Consider This

This blog was written in October, 2014. 

            I found a quote recently from Albert Einstein. He said, “Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy truth.” Al knew truth was relative. Truth, the good professor understood, doesn’t depend on your socio-economic status, color of your skin, or luck to be born “here” instead of “there.” We place so much respect in “our way” of life, “our” notions of justice and decency and being “right” all the time. And in doing so, we may miss the larger truth – the real truth.

            I was fortunate as an undergrad student to have an advisor who was a symbolic interactionist (he was also an ordained Methodist minister). I’ll never forget him saying, “Where you stand (on an issue) depends on where you sit (live economically, racially). Think police are doing a good job? Chances are you aren’t black. Einstein and my advisor were talking, to large extent, about the same thing. You have to be able to see the other guy’s perspective. Truth is universal; so is empathy.

            I love the study of history. I am fascinated by the human capacity to proceed forward, in spite of our sometime best efforts to destroy ourselves. I am awed by the seemingly ordinary man who goes forth and does the extraordinary. Joshua Chamberlain, commanding officer of a depleted Maine Regiment commands the far right flank of the Union line at Gettysburg. He and his few hundred men are all that stands between the confederate forces under General Lee and a straight path to Washington D.C. “Hold at all cost,” he is told.

            And Chamberlain, a Professor of classics at a small college, what does he know about military tactics? He knows what he must do. Exhausted and out of ammunition, his men respond when Chamberlain orders “fix bayonets” and leads them on a charge into the advancing enemy. The battle turns; the Union is saved.

            “Unthinking respect.” Every day I tell these young college students to judge what they hear on the news or read in the paper with a critical eye. What is driving the story? Obama is neither the best – nor the worst – president in this country’s history. What, I ask them, is the writer’s perspective?

            What, you may ask, does this have to do with a prison blog? A lot. I was one of those guys who knew “everything.” Republicans were always right; we were justified in whatever we did in the Middle East. Morality, justice, truth – those were “Pax Americana.” I wrapped myself in a civil Religion that told me God sang the National Anthem and 3000 dead in New York city was worse than 80,000 incinerated in Dresden, or Nagasaki.

            And a funny thing happened after my arrest. I met people who I would have crossed the street to avoid. I met black men, young and bright, who had the same dreams my son had, only their climb for those dreams was so much more difficult. There were nights I felt like Scrooge in Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol.” I would ask God “Why are you showing me these things?” All the crap I spouted about “justice” in my former arrogant days was all because I was the beneficiary of a rigged game. You know who empathized with me in those terrible days after my sentencing, after my divorce? It was those young, black kids, the gangbangers and drug users, the dregs of the American dream. They told me, “you deserve better;” they showed me compassion.

            I was befriended by a man twice tried for capital murder who faced the death penalty. That man is like an older brother to me and every day I am reminded that redemption is possible in every life. It was DC, in my worst days who reminded me what his “Pops” told him, “A real man will hold the line and do what’s right in spite of the cost.”

            “Truth.” The prison system is a failure. We, as a people, do our best when we show compassion rather than power. The Beatitudes are the real declaration of independence. “Love your enemy,” means just that. God is neither Pro-American not anti-American. He is pro-His children even as we make a mess of this world and our lives.

            This week, I wrote (as I do every month) our college newsletter. I wrote about General Ulysses S. Grant at Shiloh. His Union army was caught off guard and badly mauled. At the end of the first day of battle it appeared his line would collapse. His second in command, William Tecumseh Sherman, found the General sitting beneath a tree on the banks of the Tennessee River. “Rough fight today,” Grant said. “We’ll lick em tomorrow.” Sherman noted in his diary that Grant had the air of a man at peace. Grant gave Sherman orders for a massive counter-attack the next morning, which roared through the Confederate lines. The Union held.

            “Great suffering can change a person.” Eleanor Roosevelt said that about her husband, a man who was born of privilege and yet, his struggle with overcoming polio, the pain and difficulty with walking and standing, transformed him into a president who was prepared when the nation needed him. “The only thing to fear is fear itself.” Crazy, nonsensical words, and yet they are true.

            Consider this: truth isn’t where you sit. Truth exists in our capacity to see our commonality, to understand no one is hopeless, to do right and to remember no government has the market cornered for justice. What does that have to do with prison? Everything.

The Sign

Inside this facility – correctional center, re-entry center, prison; the word changes almost weekly with the program emphasis shifting – every building looks the same.  There are six double-sided rectangular “dormitory” buildings and, with the exception of the number stenciled dead center, you can’t tell one from the other.

That’s the way prison is.  It’s about uniformity.  Everyone dresses alike – “blues”, shirts and jeans – and everyone eventually looks alike.  Whether intended or not, prison dehumanizes you.  Your seven digit “state number” matters more than anything.  It’s ironic, isn’t it?  To stop guys from re-offending, recommitting, you have to understand their individual stories.  Instead, they’re all lumped together.  And the failure rate rolls on.

Everything looks the same.  Everything feels the same until…last Thursday.  Thursday morning a huge sign went up on the front of our building.  In burgundy letters on a pure white background, a sign, the logo of the sponsoring Virginia Community College prominently displayed in the upper left corner.  It read:

Southside Virginia Community College

Campus within Walls

Our college dorm had an identity.

The Virginia Secretary of Education is visiting our college program Monday afternoon.  She wants to see what’s going on at Lunenburg.  That’s the reaction you get from government when something actually works.  See, Virginia has contributed exactly $0 to this program.  The idea for this campus came from Southside’s President who, coincidentally, is married to our principal.  These two people have devoted their lives to educating prisoners.  And Dr. and Mrs. C, they understood a college education destroys recidivism.

