One of my favorite movies of all time is the Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels comedy “Dumb & Dumber”. In one particularly absurd scene, Lloyd (Jim Carrey) having traded away the pair’s van for a moped to save money and fuel, comes rolling down a two lane highway where he meets back up with Harry (Jeff Daniels). Lloyd explains how he traded the van straight up for the moped. Harry then utters this amazing line:
“Just when I thought you couldn’t get any dumber . . . you go out an redeem yourself!”
That movie and that quote rolled through my mind as I read this morning’s Richmond Times Dispatch editorial praising then Governor Allen for implementing no parole.
http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2011/jan/18/TDOPIN01-results-ar-780195/
The editor then cites as “facts” a number of statistics that are contrary to DOC’s own data.
What was the main reason for his “love letter” to George Allen? Virginia has a brand new, $100 million prison in Grayson County sitting empty. Ipso facto (ain’t Latin a grand language) Virginia has plenty of bed space to lock up criminals. And, he concludes, Virginia’s inmate population actually shrunk 2.8% last year.
“Dumb & Dumber” should be the name of the Times-Dispatch editorial page.
Allow me to point out the facts for the editor. I would also challenge him to get off his ass and see what’s really going on in Virginia’s prisons.
In 1995, when then Governor Allen proposed, then signed, abolition of parole, there were approximately 9,600 inmates held by DOC. In 2010, there were approximately 37,000. That is a 400% growth in prison population in fifteen years. DOC’s budget exceeds $1 billion annually. The department employs over 13,000 people, the largest state agency in Virginia.
It costs Virginians approximately $25,000 per year to house an inmate. It costs about $25 million per year to operate a prison. Want to know why the new Grayson County prison isn’t being used? It’s money. Virginia can’t afford to operate more prisons. What the editor failed to recognize is that prisons drain money from other pressing needs, like education and medical care and help for the handicapped.
No less a conservative pundit than Newt Gingrich has spoken out about the excessive incarceration rate in the U.S. As this blog previously noted in his recent Op Ed piece in the Washington Post, contrary to what the editor wrote, states with aggressive parole and liberal release actually have seen greater reductions in crime.
If Allen was such a genius, why has the recidivism rate in Virginia remained relatively constant while the number of inmates and the cost to house them has skyrocketed? Good questions to ask Mr. Editor. It’s a shame you didn’t think of it.
Let me also say a brief word about the false statement the editor makes about “available beds”. Fact: Virginia’s prisons are overcrowded. Virginia fails to comply with ACA (American Correction Association) standards for inmates per officer and living space per inmate. In the dorm I live in, two officers (one in the booth and one on the floor) are responsible for 192 inmates. The standard is one officer for every 40 dorm inmates. Instead, 96 inmates are jammed into a building made for half that many with each man having less than ten square feet of living space, rather than the required 25.
Think it doesn’t matter? Tell that to the families of inmates murdered at Nottoway, Greensville and Red Onion prisons this year. Tell it to the thousands of inmates exposed to Hepatitis C and other diseases.
I challenge the editor to read DOC’s own December 2009 “Task Force Report on Nonviolent Offenders”.
http://www.justicefellowship.org/images/AlternativesforNonViolentOffendersReportfinal_3.pdf
Better yet, get off your ass and come out here and see the Virginia prison system in action.
I challenge the editor to invite George Allen to come with him and sit down with me and listen to what’s really going on in the “corrections” system. It ain’t pretty. In fact, it’s immoral and should be seen as an embarrassment to any semi-intelligent person.
Neither the editor or Mr. Allen will take me up on my invitation. It’s far too easy to hide behind the fiction than face the facts.
