Medical Update

THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN IN JANUARY, 2015.

 

            Virginia DOC recently settled the pending class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of the 1200 female inmates at Fluvanna Correctional Center. The lawsuit alleged that the women were receiving inadequate medical care. A court appointed monitor will be named to reform health care services at the facility and VDOC has agreed to revise department policies regarding health care.

            At the same time, the department faces a $45 million shortfall in inmate healthcare through next year. DOC had contracted with Corizon (a “for-profit” prison medical provider) to manage medical care in 17 facilities, but Corizon withdrew mid-contract because it found it could not meet its profit goal and fulfill its contract obligations. Another “for-profit” medical corporation – Armor – has temporarily taken over medical care in those 17 prisons which has led to a further $14.4 million shortfall in the DOC medical budget this year.

            Finally, DOC acknowledged that there are 23 active hepatitis C patients who can benefit from the newest drug treatment protocol (that number will go to 50 next year) however, only $750,000 was budgeted – each 12 week treatment costs $84,000 per person – creating another budget deficit.

            “DOC” could be an acronym for “draining our state coffers.” What a continuing waste of money … and lives. Isn’t it time for change?

 

 

The Letters

 THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN IN JANUARY, 2015.

 

            The news reported extensively on the letters, so many letters addressing the goodness, the decency, of the man. There were over four hundred letters submitted and they all addressed the same issue: what a terrible waste of a life it would be to send this man to prison. “Déjà vu,” I thought. I’d been there when friends and community and church leaders stood by me and urged my sentencing judge to show mercy. Those people, those letters came back to me as the continuing saga of former Governor McDonnell’s pending sentencing approaches.

            Does community support matter? I’m not sure. In my case, the judge made short work of my “support.” He acknowledged I had done much good. But, he said those good works couldn’t overcome my breach of trust. In the same way, those hundreds of letters urging mercy and leniency for Mr. McDonnell focus on all the good he has done throughout his career. The letters ask the court to “weigh” the good versus the wrong. And, just like my supporters, they seek to explain the wrong as “out of character.”

            I remember spending many nights alone in my cell at the jail defending myself and life record with God. I had reasons for doing what I did, I would whisper over and over. I always tried to help people; I worked for the church, for the community. I gave all I had to my family; I was a good friend. Over and over though I’d come back to the same conclusion I’d paraphrased from a Dylan song: “All the good that you do can never buy back your soul.”

            I am, I must confess, conflicted about Robert McDonnell. He was a party to the shame that is Virginia’s corrections apparatus. As a prosecutor, he ensured that many of the men I’ve met who lacked the intellect or financial wherewithal to challenge a prosecution ended up behind bars. And, as I’ve written before, most sent to prison deserve neither the length of sentence nor treatment they receive. Prison is a false solution to too many societal failures.

            McDonnell was a party to the lie that “lock em up and throw away the key” was the cure-all to the epidemic of crime (mostly drug crime) that swept poor, inner city neighborhoods in the ‘80s and ‘90s. He supported abolishing parole. And, all his positions made him a darling in the surging Republican party of that same era. That wave led McDonnell to first being elected Virginia’s Attorney General and later to the Governorship.

            Can the “good” outweigh the “bad?” The letters, the support, tells you it should. And you know, I’m not that different from the Governor. There was a time – years ago – before kids, and marital issues, and stupid, reckless decisions about money, that I harbored dreams of political office. I was bright, energetic, and “good.” And, I “knew” crime needed to be punished. Somehow, my views changed when I ended up on this side of the fence. “A liberal is a conservative who’s been arrested.” I get that.

            Justice doesn’t reside in creating a tally sheet with “5” good things neutralizing “1” bad. No, our actions stand on their own. All those letters can’t change the fact that Governor McDonnell broke the law.

            What then are their value? For me they were, they are a reminder that at my core I am more than what the sentencing order shows. They remind me to hold my head up and believe that there is something beyond this. They also remind me that even in my worst moments I mattered to those around me.

