Cuccinelli’s Prison Reform Op Ed

            Ken Cuccinelli, former Virginia Attorney General and GOP candidate for Governor has come out in favor of prison reform. In a June 19^th Op Ed in The Washington Post, Cuccinelli – a stalwart conservative – wrote the following:

            “In short, we must reserve our harshest and most expensive sanctions – prison – for violent and career criminals while strengthening cost-effective alternatives for lower-level, nonviolent offenders …

            With today’s sophisticated assessment tools, we can better sort offenders and match them with the levels of treatment and community supervision that offer the best chance for them to stay crime free.”

            Mr. Cuccinelli is right. It’s time for the Republicans and Democrats in Richmond to come together and reform Virginia’s broken, expensive criminal justice and corrections system. Too much money and lives are being wasted.

            Governor McAuliffe, reach across party lines and embrace Mr. Cuccinelli’s stance. Do it for the good of the Commonwealth.

           

Visitation Cluster

Ninety percent of all incarcerated persons are released. A cornerstone of DOC’s “re-entry” model is that successful reintegration of the incarcerated to their communities begins with keeping those behind bars close to family and friends. Nice words. Unfortunately as with most DOC words, they ring hollow. DOC’s new visitation procedure is – in the vernacular of those behind bards – a “cluster” f –k.

            Late last year, DOC announced a new visitor approval policy. Before, a visitor would arrive at the institution and fill out an application. Application information would be placed in the computer, a criminal background check run, and then the visitor would be admitted. Simple enough.

            But DOC decided to “centralize” the process. Beginning January 1^st, all visitors had to be preapproved by a new “visitation” office at DOC headquarters in Richmond. Visitors were told to submit applications on-line to expedite the process. The department also told applicants the following:

            “In-state residents will be approved within 30 days; out-of-state residents: please allow 90 days for approval.”

            Nice standard. Impossible standard for a poorly managed technologically backward government agency to meet. No one – I repeat – no one gets approved within the time frame set by DOC itself. As if that wasn’t bad enough, calling the visitation office in Richmond gets you either 1 voicemail (which is never returned) or 2 a curt, disrespectful state employee. Customer service is not a priority. Polite, responsive answers to inquiries don’t happen.

            The result is less visits, people turned away at the front gate. “The 30 days was just a goal, not a requirement.” That’s what one of the DOC employees told a caller. Really? Read your own document including the press release announcing the new policy.

            Want to know why things work like that in DOC? Want to know why DOC employees get away with treating members of the public so disrespectfully (a 72 year-old woman was strip-searched here two weeks ago before being given entry)? It’s because they hide behind the tired, old mantra of “keeping the public safe.”

            In any other operation, public or private, failed implementation of new programs combined with a disrespectful work force which lacks customer service skills, would lead to heads rolling. But, this isn’t any operation; this is DOC which operates under its own rules. Visitation is just another in a long line of DOC clusters.

           

75 & 97

Numbers. We’re wired for numbers. We build our lives around them. They become a part of us. We have a social security number which identifies us – even though it was never supposed to be used for that. We have PINs and memorize birthdays, anniversaries, milestones all with numbers. Our lives are remembered in numbers. If we’re old enough, we know what 11-22-63 is, the day President Kennedy was gunned down. We’ve built 9-11 into our cultural conscience.

            Numbers. My life has been about numbers. I obsessed over my undergrad class rank; my monthly pay; my won-loss record with juries. With my arrest, I learned new numbers – the Virginia statue number for embezzlement. I saw on my sentencing order (again with social security number prominently displayed) a seven-figure restitution order. I reviewed records, massive piles of checks and numbers – all numbers – to account for my taking. And, I kept lists of numbers: of monies, assets conveyed to my employer and my wife, all in the desire to make things “right.”

            I came into DOC with an “offender ID” number – six digits – already issued. Two weeks later, DOC “upgraded” to a seven-digit number system. I put the six digit aside (though I still can recite it) and memorized the seven. Guys in here know how many years, months, days they will serve. It’s all numbers.