Showing posts with label Greensville. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Greensville. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Thursday, September 16, 2010
At Least This Isn't California
About a week ago, a riot broke out at California’s Folsom Prison (think “the Man in Black”, Johnny Cash) on a handball court. When it was over about 250 inmates were injured or charged with fighting. California has 155,000 men and women incarcerated in a system only built to house half that many. They are currently operating under a Federal Court order to release 40,000 inmates in the next 18 months to reduce their inmate population to 137% of bed capacity [Note: the inmate lawsuit over this issue took the Federal Courts 10 years to finally order the mass release. For eight years California operated under a consent order to either release or build more prisons. Oh yeah, they have a $19 billion budget shortfall so they can’t afford to build any new prisons.]
Things are so bad with California prison medical care that “Governor Aahnold” agreed by consent order to spend $150 million immediately to improve medical care for inmates when faced with “an alarmingly high rate of deaths of inmates due to poor care and suicide”.
At least Virginia doesn’t have the problems California has. Really? Last Friday, August 27th, one inmate was stabbed to death and three others seriously injured at the level 4 Nottoway Correction Center.
At Greensville, a massive 3,000 inmate prison holding level 2 and 3 inmates, since January two inmates have been murdered and one committed suicide. And, at Red Onion prison – the Commonwealth’s Super Max facility – two inmates have been murdered – by the same inmate.
But forget that. After all, those guys are felons. They deserve what happens to them (I wonder how many people dare say that while they’re sitting in their church pews on Sunday morning). Instead, think about the cost.
According to Virginia’s State Government website, there are approximately 38,900 inmates serving time in Virginia’s prisons. That does not include another 5,000 with DOC numbers awaiting transfer to a DOC facility who are sitting in regional jails, overcrowding them. The DOC website announces “fortunately, we don’t yet have an overcrowding problem”.
I guess it depends on how you define “overcrowding”. Having bunks sitting in fire lanes must not meet DOC’s definition of overcrowding. Having 200 inmates being watched by two officers must not meet their definition either. And, I guess being so understaffed that COs at Nottoway couldn’t search for “shanks” isn’t overcrowding, at least according to DOC’s spokesman, Larry Traylor.
Still not convinced, consider the other costs. As former Lt. Governor (and now head of Prison Ministries) Mark Earley recently said: “Virginia spends more than $1.1 billion annually on its prisons”. That’s more than is spent on education or healthcare in the Commonwealth.
Then there are the legal costs. In between filing lawsuits challenging the new federal health care plan, or going after a University of Virginia Professor who conducts research on global warming for fraud, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is responsible for defending DOC in a myriad of cases.
Each year, inmates file thousands of Habeas Corpus petitions in an attempt to get their sentences reviewed. Each case requires an Assistant Attorney General (and support staff) to defend the legitimacy of the incarceration.
Each year thousands of other suits are filed by inmates over violations of constitutional rights, such as religious freedom. Injured inmates or inmates denied adequate medical care sue.
Then, there are the major lawsuits brought by or on behalf of inmates. Currently, Troutman Sanders (a major Richmond law firm) is providing counsel to eleven inmates who have been denied parole (guys locked up pre-1994 are still parole eligible).
The National Lawyer’s Guild filed suit against DOC for refusing to allow inmates to order a legal self-help book. Prison Legal News filed a similar lawsuit over censorships of their paper, a monthly compilation of cases around the country involving inmates and prisons.
On September 2nd, U.S. District Court Judge James Turk, sitting in Roanoke, found “laughable” the Attorney General’s argument in an inmate censorship suit. In that case, the inmate sued because Augusta Correction Center refused him access, under Operating Procedure 803.2, to literary classics such as James Joyce’s Ulysses, DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Nabokov’s Lolita (all three books appear on various “100 Must Read Books”). The reason for denying access to these books according to the Attorney General? Inmates read these books for the sex scenes depicted in them, then “barter” the books for goods and services.
The Judge – not a bleeding heart, a no-nonsense conservative – found the policy unconstitutional censorship. DOC has dozens of rules that are selectively enforced and/or vague and nonsensical that lead to litigation. Imagine the dollars Virginia taxpayers spend just on legal costs alone. Add that to the $1.1 billion annual budget and you start talking about “real money”.
