The Cost of Doing Nothing

I watched with mixed emotions as the country went through the seizures of defaulting on the national debt.  Part of me was deeply amused.  Every cable news outlet had their “breaking news” and a countdown clock to debt Armageddon.  Both parties – and the president as well – played simple, false sound bites.  The “Tea Party” pushed demagoguery to a new limit.  Ah America, “God shed His grace on thee.”  And Virginia’s Governor?  He did more creative bookkeeping than I did to land myself in prison.

Governor McDonnell touted a $500 million surplus, except, he forgot to tell people he failed to meet the payment requirements to the Virginia Retirement System.  There is no surplus.  VRS is almost $17 billion underfunded and the Commonwealth still has an IOU outstanding to VRS for the prior year’s budget debacle.  And McDonnell has the brass set to go on CNN as a “possible VP” nominee and tout Virginia’s economic well-being.

A pox on both their houses!  As “The Economist” noted in an OpEd piece on March 19, 2011: 

“…despite all the rhetoric from the tea partiers, big government is not just the fault of the self-interested bureaucrats and leftist politicians.  Conservative voters…have kept on demanding the state do more…the right has built prisons, announced wars on drugs and terror, and indulged generals, farmers, and policemen…”

What we have seen in the recent economic unraveling is that everything costs.  And the bill for America’s love affair with “tough on crime” mass incarceration policy has come due.  Governor McDonnell can lead or he can step aside.  But, the time for change is now.

As states such as Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Kentucky have realized, there are more effective and less expensive ways to handle most non-violent offenders.  These states are employing alternatives to sending someone convicted of a crime to prison.  They utilize home incarceration and day center reporting versus prison.

This isn’t a “bleeding heart liberal” approach.  Conservatives such as former Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese, drug czar William Bennett, Newt Gingrich and anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist are pushing for prison reform.

Where is Virginia in this discussion?  Not even involved.  Virginia will spend $25,000 to keep me housed in a low level facility this year and the costs continue to climb.  I am unable to pay restitution for my embezzlement while in here; I do not pay taxes; I do not help raise my youngest son.  Three years I’ve spent behind bars.  If Bob McDonnell was really the politician he claims to be, he’d look at my situation and the thousands like it.  He’d let us “do our time” outside the walls; working, making restitution, being productive citizens.

As the "Sentencing Project" reported recently, lawmakers in Kansas, Michigan, New Jersey and New York adopted significant policy changes to reduce prison populations.

“In each of these state a range of policy changes were adopted, including sentencing reforms, alternatives for ‘prison-bound’ people, reducing time served in prison, addressing parole release rates and reducing revocations”

23 states have made significant changes in the way sentences are handed out and the length of time an inmate serves – Virginia is not one of those 23.

Bob McDonnell and the Virginia General Assembly can make a difference.  $1 billion a year to house 40,000 inmates is enough reason to try.  They need to enact a real “earned good time credit” system that aggressively rewards inmates who seek to change and improve.  Early release should not just be a goal, but the mission of corrections.

Virginia can no longer afford to do nothing.  Virginia needs real solutions, not “creative” accounting.  The economic realities that showed their true colors this summer prove that government must make smart choices.  No longer can the U.S. with 5 percent of the world’s population, keep 25 percent of the world’s inmates behind bars.

Perhaps Governor McDonnell will finally get it.

Consider This

Last week the Virginia General Assembly once again failed to act on prison reform. A bill before it granting ten additional earned good time days for those inmates participating in educational, vocational or treatment programs failed in committee. Under the guise of being “tough on crime”, the legislature again failed the citizens of the Commonwealth.



Consider the following from Justice Fellowship (www.justicefellowship.org):


“We seek to change our criminal justice system at every level so that it reflects the principles of restorative justice found in the Bible . . .


Sentencing practices that rely excessively or exclusively on incarceration harm our communities and sap government funds. Prisons are appropriate for many violent offenders. However, prison is not always the best way to make us safe . . . there is only a limited and diminishing relationship between incarceration and reduced crime rates. Rather than encouraging criminals to become peaceful, productive citizens, prison culture often has the opposite effect, operating as a graduate school for crime. . .


Good time credit opportunities should be increased and truth in sentencing laws should be reformed to reduce the time an offender must be in prison before he or she is eligible for parole.”


Makes a lot of sense. It’s a shame that Virginia’s elected representatives don’t.


Then, these statistics from the recent symposium on Mass Incarceration held at George Mason University:


Between 1987 and 2007 correction spending increased 127%. In the same time period higher education spending only increased 21%. The United States has the highest prison population rate in the world, 756 per 100,000. Three fifths of the world has rates below 150 per 100,000.


The combined inmate population of the top 35 European countries is a million less than the inmate population here:


1:100 Adults are incarcerated


1:25 18-65 year olds are on probation or parole


1:5 American adults have a criminal record


3.5:100 Juveniles 11-17 years old are in the juvenile justice system.


According to a study by Cullen, Nagin and Johnston (2009), “Incarceration has no impact on recidivism rates, but may in fact cause future criminal behavior.”


What does it all mean? As one “on the inside” I can tell you incarceration is necessary. However, the length of sentences and the disparity in sentences must be changed.


I don’t disagree that I should have been incarcerated. But, what number of years is a reasonable sentence for the crime of embezzlement? I keep a file full of embezzlement cases. Not one sentence handed down was as severe as mine. The closest, former Virginia Finance Director John W. Forbes, embezzled $4.1 million from a state commission. He made no restitution at trial. His sentence: 10 years, well below my sentence.


In prison, I am a drag on society. I pay neither taxes nor my remaining restitution. It costs $25,000 per year to keep me here.


It didn’t take long in here to realize I didn’t want this. Nothing is worth my loss of freedom. The price I paid was high.


It is painfully clear Virginia needs to restore parole and give inmates an opportunity to rehabilitate and earn early release.


The system is neither economically viable nor morally justifiable. It’s worth considering.

General Assembly Update

Once again the Virginia General Assembly is considering a number of bills that will directly affect inmates. But inmates are the one minority it’s OK to mistreat. As pointed out in the book The New Jim Crow, prison inmates today are the last discriminated class in America, akin to the black struggle against injustice in the segregated, Jim Crow era south. Michelle Alexander, the author, is a radical. She believes mass incarceration is as morally repugnant as apartheid.



This year the General Assembly will consider giving inmates additional “earned good time” days each month. The fact that we sit here and hope an additional five, seven or even ten days a month could be earned to the paltry 4.5 days currently on the books should tell you how desperate the prison population is for any relief.


I repeat something I have stated more than once in this blog: Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote 150 years ago that “a society is judged by how it treats its prisoners”.


Virginia has a moral imperative to ease the length of prison sentences and ensure prisons are humane. The Commonwealth, the country as a whole, risks moral bankruptcy unless prison reform becomes a reality.


The General Assembly has a clear choice. They can be just, be honorable, act morally or continue with business as usual.