Dr. C sold this idea to skeptics at DOC and in the Governor’s office.  The state provided no money, no materials, nothing.  In fact, everyday at least one officer would push back against the college idea.  I still remember the day CO Newbill, sitting in the building, heard me conduct an English review class.  He called me over, “You’re wasting your time”, he said.  “These scumbags will be back.”  Simply put, that pissed me off.

And that’s the way things went until the Community College won a Bellwether Award about two months ago.  The Bellwether is the most prestigious award granted community colleges for excellence and innovation in their programs.  Southside won a Bellwether for the “Campus within Walls” initiative.  And then, everyone wanted to jump on board.

Governor McDonnell’s office put out a press release touting the Bellwether and then conveniently tied the program into his re-entry initiative.  The community college has been swamped by community colleges in other states asking “How do we start the same program?”  And Monday, Virginia’s Secretary of Education is coming.  She’s scheduled to participate in the computer class I assist.  

After that, there will be pictures in front of the sign:  The Secretary of Education, Dr. and Mrs. C, and the college aides.  Thursday, we had photos taken of us in front of the sign with the Warden, Assistant Warden and unit manager.  Everyone, it seems, wants in on the sign.

Thursday night as I was falling asleep I was trying to figure out what it all meant.  This week marked another birthday I missed of my older son.  I haven’t heard from either of my sons in almost 3 ½ years.  And my ex?  She’s moved on to a new life.  Friends have fallen by the wayside.  In truth, without the hectic schedule of this college program, I think the loneliness and emptiness would overwhelm me.

“What does it mean, God?”  And then I remember Lunenburg wasn’t even on my list of prisons when I was at the receiving unit.  I wasn’t supposed to come here.  Yet, I did.  And two days after my arrival, I was hired as an academic aide in the school.  Thirty days later, I was given permission to start a creative writing class.  Five months later Mrs. C called me in, told me about the grant and asked me to head up the academic aides.

Was it a sign?  Albert Einstein said, “God uses coincidences to remain anonymous.”  Coincidences are nothing more than signs.  And signs matter, sometimes more than we realize. 

Revolving Door

Albert Einstein reportedly said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” I always thought Einstein was referring to my behavior. Since seeing the prison system up close, I now realize he was referring to Virginia’s corrections mentality.



This past week USA today reported on the results of a recent Pew Center Study that showed the number of inmates returning to state prisons within three years of release has remained steady for more than a decade “a strong indicator that prison systems are failing to deter criminals from re-offending.” The report further noted the lack of change “despite huge increases in prison spending….”


Virginia government officials immediately presented Virginia’s “results”: the Commonwealth’s recidivism rate was 28 percent (that’s slightly below the national average) thanks, in large part, to Virginia abolishing parole in 1995. Oh Albert, where art thou when we need you?


Virginia just proved Dr. Einstein’s quote and once again showed that “numbers don’t lie, but liars use numbers.” Yes, Virginia does have a recidivism rate below the national average. But, that rate has not changed in any statistically significant way since the abolition of parole. What has significantly changed is the rate of incarceration (Virginia now has one of the highest incarceration rates in the country), the overall number of inmates (quadrupled since parole was abolished) in DOC’s control and the cost to operate this unyielding bureaucracy (over $1.1 billion and the largest number of state employees: 13,000).


Abolishing parole, incarcerating at an abnormally high rate, warehousing inmates without adequate rehabilitative programs, has not made the public safer.


As the director of the Pew project noted, the national prisoner recidivism rate will likely remain at the same levels unless “state’s more deeply embrace programs to better prepare offenders for re-entry and reward corrections officials for finding alternatives to prison for many non-violent offenders.”


Are you listening Virginia? As I’ve written before, Governor McDonnell should be commended for placing emphasis on prisoner re-entry. But, without directing the same energy to early release, his program is doomed to fail. Virginia cannot afford the hard dollar costs necessitated by its draconian sentencing and incarceration methods. Those costs don’t even include the millions lost in tax revenues from 40,000 individuals who could be living as working, productive citizens. It doesn’t include the soft costs of children deprived of a parent, being raised in one parent or no-parent homes.


Simply put, there is no way to reduce prison costs without closing prisons and letting people go. As Marc Mauer, Executive Director of the Sentencing Project stated, “the only way you can really reduce spending is close prisons. “


This isn’t some “liberal, soft on crime” fantasy. It is fact. In 2005, Texas began implementing sentencing changes and poured money into drug treatment and probation programs. The results: the state’s incarceration rate dropped, since 2003 – there has been a 12.8 percent drop in violent crime, and the state has saved over $2 billion that was needed to build new prisons. That drastic change was spearheaded by Conservative Republican Governor Rick Perry.


Or, ask Republican Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi what he thinks. In 2008, Mississippi, with the highest incarceration rate in the country, implemented a bold initiative to allow inmates to earn significantly more good time credits toward early release. Included in that was the retroactive provision allowing all nonviolent offenders to be eligible for parole after serving just 25 percent of their sentence. Barbour, coincidentally, has been named as a possible candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.


Want to stop the revolving door of recidivism and gain significant financial savings Virginia? Urge Governor McDonnell to boldly implement early release programs as part of his re-entry initiative.


You don’t have to be an Einstein to know that’s the only solution that can succeed.