Potpourri for the Week

Anyone familiar with “Jeopardy” knows about the catch-all category “Potpourri.” “I’ll take potpourri for a thousand, Alex.” With that in mind, here’s a potpourri of D.O.C. happenings this week.

An inmate was found dead in his cell at Powhatan. Cause of death: “apparent” heart attack. I say “apparent” because a week after his death his family still wasn’t given any details. “Privacy Issues,” DOC’s spokesman said when the local TV news reporter approached. The family and the press are demanding answers. What they’ve gotten is a copy of the department procedure for dealing with a dead convict.

Hey, people die behind bars. “If you didn’t want the worry of keeling over in prison, you shouldn’t have broken the law.” I know all that. Still, what does it tell you about the system put in place to carry out justice acting corrupt and callous?

Speaking of corruption, Lunenburg is awash in tobacco. Guys are chain smoking in every building bathroom. A library aide went to the hole when he was caught with forty – that’s right forty – cigarettes. There’s only one way that much tobacco can come on the compound and that’s through the staff. And that’s half the problem inside prison – the people paid to run the place are as dirty as the inmates.

The Justice Policy Institute has issued a scathing indictment of Virginia’s justice system. Dated this November and titled: “Virginia’s Justice System: Expensive, Ineffective, and Unfair,” the researcher notes, “Despite some recent small progress in the areas of post-incarceration re-entry … the state continues to suffer under misguided policies and practices of the past.” Here are a few notable highlights –

·       At minimum, Virginia spends nearly $3 billion on its Public Safety Office and Judiciary. $1.5 billion of that goes to operate its crowded jails and prisons.

·       Virginia has the 13^th highest incarceration rate in the county. It costs in excess of $25,000 a year to keep a person in prison. For inmates over age 50 (approximately 15% of all inmates) the costs grow four-fold because of health care costs.

·       It costs over $100,000 per year to confine a juvenile in a juvenile facility. Almost 63% of confined juveniles are on psychotropic meds. Those sent to juvenile detention have a recidivism rate (re-offending within the first twelve months of release) in excess of 75%.

·       Contrary to what politicians say, “Truth in sentencing laws” (Virginia abolished parole in 1996 and requires an offender to serve 85% of their sentence) “have no significant impact on standardized recidivism rates”.  In fact there is no correlation between increased sentence length and recidivism rates.

·       While Virginia’s crime rate has decreased significantly over the last two decades (and across the country) the number of arrests (as opposed to the rate of arrest) has only fallen 1% in the same period.

·       Virginia law contains hundreds of restrictions on convicted felons searching for work making re-entry success more difficult.

·       Over 75% of Virginia’s incarcerated have an education of high school or less (40% have no high school diploma).

The study makes specific recommendations to avoid “an escalating crisis if the state does not take steps to reassess and change its approach to crime and imprisonment.”

1.     Repeal “Truth in Sentencing” and reinstate parole.

2.     Reduce focus on drug offenses.

3.     Work to address racial disparity throughout the criminal justice system.

4.     Demand better educational resources and opportunities especially for low-income communities of color.

5.     Re-allocate juvenile justice resources and restore authority of judges to treat juveniles as juveniles (not adults).

Is anyone in Richmond listening? Virginia’s justice system is broken.

Then there’s Jasper. Jasper is 38 years old. This is his second time in prison; he has a dozen or so trips to the jail. He’s a rural, Southside white guy with a rented trailer and five kids. And, he can’t read or write. He makes crystal meth – at least until he gets caught – because it’s more economically advantageous. His lack of education excludes him from most work.

Every third period at school I work with Jasper and four other men just like him. Five men, all of whom are between 30 and 50; all of whom have children; all of whom read and write below the second grade level.

 That I work with them is in itself a surprise. I’ve never been known as a patient man. Yet, all five guys love the class. For them, it’s the first education success they’ve ever known. And, it’s been good for me. It’s too easy to miss the “other” America, the America without education, good jobs and benefits, and hope in the future.

You want to solve the “prison” problem? Figure out a way to give Jasper’s kids a better chance at the American dream.

Just a random week in DOC.