            In a prior blog, I wrote that I believed Mr. McDonnell deserved mercy and that no societal benefit can be derived from his incarceration. Like me, his punishment is felt daily in the heartache over his family turmoil and the hurt he caused those who care about him. Mr. McDonnell can still do much good. Don’t waste his talents in the cesspool that is prison.

            Perhaps the letters will remind him of who he truly is and what he really cares about. And perhaps those currently in power Richmond will use his situation as a wakeup call to release so very many of us who languish in here while trying the best we can to make a difference.

            If you ever want to be humbled, have a lawyer ask your friends to write a letter supporting leniency in sentencing. It will change your heart forever. I hope the former Governor has figured that out.

 

Up in Smoke

 

THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN IN JANUARY, 2015.

 

            They locked another college student up the other day – “Leo,” a short guy who’s been down much too long – almost fifteen years (with a one year break in there) with nine more to go. “Dirty Urine” was the reason. He – and another guy named “Lefty” – were packed up New Year’s Eve. And, they’re guilty; they know it; the investigators know it; everyone in the building knows it. They were part of the regular group of ten to twelve guys going out in a pack, every day at the same time, huddled together – or worse, hanging out around the three port-o-johns on the rec yard.

            They get busted – no brainer for the investigators – and rumors fly that there’s a “rat” in the building. It’s always a “snitch,” has to be, they’ll tell you. You think you can get away with it, it’s all well-planned, you know what you’re doing, and just like that it goes up in smoke.

            I have no doubt there are snitches in the building. There are some guys who are too comfortable with the officers and it borders on fraternizing. There are guys who love stealing “private” moments in the building vestibule with a particular female officer; or, they stop the CO at their cut and laugh and joke for ten, fifteen minutes. They forget why the CO is on the floor; worse, the CO who feigns professionalism – and yet DOC may be the most unprofessional uniformed group in state employment – likewise gets too cozy with the inmate. It’s toxic; it’s potentially dangerous; it always causes trouble.

            And these guys talk and they say things about others that they shouldn’t. Almost every one of those guys is slow – by slow I mean not bright. Worse, they lack connection with family or friends outside; they lack connection with the “real” world. They substitute communication with those outside for phony relationships with those in charge.

            Ironically, they aren’t the snitches. Don’t get me wrong, they tell. No, snitching is done more subtlety. It’s done with anonymous “notes.” Scores are settled. Want to get even? Drop a note. There is a constant undercurrent of suspicion and accusation inside the fence. “He’s a snitch,” is almost always followed by a loud, obscene, denial from the targeted. Snitching – or the paranoia generated by the thought of a rat in your midst – creates tension and stress.

            Back to the lock up. So, the guys get busted and talk immediately centers on “who told.” Small groups gather around the dorm trying to figure out who fingered “Leo.” “Someone had to tell,” becomes the mantra. After all, they “piss tested” every user not once, but twice, in a week’s time. I sit back and watch with bemused thought. Like “Pogo” said, “we have met the enemy, but he is us.”

            We are not good at doing wrong. Ten guys who go outside, together, and huddle around each other will always draw the attention of the tower. Smoke in the bathroom and the aroma heads toward the doors. You don’t need a snitch to tell you who’s using. All you need to do is look.

            Before he was locked up “Leo” came to talk to me. “If they get me will I be let back in school?” I saw fear in his face. For most of his life, “Leo” had let his mom down. He was in and out of trouble with the law; there was drug use and a short prison sentence in his teens; released, he gets back on drugs and commits robbery and now is sentenced to real time – years, decades, not months. His mom was always there.

            He started college and appeared – anyway – to be “getting right.” He made A’s in all his classes. In a presentation in class he spoke about “bad thinking” and the resulting damage it caused. Then, drugs became too easy to get in here – weed, coke, heroin, pills – and he started smoking. And, all that work, all that “growth” and “change” went up in smoke.

            He says he’s quitting school. “I don’t want to be living with snitches,” he told a guy while they were taking him out. Other “smokers” parroted his words. “I’m not going to college with a bunch of rats.” I shake my head. Short-sighted thinking, bad self-analysis of what matters, these are the trademarks of most people behind bars: misevaluation of the risks and the consequences, misjudgment of long-term prospects. Is smoking a little weed more important that getting your education? So you quit school and move to another building – just like this one with the same caliber of men whose character is already suspect – and you think you can get high without repercussions and still leave prison with opportunities for decent  work? Yeah, you’re smoking something alright. You’ve let reality go up in smoke.

