Incarceration Nation

CNN’s Fareed Zakaria recently revealed in a Time magazine column what those of us inside already know – America is now “Incarceration Nation”.  America, “land of the free” and “home of the brave” has over 6 million people under “correctional supervision”.  That’s more people than Stalin held in the Soviet Union’s infamous gulag system.

There are many reasons for this, some benign, some well-intentioned, too many the result of political myopia.  But, as Zakaria noted, the worst of the American political system can be seen in the growth of the prison-industrial complex.  “Tough on crime” politicians – in Virginia it’s been “abolish parole”/longer sentencing politicians – helped fuel the money trail.  “Many state prisons are now run by private companies that have powerful lobbyists in state capitals . . . Partly as a result; the money states spend on prisons has risen at six times the rate of spending on higher education in the last 20 years.”

Governor McDonnell touted relief for Virginia families facing ever increasing tuition demands from the Commonwealth’s university system.  He gave higher education lip service while turning a blind eye to the bloated, badly mismanaged bureaucracy that is Virginia’s Department of Corrections.  Thirteen thousand employees, almost 40,000 inmates, over $1 billion a year to maintain a system that houses a majority of those inmates in level 1 or 2 facilities, all the while the recidivism rate remains flat and not one dollar of state money goes to the very program that reduces recidivism:  college education. 

Like his predecessors, Governor McDonnell talks a good game; most snake oil salesmen do.  But, Virginia needs leadership.  And, leadership means it’s time to change the way things are done.

In a May 2011 release, the Institute for Higher Education Policy advised that the single most effective determiner to recidivism was an inmate earning a college degree.  No prison program has a more lasting effect in breaking the cycle of recidivism than college.  Ironically, forty-three states participated in the study.  Virginia chose not to.

As I read the Institute’s findings and reflected on my own experience in here working with the college students, I understood how right, how easy, it is.  Give an inmate an education and you give them hope and skills to make it on the outside. 

So why does Governor McDonnell refuse to spend even one dollar on the college program here, a program internationally recognized twice in the last month?  Why is the Governor willing to spend millions on a software program that is easily manipulated (questions seek to determine remorse and empathy levels) to identify “recidivism risk” rather than any money on the one identifiable method of eliminating recidivism?

Perhaps things will change.  The founder of Governor McDonnell’s law school, Regents University, recently came out in favor of prison reform and dramatic reductions in America’s incarceration levels.  Rev. Pat Robertson joins a growing list of Republicans and Conservatives who are calling for drastic changes in America’s love affair with corrections.  The leaders in that movement, RightOnCrime.org released new polling data from the Pew Center which showed 84 percent of respondents agreed that tax dollars could be shifted from prisons to community corrections alternatives for non-violent, low risk inmates.  Significantly, 77% of responding Republicans and 85% of independents agreed.

Perhaps change is coming to America’s, to Virginia’s, love affair with prison.  Each day I pray that today is that day.

Madoff, Mandatory, Mandela and the Magi

Bernie Madoff – convicted con man currently serving a 150 year federal prison sentence for the theft and loss of billions – received some devastating news this week. His elder son, Mark, estranged from him since his arrest, committed suicide the other day. Mark took his own life while his two year old son napped in an adjoining room. His death was staged on the second anniversary of Bernie Madoff’s arrest.



It was a tragic ending to a family drama that has played out on the pages of business journals, daily papers, and celebrity rags. Mark, as I noted, was estranged from his father. He was a party to numerous lawsuits by the Madoff trustee seeking to recover part of the billions lost in Bernie’s scheme. He was also the subject of an ongoing federal criminal probe into his involvement in the Madoff con.


Mark Madoff always professed his innocence, always said he knew nothing of his father’s wrongdoing. He couldn’t forgive his father for destroying his career, his future. He couldn’t forgive his mother for standing by his father. “That’s what you do when you love someone. That’s what my vow means”, she told him.


Mark told anyone that would listen that he was innocent. “My dad lied and betrayed me as well,” was his common refrain.


Yet, people talk. It’s painful and embarrassing to be the fodder of community gossip. It’s stressful to see your name in the paper and have every purchase you ever made, every decision you ever took, scrutinized. Over and over Mark heard “you were paid over $400 million working for your dad. You really think you were that good an investment counselor?”


I feel for the Madoff family. In many ways, my own circumstances parallel theirs. Almost every person who hears my story begins with the same question “How can she [my ex] claim she didn’t know? She sure enjoyed it while it was going on.” I tell everyone that will ask she knew nothing. It doesn’t matter. What she knew – or suspected – is between her and her conscience. But, people whisper and she couldn’t handle the public evaluation. So unlike Mrs. Madoff, she fled.


