…And it will save the taxpayers of Virginia

THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN IN DECEMBER, 2014.

Irony – “an event or result that is the opposite of what is expected.”  That word came into focus the other night as the local Richmond newscast reported that disgraced former Governor Robert McDonnell’s defense team countered the Federal Probation sentencing recommendation with a request for leniency and “community service”.  The defense recommendation noted “”serving in community service will save Virginia’s taxpayers over $300,000 in a decade.”  Hey Governor Bob, no kidding!! Yet, when you had that power, that ability, to commute sentences of non-violent felons doing time in Virginia’s prisons, you said no.  You wouldn’t intercede even when the sentence was harsh, even when the offender was remorseful, even when the taxpayers were paying over $25,000 each year just to keep the prisoner locked up.  You wouldn’t act courageously, justly, mercifully.  And now, with your own life’s house of cards collapsed around you, with no acknowledgement of guilt on your part, you ask for the very thing you denies so many.  Irony.

“Give mercy, and mercy will be given to you.  Forgive as your Father has forgiven you.”  Pretty clear words.  The meaning of those words so often escapes us.  Some call it Gospel Karma.  We continue to be legalistic.  We see fallen behavior, we rush to condemn and demand “justice”.  But our definition of justice, typically extracted in years and “pounds of flesh” is the exact opposite of the “word”.  “Law and order”. “tough on crime”, “truth in sentencing”, all make great campaign slogans until the man handcuffed before the court is your son, your friend, or you.  Those simple words, the Biblical admonitions are a reminder – and a warning – that the standards you set for others will one day be applied to you.  “But I’m not like him”, you say.  You may be – in God’s eyes where “all sin and fall short”.

Governor McDonnell had the power – and the opportunity – to make a huge difference in the lives of thousands of Virginia’s incarcerated, me included.  He could have said there are too many first-time felons doing too many years in Virginia’s prison system for nonviolent felonies.  He could have personally read the letters sent to him by the friends and families of hundreds of these inmates; he could have examined their incarceration records and seen evidence of genuine remorse and change.  Instead, he allowed those sentences to stand.  Worse, he ignored these men and women’s pleas while he was engaged in his own wrongdoing.  And now he prepares for his own day in court, his own sentencing. And, I’m sure he wonders, will the judge listen to him, to his family and friends, as a plea for sentencing mercy is made.  Ironic, isn’t it?

I believe there is no purpose served by sending Robert McDonnell to prison.  If U.S. District Judge James Spencer were to ask me, I would simply tell him, “Do not send this man to serve time”.  There is not purpose to it.  McDonnell has already been punished.  He has been convicted by a jury of Virginians.  His reputation, damaged; his family problems bared; his marriage is in shambles; his law career ruined.  Nothing is penologically served by now sending this broken man to a low-custody Federal prison.  No, Robert McDonnell does not deserve incarceration, any more than hundreds of men I’ve met these past six and a half years who are watching calendars turn, day upon day, month to month, year after year; in a warped dance called justice.  Perhaps showing Governor McDonnell justice with mercy will be the beginning of real corrections, real prison reform, real justice.  Perhaps another Governor is watching and thinking, “There but for the grace of God – and a rabid prosecutor – go I.”

February 3, 2009.  I was sentenced that day in a courtroom packed with friends who took the stand and asked the court to show me mercy.  My two assistants sat with coworkers.  Across from them, my parents and my retired minister sat.  They heard a community leader tell the court how I had turned the local Meals on Wheels around from a state of financial collapse.  Letters from church and community members were presented.  Each letter, each person who spoke, asked the court to show me mercy.

And then I stood before the court.  I have never felt so alone, so broken, so ashamed.  I had written a brief statement.  In it, I minced no words.  I wasn’t nuanced.  I admitted I broke the law – the same words I spoke the day I was arrested.  I apologized to my employer, my family, my friends, the court.  I bluntly told the court I failed my wife, my sons, my parents, my moral code.  I told the court I deserved prison.  I asked the judge to instead show me mercy.  Give me an opportunity to make right my wrongs. 

My words fell on deaf ears.  Within moments of my remarks ending, the court handed down my sentence.  There were gasps and weeping from friends, from my “girls”, my two assistants who’d each been with me over ten years.  Me?  I stood there, said “thank you” to the judge and walked out of the court.  You know what else?  My head was up.  I had spoken from the heart, told the truth.

Within a month I was served with divorce papers.  Would a shorter sentence have saved our marriage?  I don’t know.  I don’t know if she could have ever forgiven me for the betrayal.  Still, how do you ask someone to stay for fifteen years?  Within a month, I was assigned my DOC number.  I was now “in the system”.  Less than four months later, I was in a cell with a gangleader doing 76 years for murder, in the oxymoron known as DOC receiving at Powhatan. 