            I thought a lot about two numbers this week and what they mean. “75” and “97,” two obscure random numbers yet they carry meaning for me. And that, I realized, is what makes a number significant: What it means to us.

            “75.” Seventy-five years ago this July 4^th Yankee great Lou Gehrig gave one of the most poignant and heartfelt speeches in American history. Gehrig, “the Iron Horse,” had to give up baseball, his career, his artistic medium, when his body inexplicably began to deteriorate and weaken. We now know Gehrig had ALS, a form of muscular dystrophy that now bears his name.

            On the 4^th of July in 1939, the still young Gehrig stood at home plate as he was feted and recognized for his baseball accomplishments. And there were so many. Baseball – a game I hold in near reverence – is built on numbers and Gehrig’s dwarfed all but a few. The crowd knew, the man they had called “the Iron Horse” who set a record for consecutive games played (a record not eclipsed until Cal Ripken more than fifty-years later), was dying.

            Gehrig did not want to speak that day. He wanted, as was his custom, to stay quietly in the back. But, at the urging of his manager, he reluctantly stepped to the microphones. He spoke of his love for the Yankees and the men he played with and then he uttered these words:

            “Some people say I’ve been given a bad break. But today I consider myself the luckiest man alive …”

            In my prior life my wife and kids would laugh each time as I watched Gary Cooper in “Pride of the Yankees,” recite those words. No matter how many times I saw it, I choked up. They were, they are, te most powerful words of courage and hope in the face of death I had ever heard.

            There have been days these past six years when I conjured up those words to keep going, keep hoping. Gehrig knew he was dying, yet in his mind’s eye he was blessed. Two years after he said those words Gehrig passed away. Baseball, however, will never let Gehrig pass. His numbers still rank him among the greatest, but his words spoken from the heart 75 years ago will live on long after every record is erased.

            “97.” He lived to the ripe old age of 97 and when he passed the other day celebrities and politicians marveled at his life. And in here, at least a dozen of us who had read his life story knew we were better men because of him.

            Louie Zamperini lived an extraordinary life by any measure. A member of the 1936 U.S. Olympic track team he was in Berlin, Hitler’s showcase event where Nazi legions sat in stunned silence as black American runner Jesse Owens took gold. After the beginning of the war he became an Army Air Corp bombardier. What made his story amazing was little known until recounted in author Laura Hillenbrand’s best seller, Unbroken.

            Zamperini’s plane crashed in the Pacific. For 47 days – a tremendous number of days by any means – he floated in the Pacific. “Somehow,” he survived. Reaching an island, he was captured by the Japanese, taken to “Execution Island” and interned in a prisoner of war camp. He was starved and beaten by one particularly sadistic guard. “Somehow,” he survived.

            After the war, he returned to Southern California a hero. But, he couldn’t escape the anger and demons that welled up inside him from his time in captivity. He couldn’t escape the guilt of surviving when all the others on his plane didn’t. He drank and watched his life spin out of control.

            And then it happened. Louie was convinced by his wife, a woman pushed to the edge by his demons, to go to a church service. A young preacher named Billy Graham was having a tent revival in Los Angeles. Louie Zamperini went and discovered he didn’t have to live in guilt and hatred. Louie Zamperini was saved.

            He found the strength and courage to return to Japan and to forgive the guards who had treated his so cruelly. He found the courage to forgive himself.

            I read Ms. Hillenbrand’s book within weeks of its release. That copy of the book went from man to man in here. As I read it, I thought of a friend of mine who in my worst days at the jail visited almost daily. I was falling apart; I hated myself; I hated what I’d done. My friend told me to stop wearing sackcloth. “Stop being so hard on yourself. Every hair on your head is numbered.”

            Every hair is numbered. Even for a balding man those words made sense. I mattered. I was alright. As I read Louie Zamperini’s story, his was a story of numbers – every hair numbered.

            There are few books I consider life changing. Mr. Zamperini’s journey described in, Unbroken, is one such book. Throughout these years I’ve thought often of him and his amazing story. It is a story of numbers – of times in track races, days lost at sea, days in captivity, and finally days knowing his hairs were numbered. “97,” an extraordinary life for an extraordinary man.

