgiving week a 911 call was placed by a neighbor of Senator Deeds. The Senator had been discovered staggered and bleeding as he walked along a rural roadway in Bath County. Deeds had been stabbed numerous times. Police went to the Senator’s house and during a guns-drawn search, found the body of Deed’s son, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

            Within a day the public learned that the Deeds’ son had suffered from serious mental illness. Interestingly, it has not been disclosed what this actual diagnosis was. A bright, quiet kid, his mental disorder led him to leave William and Mary College and – just days before his suicide – a failed attempt by his father (Senator Deeds) to have the young man hospitalized. For another few weeks (just like after the VA Tech massacre) Virginia’s mental health apparatus was on full display. The picture was not good.

            And now, with Senator Deeds healing from his physical wounds while grieving the death of his beloved son, the politicians gather again in Richmond to kick off yet another session of the General Assembly, and they say, “Something must be done about mental health.” Please, give me a break.

            His name is Gary. Of course, it could be Thomas or Tyrone or a dozen other names. Gary is thirty-five and suffers from schizophrenia. Each day, both morning and evening, Gary takes a combination of psychotropic medications. The pills dull his senses to the point that he sleeps upwards of twenty hours a day. It’s the only way DOC has found to turn off the voices in Gary’s head. That’s right; Gary hears voices, multiple voices. The pills work most times. But, there are other times, like last week …

            So Gary’s up three days straight. Even doped up with enough crap to stun a bull moose, he’s up twenty-four straight hours for three days. He’s fidgety. “What is it?” I ask, when a friend of Gary’s asks me to write up an emergency grievance to get him to medical. “It’s the voices,” the guy tells me. “They’re talking non-stop and telling him all kinds of crazy shit.” So I file the emergency grievance and I put in it, “psychotic breakdown,” words Medical knows Gary doesn’t know, and an hour later he’s called to medical. I see him a short while after that. “How’d it go?” I ask. “Ok. I’ll see the Psych tomorrow on video conference and he’ll adjust my pills.”

            That’s right; the psychiatrist isn’t actually on site. He handles multiple prisons via “video conference.” Five minutes on camera and a new script is written. More pills prescribed. It’s economics. You’ve got over one-third of the men here on psychotropic meds. That’s the extent of DOC’s psych treatments unless you’re unlucky enough to find yourself sent to Marion – that’s the state prison for the criminally insane.

            How bad do you have to be to end up in Marion? Try this: I’m at the receiving unit, also known as “hell,” and there’s a nineteen year old kid so wacked out that every night he’d scream “help me Jesus, they’re killing me!” He’d yell like that for hours until 4:00 a.m. when he would shout like a rooster “cock-a-doodle-doo.” And, paper, bars of soap, and profanity would be unleashed against the front of his cell. That young kid was shipped to Buckingham a level 3 prison. He was crazy, not criminally insane.

            Yeah, mental health should be a priority for the state. Almost half the Virginia DOC inmate population suffers from some mental disorder or illness. Here’s the irony: Tens of thousands of Virginians suffer from a mental disease or disorder and the state uses the criminal justice system to control them. Schizophrenic? Hear voices? That’s no excuse. You break the law, you go to prison. Then, all the prisons do for your mental condition is load you up with drugs. You need mental health services in the Commonwealth? Go to jail. At least you’ll get meds.

            I’m sick of politicians and private citizens wringing their hands every time a young Mister Deeds appears on the scene. Collectively, we don’t give a shit about mental health. It’s only after the poor, sick bastard acts out that we talk about it. You want to see how much Virginia cares about mental health? Come inside a prison during “pill call” and watch the hundreds of zombies stand in line for their hit of Prozac, or Thorazine, or Seroquel, or all three.

            There’s another young Mr. Deeds out there and Virginia’s only solution right now is to let him act out then watch him kill himself or send him to prison. That’s harsh, and vulgar, and way too accurate.

 

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.

Political Courage

Much has recently been made of the impending budget battle looming in Congress. This week, in between breaking news from Libya, the news focused on budget struggles in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, New York and California. As I write this, the Virginia General Assembly is reviewing its own budget. The current legislative session is set to expire tomorrow. We live in an age where economic realities demand politicians speak the truth and show courage. Unfortunately, truth and courage are in short supply.



Consider that two relatively conservative bills were introduced in this year’s Virginia General Assembly that would have potentially changed the total sentence served by some inmates. Under Virginia’s current draconian “No parole” sentencing system, the maximum good time days an inmate can earn is 4.5 days a month, or 85% of the total imposed sentence.


One bill introduced and voted down in committee would have increased good time earning to 10 days per month for those inmates (1) exhibiting good behavior and (2) actively participating in education, vocation and rehabilitation programs. That would have decreased possible sentence length to 65% for those inmates actually trying to rehabilitate. A compromise bill increasing good time earning days to 7½ (75% of sentence length) under the same criteria also failed even as the bill’s sponsor showed no adverse budget effect, and annual prison bed savings over the next five fiscal years.


But, it is easier for politicians to talk about “keeping criminals off the streets” and wasting billions each year incarcerating more citizens with no lessening in recidivism rates and continuing cut backs in prison treatment programs.


As I wrote last week, one courageous politician may actually exist in Virginia. Republican Congressman Frank Wolf recently held the “National Summit on Justice Reinvestment and Public Safety”. I share with you some of the statements from that report:


“The number of individuals incarcerated or under supervision is high, and states generally bear excessive costs related to this population.”


“Despite the money expended, in many states the problems of incarceration and recidivism are getting worse, not better.”


Cost effective corrections policies “start with identifying those individuals likely to pose the greatest risk to public safety.”


“Policies that rely on simply building more and more prisons to address community safety concerns are not sustainable.”


As Congressman Wolf’s summit concluded, the system is broken. The public isn’t being kept safe. Recidivism isn’t decreasing (in fact the rate has remained unchanged) and costs are dramatically increasing.


There are currently 2.3 million people incarcerated. Another 5.1 million are under supervisory probation or parole. The United States leads the world in the number of people incarcerated and the rate of incarceration. We may be falling against the world in student achievement, health care, and infant mortality; but at least we’re number one in something.


One in every fourteen disciplinary dollars is spent on corrections. Only Medicaid spending has grown faster than corrections as a proportion of state spending. As U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder recently stated “we must recognize that incarceration alone does not provide the entire solution. Simply building more prisons and jails will not solve all of our problems.”


Eventually, a few honest, courageous politicians will step forward and tell the truth. Sentencing must change. Those who break the law must be held responsible. I needed to be sent to prison. I deserved incarceration for stealing. But, the punishment must be commensurate with the crime.


The prison system is collapsing under its own weight. Some enlightened Governors and Legislators are doing the right thing (South Carolina, Indiana and Mississippi, for example) and re-engineering sentencing and corrections. Governor McDonnell and DOC Director Clarke can lead the Commonwealth of Virginia toward a new view of corrections. They must show courage. For me, and thousands of other inmates who are doing their sentences properly, change can’t some soon enough.