            What will “Leo” do? My gut tells me he’ll be back. First time dirty urine gets you ten, maybe fifteen days. He won’t want to call home and say “Mom, I screwed up again. I quit school because I got caught getting high.” No, he’ll come back. The other guys? I’m not so sure. Inmates are known to do stupid things, just look at me.

            Up in smoke. Prisons claim they are in the business of rehabbing errant citizens. Most of us will leave this place (over 90% of Virginia’s incarcerated are released), but as I watch men repeat the same short-sighted thinking that put them here, I wonder, will it ever change? Will they ever change?

            Snitches cause tension. But, bad-thinking, impulsive, short-sighted behavior is what keeps places like this full, and dreams and decent lives go on … up in smoke.

 

 

Christmas ’14 Part 2 Meeting Ximena

THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN IN DECEMBER, 2014.

 

            I have weird experiences in here with my writing. Almost everyone – it seems – knows I write. I get asked almost daily – “What are you writing this week?” Or “Is this going in a blog?” I’m constantly amazed by people coming across my ramblings. So, I’m sitting around the other day and a guy asks me, “Why do you write about all this stuff?” Good question. I thought about that a little while. Why do I write about all this stuff? Maybe, I think, something I write will make a difference to someone. They’ll pause for a moment and say, “He may have a point,” or “I’ve felt that same way.” That’s my noble rationale for writing. The less noble reason is I want to write a story that will lead me to meet Ximena.

            Writing nobly. I was walking back from chow one night when a young guy, new to the compound, stopped me. He very politely asked, “You’re Larry and you have a blog?” When I said yes, he told me I helped his mom and wife understand what this “really was.” Funny thing is, I get that almost weekly from guys who have family – or friends who stumble across my site and stop for a moment, read, and get what’s going on.

            There’s a song by Sara Bareilles, “Brave” that goes in part,

            “You can turn a phrase into a weapon or a drug

            Or you can start speaking up …

            Fallin for the fear

            Disappearing, bowing down to the mighty

            Don’t run, stop holding your tongue

            Maybe there’s a way out of the cage you live in

            Maybe one of these days you can let the light in

            Honestly, I want to see you be brave.”

            I write – a lot – because I think I have perspective now. As I told two friends who visited the other day, this past six and a half years have exposed me to a lot I never thought existed. There are a great number of folks who live on the fringe of society. For them, the deck is stacked. They are disrespected, disregarded, and America seems disinterested in their well-being.

            I didn’t want to think color, religion, or you financial status mattered. I smugly held to the notion that all are equal before the law. They aren’t. Ours is a fragile experiment in governance and we as a people fail more often than we care to admit. I found myself thinking about rap artist Macklemore’s song “Same Love,” addressing prejudice aimed at gays.

            “America the brave still fears what we don’t know.

            God loves all his children is somehow forgotten,

            While we paraphrase His book that’s been around 3500 years …

            I learned in church if you preach hate in the service,

            Those words aren’t anointed.”

            I write because I think honesty requires it. For too long I wasn’t honest, about a great number of things. Then I found myself in a foreign environment, lost, confused, broken. Honesty came naturally at that point. There’s a lot wrong with all this in here. There are more than a few who deserve better, who need compassion and help, not punishment. There is also a lot of evil and ignorance and just plain stupid behavior. So I write because in my heart I believe I have a story to tell. The people, the stories are fascinating.