I used to worry a great deal about what other people thought. I was raised by parents – a mother especially – who obsessed on what other people thought of my actions. After my arrest, every time I appeared in court an article showed up in the paper. Within days of the article, a “love” letter arrived from my then wife – “you a—hole. People are talking about us . . . .”


Here’s what I learned. People love to talk a whole lot about other’s misfortunes. We’re somehow wired to feel better about ourselves when other folks’ indiscretions come out. Perhaps that’s why so much time is spent in the New Testament warning believers’ gossiping is a sin.


I learned through my own experience not to give a damn about what other people think. We all screw up. Even my ex, who I still love dearly, needs to face the fact she isn’t perfect. Same goes for my sons. They are wonderful, strong, loving boys, but, it’s time they “nut up”. At the end of the day, what my ex and sons need to learn, what Mark Madoff couldn’t quite grasp, is it doesn’t matter what they say or write about you. What does matter is we all screw up and we all need those people, who in good times claim to love us, to love us when the world seems out of control.


It’s not about being right and well regarded. It is about love and forgiveness.
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There are approximately 8,000 inmates in Virginia still covered under the “old law” (pre – 1995 when parole was abolished). Each year these guys come up for a parole hearing. That is really a misnomer. There is no “hearing”. Guys are called into the lead counselor’s office and sit in front of a TV. On the screen, a young woman with her face buried in a laptop, confirms the name and DOC number, then asks four or five silly repetitive questions:


“You’re still in here on a first degree murder charge?”


“You were rejected for parole last year?”


Approximately two weeks later, a letter arrives from the board. In all but 2% of the cases the letter reads “denied”. The reason: “severity of crime”. There was no hearing. The parole examiner (the pretty young bureaucrat with the laptop) sent email summaries of the cases to board members. No “blood and flesh” face to face with the inmate, just electronic summaries and, in most cases, denial.


Prior to parole being abolished an inmate in Virginia made early parole in about 50% of the cases. Today, parole cases almost always have to wait for their mandatory date.


How does it work? Take my fifteen year sentence. Had I been “parole eligible” I would have had a parole hearing after two years. Even if I was rejected, odds were better than 50-50 I’d be out at my next anniversary. With earned good time credits applied (30 days good time for 30 days served) my mandatory release would occur after less than eight years.


There has been a lawsuit going on in federal court over Virginia’s parole board. The inmates lost the initial battle but an appeal is underway. The case focus revolves around the argument that the board denies parole candidates their due process rights by the lack of hearing and relying on rubber stamped grounds (“severity of crime”).


A few guys make parole every year, but they aren’t “violent” inmates. DC has done 38 years. He has 5 more before he mandatories on his murder 1 sentence; Black’s done 16 years. Three to go to mandatory on his murder sentence. Tyrone: 30 in, 7 to go on his armed robbery sentence. Powers: 14 in, 14 to go on his murder 1 sentence. Malik: 23 in, 4 to go. The list of guys I know who can’t get out early because of the severity of their crimes goes on.


Here’s a question to ponder: If all these guys committed crimes so serious that they can’t be released early, what are they doing at a low custody corrections center? Each one of the men I mentioned deserves another chance. They deserve parole.
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Nelson Mandela, as I’ve written before, is an amazing man. He survived over 26 years in South African prisons. He was no saint, he’ll tell you that. He was a serial adulterer, fathering numerous children out of wedlock. He committed and supported acts of violence against the apartheid regime in South Africa.


Yet, this man maintained his dignity throughout his imprisonment. He did not become an icon, a revered hero, for his actions before his arrest. He became so by the example he set in challenging apartheid from his cell. He held strong, he endured, he overcame, he defeated the prison.


For many of the men I’ve met in here Mandela is living proof that you can never be broken by prison if you keep your mind free.


Time Magazine got it wrong with its choice for “Man of the Year”. In the hearts and minds of prisoners around the world, Nelson Mandela set the example for properly enduring prison. As long as I remain behind these fences, he will always be my man of the year.
____________________________________________________________________________________As you enjoy your holidays, remember that the Magi found the light of the world in a broken down barn. He didn’t come into the world in wealth and power, but in poverty and humble origins.


And the word was spread by outcasts and nonconformists, most of whom ended up in prison and executed. The good, decent, law abiding society rejected Him. It was the prostitutes, the possessed, the lepers and the tax collectors that flocked to Him.


The Magi went to find the new King, but it wasn’t as the folks in power expected. He came for the broken, the troubled, the oppressed, the law breakers. He brought salvation, forgiveness, redemption and hope to those in dire need. That may be a boring message when you think you have everything, when you think you’re “livin’ the good life”. But, for a guy in prison, it’s the most amazing liberating message ever received.


John 1: 1-14. Merry Christmas!