In this case, Virginia DOC is well on the road to copying its neighbor to the west. Soon Virginians will be able to paraphrase President Kennedy’s famous words. When it comes to prisons, Virginians can say: “Ich bin ein Californian”.
Things are so bad with California prison medical care that “Governor Aahnold” agreed by consent order to spend $150 million immediately to improve medical care for inmates when faced with “an alarmingly high rate of deaths of inmates due to poor care and suicide”.
At least Virginia doesn’t have the problems California has. Really? Last Friday, August 27th, one inmate was stabbed to death and three others seriously injured at the level 4 Nottoway Correction Center.
At Greensville, a massive 3,000 inmate prison holding level 2 and 3 inmates, since January two inmates have been murdered and one committed suicide. And, at Red Onion prison – the Commonwealth’s Super Max facility – two inmates have been murdered – by the same inmate.
But forget that. After all, those guys are felons. They deserve what happens to them (I wonder how many people dare say that while they’re sitting in their church pews on Sunday morning). Instead, think about the cost.
According to Virginia’s State Government website, there are approximately 38,900 inmates serving time in Virginia’s prisons. That does not include another 5,000 with DOC numbers awaiting transfer to a DOC facility who are sitting in regional jails, overcrowding them. The DOC website announces “fortunately, we don’t yet have an overcrowding problem”.
I guess it depends on how you define “overcrowding”. Having bunks sitting in fire lanes must not meet DOC’s definition of overcrowding. Having 200 inmates being watched by two officers must not meet their definition either. And, I guess being so understaffed that COs at Nottoway couldn’t search for “shanks” isn’t overcrowding, at least according to DOC’s spokesman, Larry Traylor.
Still not convinced, consider the other costs. As former Lt. Governor (and now head of Prison Ministries) Mark Earley recently said: “Virginia spends more than $1.1 billion annually on its prisons”. That’s more than is spent on education or healthcare in the Commonwealth.
Then there are the legal costs. In between filing lawsuits challenging the new federal health care plan, or going after a University of Virginia Professor who conducts research on global warming for fraud, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is responsible for defending DOC in a myriad of cases.
Each year, inmates file thousands of Habeas Corpus petitions in an attempt to get their sentences reviewed. Each case requires an Assistant Attorney General (and support staff) to defend the legitimacy of the incarceration.
Each year thousands of other suits are filed by inmates over violations of constitutional rights, such as religious freedom. Injured inmates or inmates denied adequate medical care sue.
Then, there are the major lawsuits brought by or on behalf of inmates. Currently, Troutman Sanders (a major Richmond law firm) is providing counsel to eleven inmates who have been denied parole (guys locked up pre-1994 are still parole eligible).
The National Lawyer’s Guild filed suit against DOC for refusing to allow inmates to order a legal self-help book. Prison Legal News filed a similar lawsuit over censorships of their paper, a monthly compilation of cases around the country involving inmates and prisons.
On September 2nd, U.S. District Court Judge James Turk, sitting in Roanoke, found “laughable” the Attorney General’s argument in an inmate censorship suit. In that case, the inmate sued because Augusta Correction Center refused him access, under Operating Procedure 803.2, to literary classics such as James Joyce’s Ulysses, DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Nabokov’s Lolita (all three books appear on various “100 Must Read Books”). The reason for denying access to these books according to the Attorney General? Inmates read these books for the sex scenes depicted in them, then “barter” the books for goods and services.
The Judge – not a bleeding heart, a no-nonsense conservative – found the policy unconstitutional censorship. DOC has dozens of rules that are selectively enforced and/or vague and nonsensical that lead to litigation. Imagine the dollars Virginia taxpayers spend just on legal costs alone. Add that to the $1.1 billion annual budget and you start talking about “real money”.
In this case, Virginia DOC is well on the road to copying its neighbor to the west. Soon Virginians will be able to paraphrase President Kennedy’s famous words. When it comes to prisons, Virginians can say: “Ich bin ein Californian”.
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