1. Gay Tony. He sits to pee and sashays around the building like he’s in a Lana Turner movie. When he first moved in he said, “I just love the way you talk Larry, so worldly and polite.”
2. There are “Vikings,” guys who think showering and laundry are optional. You watch them use the bathroom and exit without a bar of soap coming near their hands. And, you finally break down and say, “Look, you need to get in the water and wash your ass!” You learn guys live in here like they live outside; there are some filthy men living out there!
3. You see layer upon layer of DOC “counselors” who do no counseling and in fact, cause more harm than good. They put inforce stupid rules to “modify” behavior – they only piss guys off. “Evidence Based programs” – that’s the catch word for re-entry programming and it’s nothing but inane jargon created to keep people employed.
4. Drug use is rampant. God knows how much is spent on “piss” testing. Weed, coke, heroin – it’s all here in abundance. And, somehow guys have figured out how to beat the test. The investigators rely on “rats” dropping “notes” on “enemies.” Want to hear something funny? Most of the “informants” the investigators rely on are dirtier than who they rat out.
5. So, four guys in our building – all who are walking in and out the port-o-johns on the rec yard far too often – get tested. They “conclude” someone dropped a “note” on them. As I said earlier, guys are plain dumb. Anyone can tell they’re up to something. “You know Larry, this should be expected in here. This is prison.” I disagreed. You learn who you really are in your worst moments. You don’t have to be a user/an addict/ a scumbag in here; it’s way too easy to be one out there.
6. The factory guys. Sure, they make fifty-five to eighty-five cents an hour making furniture that is sold at exorbitant prices to state agencies who could buy the same stuff on the open market at lower cost. That’s Virginia’s “correctional enterprises” program: slave wages plus captive buyers paying exorbitant prices.

Yes, that’s life around here. It gets discouraging sometimes, ok, most times. Then, I think about Dr. Ken Brantley. He was in Africa, a doctor serving with the Christian aid group “Samaritan’s Purse.” Brantley contracted Ebola. He returned to America and was treated with experimental drugs. And he survived.

            “I still have the same flaws I did before, but whenever we go through a devastating experience like what I’ve been through, it is an incredible opportunity for redemption or something. We can say, ‘How can I be better now because of what I’ve been through?’ To not do that is kind of a shame.”

            Dr. Brantley understands redemption. Perhaps, just perhaps, that explains why I keep writing. You screw up, you throw it all away and you try and get beyond the regret that gnaws at your very being. You realize you can’t change the past, but maybe you can affect the present and improve the future. So noble. But, there’s “Ximena.”

            My buddy, O, has been trying to teach me Spanish for more than a year and I must confess, I’m miserable at it. I recognize a fair number of words, can read it and create grammatically correct sentences. But translating it and speaking? Let’s just say you wouldn’t want me asking anyone in Honduras for directions!

            He did get me watching Univision which is where I found “Ximena.” Ximena – a former “Miss Columbia” in the “Miss Universe” pageant is a mid-thirties “weather girl” on Univision’s morning show. Univision is to beautiful women what Omaha is to steaks. Every show is cast full of gorgeous women. No matter how bad the news is in the world, you smile watching Univision.

            So I decided – I told the guys – that I’ll write the great American novel so that I can get invited to Univision’s morning show and meet Ximena. Hey, it’s a goal, maybe not a noble goal but a goal nonetheless.

            Christmas 2014; seventh one inside. And it’s Ok. There are days I still wonder when all this will end; there are days when I feel like I am more alone than I thought possible. But then, then there are those days when I know I matter, and this matters; days when I laugh more than I ever believed possible in these circumstances.

            I’ve thought about the “human” condition a lot recently. We have such an almost natural ability to do horrible things: killing kids in schools in the “warped” name of your God. We seem to kill more than we heal; we are self-centered, vindictive, and fearful. And then, in the hopelessness and darkness there is … hope. That’s Christmas, a reminder that no matter how dark things appear, there is a light, “and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” Are there any more hopeful words?

            What does all this have to do with prison? A long time ago a prophet said the following, that a day was coming when “He” would,

            “Open blind eyes,

            To bring out prisoners from the prison.”

            Everything I write, everything I experience in here is seen through that lens. It’s all about prison, though not just the ones with walls.

Merry Christmas

Christmas ’14, Part 1 – A Wonderful Life?

THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN IN DECEMBER, 2014.