            I found myself thinking of numbers this week: my friend DC turned 61 and has spent 42 years incarcerated. My father turned 81. In three weeks I’ll be 55. In 5 weeks I will have been locked up 6 years. Numbers all around me. And then I came across 75 and 97 and I remembered some numbers really do matter.

Fraternization - Again

A few months ago, a story broke out of the Maryland Department of Corrections which caused a national stir. Eight female officers were fired for engaging in sexual relations with leaders of a notorious Baltimore street gang. These women officers, the articles alleged, carried in drugs, cellphones, and even weapons to their incarcerated boyfriends. A few had children by these men.

            Commentators searched for a logical explanation for a why a woman would jeopardize her career – and perhaps her own freedom – to engage in an illicit sexual relationship with an incarcerated violent felon. Why indeed. Fraternization – “to associate with in a friendly way” is alive and well in every prison in America. Here is no exception.

            Thursday, a chubby, plain-looking, country officer was escorted off the compound. Her “boy toy,” a child-rapist offender, was placed in the hole (for transfer this week). The officer has a husband and three small children. She lost her job with benefits. Being walked off the compound and fired for fraternization will preclude her from ever working for the state again. Her scarlet “F” is as pronounced as one worn by a felon. And, I wonder, why a mother would engage in a sexual relationship with a man doing twenty years for forcibly raping a child under age ten?

            Let me be clear, DOC makes a big deal out of “silly” fraternization. “Don’t call offenders by anything but their last name; don’t shake hands.” Fraternization should not be about being polite and respectful. It should be about crossing the line and offering inappropriate help to an offender. It’s about becoming emotionally – and/or physically – involved with an offender.

            It’s wrong; it’s dangerous (officers who become romantically involved with offenders are known to use their position as an officer to get at their boyfriend’s enemies), and it’s plain stupid. And, it keeps happening.

            Two years ago an officer was walked off the compound being caught in an office with an inmate. That inmate – a college student – was shipped elsewhere. His best friend – “L” decided to transfer as well. A few weeks ago word reached us from St. Brides (another level 2 re-entry prison). “L” married the fired officer in a prison wedding ceremony (the honeymoon will have to wait until he’s released next February!).

            Rumor has it another officer here is getting ready to fall for the same thing as country girl. The only surprising thing is, I’m no longer surprised.

The Promised Land (2)

On June 11, 1963, a reluctant young President Kennedy addressed the nation. For the second time in his administration he was forced to federalize a state’s National Guard to ensure that black students were able to enroll in universities, which were deemed “off-limits” to people of color.

            Kennedy was not a champion of civil rights at the time. His ventures into the increasingly violent white reaction to a black minister’s call for an end to “Jim Crow,” a call for equality under the law regardless of the color of one’s skin, were often politically motivated. But now, with a Southern Governor standing on the threshold of his state’s flagship university and refusing admittance to two qualified black students in defiance of a Federal court order, with fire hoses and attack dogs let loose on peaceful children (some as young as six) marching and singing, Kennedy had seen enough.

            Race, he said, was a moral issue. America cannot be the land it professes to be as long as some of its citizens are denied the American dream, denied equal citizenship because of their color. He said, “Race has no place in American life or law.”

            That night, a young black wife and her children waited for a husband and father to arrive home in Jackson, Mississippi. This man – soft spoken and well versed – was the face of the civil rights movement in his state. As his wife and children walked out the front door of their home to tell him of President Kennedy’s words a shot rang out. Medgar Evers lay dead in his driveway. His crime? He believed in “the promised land.”

            Race in America. President Kennedy was right. Until we deal with it, lay it out there and move forward, America will never get to the Promised Land. I write this blog in a moment of deep distress over what I saw in here this week among young men who are – purportedly – seeking an education and a future. As I have written so often, prison is a reflection of the society at large. The views, the prejudices, uttered in here are the same as those out there. That thought distresses me.

            A Humanities class is being taught. The subject the African-American experience. It is taught through great American literature and it is taught by a petite white woman. The class is equally divided: eight whites, eight blacks. It wasn’t intended that way; that’s just how the college student pool in here breaks down.