 

What am I thinking about? Good question, at least that’s what I tell myself. It hit me, like most revelations I encounter, at the end of a 10K run. It was a cool, crisp fall Saturday, perfect running weather and I managed the twenty-two laps around the hard gravel track with little problem. I was in the zone, fluid, smooth, constant stride propelling me forward. I wouldn’t have noticed the six guys lifting weights until I was asked the time on lap sixteen. I didn’t even miss a breath; I switched from “lap mode” to “time” with a finger push on the Ironman watch and announced, “1:22.” The laps rolled: 2:05 pace; 7:50 miles; it was a perfect run.

The entire time out there I’m singing tunes in my mind’s eye. I’m running through “Let It Be” and “Rambling Man” and “Son of a Son of a Sailor.” There’s a whole playlist in my head and I hear it and summon it on these runs. The words are etched in my mind from years of conjuring them up when I needed just “that song, just those words” to make sense of so much senselessness in my life. I sang and I told God between mind tracks I was doing well; and, I ran. I finished, shirtless and pouring sweat even with forty-five degrees, and drank water. I began to cool down and chill quite soon. Hat and sweatshirt took care of that. Then, the thought.

“A Wonderful Life.” My favorite Jimmy Stewart movie; my favorite Christmas movie, my saving hope during that first ugly holiday away. That was all before … before the filing and the decree, before the letter telling me “I’ve met someone,” before the college graduation, the wedding, the proms, cross-country races, law school, graduation, and finally before the remarriage. “A Wonderful Life.” I mattered to her and our two boys. I mattered to family and friends. This was a short chapter in my life’s book, I told myself. And, I had hope. No matter what would happen out there, eventually it would all work out.

The run ended, the cool down lap walked, and the thoughts began. Everyone was better off since my fall. A wonderful life my ass! She was remarried, happy and in love. The boys – those two amazing lives I held seconds after entry into the world, these two breathing, flesh and blood creations who I whispered “Forever Young” to over nine years apart as they let out their first exhales – they had done remarkably without me. The older, he graduated with honors from a prestigious liberal arts college. He’d gone to law school, married his college sweetheart; there’s been law review, awards at graduation, a clerkship. The younger had become an athlete – triathlons, teaching swimming, considering Navy Seals after high school. His girlfriend was gorgeous, blonde, blue-eyed athletic. He spent his senior high school year already in college. I had left a slightly pudgy, round-faced little eleven year-old. He had grown in my absence into a man.

The new husband, the new me, he’d taken my place with “the guys,” our collection of husbands from the small band of couples who socialized. “He’s not as funny as you,” one of my buddies who dared stay in touch told me. Still, he was me – or playing me, living in “my” house, using “my” Viking gas grill, sleeping in “my” room with “my” wife … except it wasn’t … mine … anymore. None of it: the house, the beautiful – though complex – soulmate, the sons, the social club. It was all gone and it was as if it never was mine. Everything, everyone had moved past me and I had faded; not slowly over time, no, I had been wiped clear of all their lives in rapid succession. The image overwhelmed my brain. Every breath, every thought as I stood there alone on the track with the last droplets of run sweat fading on my skin, “They are all better off.”

I showered and tried to drown out the words with music. I settled on the Beatles and began to lose myself in tune after tune until “Let it Be” began. I froze. The words from Sir Paul metastasized in my cortex. “Let it be … there will be an answer … let it be … whisper words of wisdom …” Where was my Mother Mary? Where were my words of wisdom? Everything I loved, everything I had ever truly wanted, ever truly valued, was gone. And there was no regret, no comparable loss from those out there. I thought maybe that’s better, maybe that’s good, they are whole, healthy, living. In the back of my mind I heard the whispers, “You’re fooling yourself. Too easy. You never mattered, you weren’t even needed …”

            “It’s a Wonderful Life.” George Bailey delayed everything he dreamt of, everything he wanted, to stay in tiny Bedford Falls. Then the bank examiner, and forgetful Uncle Billy, and criminal charges facing him. George is on the bridge. All is lost. Even God, the Being he prayed to and said “I’m not a real spiritual man, but show me the way …” had – it seemed – abandoned him. He looked at the water below, life insurance contract in hand, and knew he was worth more dead than alive.

            I choke up every time I see Jimmy Stewart on that bridge. I choke up because I know what’s coming. Clarence, George Bailey’s guardian angel appears, and soon it all becomes clear that George’s life mattered. He meant something to more people than he ever knew. I choke up because I know – at least in Hollywood – dramatic arcs come to conclusions and there are restorations, reconciliations, happy endings. Not this day, not the way I feel. There aren’t any happy endings …

            Happy. That’s a word we throw around so nonchalantly. “I want to be happy.” What does that mean? I think of my happiest days – the day I married her; hearing heartbeats on the ultrasounds; holding healthy baby boys. Yeah, happy days … and yet distant memories. All of it replaced; all of it set aside; all of it lost. This isn’t a movie. There’s no brother “Harry,” no “Mr. Martini” coming to my aid. And, “Mary” – she’s gone. Billy Wilder, you bastard! You made me believe I matter …

            “Unto us a Son is given;

            And the government will be upon His shoulder.

            And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace …”

            It’s the next morning, still dark, and I’ve had a lousy night. It’s Advent, expectation and preparation – “God with us.” I went to sleep trying to pray, trying to be hopeful, trying to …

            And the verse from Isaiah is there before me. There is clarity in those words; they make sense. And, the voice quiets. You know, it was a good life … it still is a good life. There are expectations for the future, a good future. And I realize. I was wrong. My watch alarm goes off – chimes – and I never have it on chimes. I think of the movie and little “ZuZu” telling her father, “teacher says every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings.” She might just be right.

 

Another Closing?

THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN IN DECEMBER, 2014.

 

            The COs have been on edge the past few days. Rumors are circulating that another prison closing will be announced before Christmas. Given the age of the current facilities still in operation betting is on Buckingham or Nottoway, both level 3/4 prisons. I say “good.” The waste and mismanagement that permeates DOC is appalling. That so few know about it – or even care to understand it – is worse. Like regular German civilians who didn’t “want to know” what was going on behind the concentration camp fences, so too it seems are the vast majority of Virginians who choose to ignore the $1.2 billion annually spent to house 40,000 behind bars.

            As I’ve written repeatedly in these pages, Virginia’s prisons are run like self-contained fiefdoms. Department Operating Procedures put in place to provide uniform standards are arbitrarily enforced from facility to facility and inmate to inmate. Discipline and grievance procedures – created to provide constitutionally guaranteed due process rights, are ignored. It is virtually impossible for an inmate to prevail in a hearing where an officer has written a charge or where the facility has violated its own DOPs.

            It clearly is a tough time for DOC. A billion dollars is “real” money and probing eyes are beginning to look at how it’s spent by the prisons. And the easy answer for the director, his regional managers, and even the wardens themselves, is to cut back on the inmates: poorer food, less access to medical and programs, less rec, cutting back work hours and pay. But, those items are just small line items compared to the tens of millions spent on too many officers, counselors, and administrators who draw a check just for “watching.”

            It was reported in last week’s Washington Post that Texas’s prison reform efforts have yielded a “$3 billion savings.” Those efforts included sentence reductions, early release for nonviolent offenders, and more emphasis on community corrections. Great ideas all and yet Virginia DOC continues to ignore them and instead does the old “sweep in and close.”

            Virginia’s prison operation since the early ‘90s – when parole was abolished – has been built on a series of lies involving “tough on crime” slogans, the real cost of incarceration, and the effects these policies would have on crime rates and recidivism. Those lies are coming due and doors are being closed … and I say it’s about time.

           

 

Sentences: Beginning and Ending

 THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN IN DECEMBER, 2014.

 

            This week the last two men still here from our original Campus within Walls cohorts (group #2 who began in December of 2011) leave for home. “Mopey Joe” and “Chase” are leaving this place, this life (if you call living like this “life”) after 14 and 19 years respectively. I will miss both these men.

            “Mopey Joe.” I gave Will that name shortly after I met him in 2011. He was a “grumbler,” who reminded me of the “Winnie the Pooh” character, “Eeyore.” But, he was a decent, quiet guy who committed an armed robbery shortly before his 19^th birthday (coincidentally, the “victim” was not a choir boy himself – he too was on the police “radar.” To avoid his own legal problems, he fingered “Mopey Joe.”). “Mopey Joe” did hard time at some not so nice high level facilities.