            From the outset of the class I heard carping from white students. “Why do I need this bullshit?” My response: Have you ever read ‘A Raisin in the Sun”? Have you ever read Richard Wright? Do you know who Langston Hughes is? Maya Angelou? Have you ever dissected Dr. King’s letter smuggled from the Birmingham Jail?

            They reluctantly agree to give the class a shot, all the while muttering code words for the “N” word: “Yams,” “Canadians.” There are dozens of words tossed around in prison that white guys use to degrade blacks without uttering the “N” word.

            So now I’m pissed. I can’t believe I’m having to justify Dr. King to a bunch of idiots – worse, idiots who profess a belief in the teachings expressed by Jesus yet they fail to see that everything Dr. King wrote and preached began with this pure statement of faith:

            “We as a people will get to the Promised Land … Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”

            Powerful, heartfelt words of faith and determination, and hope, uttered-ironically – less than 24 hours before he too was cut down by an assassin’s bullet.

            In frustration I run and wonder how professing Christians can ignore Paul’s words to the citizens of Athens (Acts 17) as he proclaimed “the God who made the world and everything in it … He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on the face of the earth.” We are so far from the Promised Land.

            I was frustrated and angry … and it got worse. For now there were the black students, members of offshoot black supremacist groups acting under color of religion: the IVOI, Moors Temple, 5%ers. They profess intellectual acumen yet they are forged and schooled in the same dearth of prejudice and ignorance I just confronted with the whites.

            “Why do you want to teach this material?” One guy asks in class. The question, at first blush, seems innocuous; but it isn’t. Moments before, I heard this same Einstein shake his head and say, “I got to listen to this European lady talk about black issues.” “European,” that’s black “supremacy” lingo for “cracker.”

            “Why do you want us to read Native Son? Why do you want us to read 12 Years a Slave?” Each question is a challenge to her. He might as well say, “What gives you the right to delve into the black experience? You aren’t black!” And I get more frustrated, pissed off, angry. “When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?”

            “I don’t know what the future holds … but I know who holds the future.” On one of the darkest days of the civil rights struggle – bombings, murders, beatings, - a fearful group of parishioners gathered in an all-black church on a sweltering day. Dr. King, from the pulpit, uttered those words and from around that church came soft murmurs of “Yes, Lord.” “The Promised Land” is so because He deems it to be so. God – not man – will deliver His people to the Promised Land.

            A story I have never shared with anyone. I was a sophomore in college living in a wild party-filled dorm across campus. In the room next to mine was a young black guy from Dayton, Ohio – Johnny D. Johnny and I shared some common interests in music, food, girls. I thought I was cool – I had a black friend.

            One night we had a party on our floor. There was way too much alcohol and weed; there were girls everywhere and we were all getting way too sloppy and out of hand. I’d spent some time with “Charlotte” a tall, gorgeous girl from Valdosta, Georgia. We were making out, getting friendly, when she saw Johnny looking our way. In her sexiest Southern drawl she told me the “N” was making her uncomfortable. I turned toward Johnny and laughing said, “he’s a harmless n-----.” … As the word came out of my mouth I had a flash of sobriety. I saw his face and what my saying that word had done. In my rush to win over some beautiful, though obviously ignorant, girl I had done something harmful.

            “Look, Johnny, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I was just trying to impress her.” He looked at me and said, “It’s ok. I’m used to it.” The truth is you never are used to that.

            I have never used that word since. I still feel guilt over saying it then. “The promised land.” Will we ever get there?

            “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Powerful words that describe the dream of America written by a slave owner from Virginia.

            “Jesus loves the little children

            All the children of the world

            Red and yellow

            Black and white

            They are precious in His sight

            Jesus loves the little children of the world.”

            Will we ever get to the Promised Land? We have to walk through the valley of fear and ignorance. In God’s eyes there is no black or white, no yellow or brown. In spite of this week’s race baiting and ignorance on both sides I still have hope. As Dr. King so eloquently put it in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, America will overcome the scourge of its racial past because,

            “The sacred heritage of our nation and the

            eternal will of God are embodied in our

            echoing demands.”