            Chase is approaching his fiftieth birthday. As a young man in Baltimore, he was not the man he is today. He found himself on the wrong side of the law more often than he may even care to admit, but it was always “2 years here, 2 years there.” Then, in Northern Virginia, he crossed a line – a violent robbery and lock up for the next 19 years. When I first met him he walked up to me and told me, “I’m not sure I can do this college program. I never even turned on a computer.” I watched Chase learn to type; I watched him learn to write well; I watched Chase succeed… and complete our program.

            Both men leave before Christmas. And I watch as they prepare for life after this place, after this experience, and I hope and pray they do well. Prison – contrary to what politicians and judges say when they seek to justify billions in spending and millions of lives wasted – is not transformative. No one ever leaves prison better because of prison. No, you leave here transformed in spite of the filth, and insanity, and violence. Character – real character – comes out in the worst circumstances. Both of these men are decent, caring, and compassionate. That doesn’t ignore the fact that they committed wrongs which led to their incarceration. It should make you ask, did they deserve so much time?

            Both men will see their sentences end next week. Both men will begin lives anew and try to forget the worst and maybe remember those few moments of joy and friendship that somehow even arise in places like this.

            Sentences begin. For Virginia’s ex-Governor, Robert McDonnell, he sits on the cusp of his sentencing. Shortly after the new year begins he will enter the main courtroom in the Federal Court building in downtown Richmond. There, the presiding U.S. District Court Judge will hand down his sentence and McDonnell will, undoubtedly be going to prison. The U.S. Probation Office filed its “pre-sentencing” report the other day and recommended “at least ten years.” McDonnell is in purgatory right now. His old life is over. He may be going through the motions, acting as if all is as it was, but it isn’t. He knows nothing about what is coming. Until you hear that door slam shut, until you are processed in, you don’t know anything about it.

            The ex-Governor will stand there and hear the sentence handed down and he will feel more alone, more lost than ever before. And, he will wonder if he can survive it all. Can he survive prison, and loss of reputation, and loss of wealth and privilege? That is the beginning; it feels so much like the end – the end of dreams, and lifestyle, and relationships – but it is the beginning.

            Then there is “fighting Joe” Morrissey, member of the Virginia House of Delegates, lawyer – once disgraced, then restored – who accepted an “Alford” plea (Alford plea says “I’m not admitting guilt, but I know you have enough to convict me.) On 1 count of misdemeanor “contributing to the delinquency of a minor.” Morrissey was given a 6 month sentence; he’ll serve 90 days at the Henrico Jail, my “home” for a year.

            The Morrissey case points out the problems inherent in the criminal justice system. A family dispute – estranged parents – and the father notifies authorities that Morrissey is engaged in an “improper sexual relationship with his underage daughter (question: can there ever be a “proper” sexual relationship with someone underage?) Allegations of nude pictures on his cellphone (“child pornography”), underage drinking, and more come out in the press. Morrissey denies it all and vows to put up a fight.

            Both the girl (the alleged “victim”) and her mother claim nothing inappropriate occurred. The press eats it all up. After all, love him or hate him, Jim Morrissey brings ratings. Then, at the courthouse, just moments from beginning trial, the parties announced the plea. And Morrissey? He showed up at the Henrico Jail and smiling – genuinely smiling – he began his 90 day sentence.

            I like Joe Morrissey, always have. He thumbs his nose at the “civil,” the elite who rely on their status to maintain their comfortable lives. Morrissey regularly spoke out for the disenfranchised, the poor, the poorly educated, those behind bars. But, I can’t help and think that by accepting this plea he is admitting he crossed a line, a line no reasonable adult can justify.

            Morrissey will do his 90 days. His sentence is short but the repercussions to his career, his reputation, may last the remainder of his life. That is the thing with most sentences: they have beginning dates and end dates but the results may go with you.

            Two sentences end, two sentences begin and for each man their lives go forward.