No, Bob McDonnell doesn’t deserve all that.  He deserves mercy…just like a lot of us in here.

 

 

Another Closing?

THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN IN DECEMBER, 2014.

 

            The COs have been on edge the past few days. Rumors are circulating that another prison closing will be announced before Christmas. Given the age of the current facilities still in operation betting is on Buckingham or Nottoway, both level 3/4 prisons. I say “good.” The waste and mismanagement that permeates DOC is appalling. That so few know about it – or even care to understand it – is worse. Like regular German civilians who didn’t “want to know” what was going on behind the concentration camp fences, so too it seems are the vast majority of Virginians who choose to ignore the $1.2 billion annually spent to house 40,000 behind bars.

            As I’ve written repeatedly in these pages, Virginia’s prisons are run like self-contained fiefdoms. Department Operating Procedures put in place to provide uniform standards are arbitrarily enforced from facility to facility and inmate to inmate. Discipline and grievance procedures – created to provide constitutionally guaranteed due process rights, are ignored. It is virtually impossible for an inmate to prevail in a hearing where an officer has written a charge or where the facility has violated its own DOPs.

            It clearly is a tough time for DOC. A billion dollars is “real” money and probing eyes are beginning to look at how it’s spent by the prisons. And the easy answer for the director, his regional managers, and even the wardens themselves, is to cut back on the inmates: poorer food, less access to medical and programs, less rec, cutting back work hours and pay. But, those items are just small line items compared to the tens of millions spent on too many officers, counselors, and administrators who draw a check just for “watching.”

            It was reported in last week’s Washington Post that Texas’s prison reform efforts have yielded a “$3 billion savings.” Those efforts included sentence reductions, early release for nonviolent offenders, and more emphasis on community corrections. Great ideas all and yet Virginia DOC continues to ignore them and instead does the old “sweep in and close.”

            Virginia’s prison operation since the early ‘90s – when parole was abolished – has been built on a series of lies involving “tough on crime” slogans, the real cost of incarceration, and the effects these policies would have on crime rates and recidivism. Those lies are coming due and doors are being closed … and I say it’s about time.

           

 

Holton Hears a Who

THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN IN DECEMBER, 2014.

            My apologies to Dr. Seuss, but sometimes things just show up in my mail and I read them and realize “this says it all!” Such was my reaction when I read Walter Holton’s op ed on prison reform, “Changing the Priorities of a ‘Prison-Happy Country.’” Who is Walter Holton? He’s the former United States Attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina. He was chief federal prosecutor in his district and he handled more than his own share of criminal prosecutions. He understands the “system.” So, his insights, his critiques, should carry weight. Funny thing is, he sees prisons – and this nation’s love affair with incarceration – as in dire need of change.

            “We are a prison-happy country with five percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. Our prisons are overrun with non-violent offenders hit with mandatory minimum sentences or longer sentences than were previously imposed for the same crimes.”

            How about this from the former federal prosecutor:

            “Research now shows conclusively that longer prison sentences do not reduce crime …

            Prison punishes – that’s it. Prisons take people out of work. Prisons remove parents from children and from child support obligations. Prisons almost certainly guarantee that the prisoner returns home less educated, less trained, and less employable. As a result, crime goes up, not down. The numbers don’t lie.”

            Harsh critique from one who was on the inside. Holton understands what one day in here proves – prisons fail. They don’t make society safer, they don’t reduce crime, and they don’t deter future criminal wrongdoing. Holton isn’t saying there should be no prisons. But, prisons, historically used for the violent; are now overrun with most non-violent offenders serving abnormally long sentences.

            How did we get to this place?

            “We made mistakes,” Holton writes. “One big one is promising states money to build prisons if they agree to lengthen prison sentences. They did. Prisons sprang forth and have filled. We have incarcerated prisoners at a world-record pace, taking in the violent and the non-violent. Oops. (Don’t you just love it when a federal prosecutor uses the term “oops.”) …

            Federal and state prison budgets now eat one-third of the money available for the public good. The United States Department of Justice … now feeds one-third of its total budget to the prisons.”

            Feeling safer American? Prisons bleed money and lives. Prisons – for all but the most violent and unrepentant – serve no positive societal purpose. Prisons destroy human dignity, hopes, lives.

            The real tragedy behind America’s love affair with incarceration is that people just don’t know. They don’t know:

1. Almost 900,000 behind bars are there for nonviolent offenses;
2. 330,000 + are behind bars for drug offenses
3. 125,000 + are over the age of 55 (studies show that inmates over 30 have a 3% recidivism rate);
4. 40% of the incarcerated suffer from a diagnosed mental disease or disorder. Prisons have taken the place of mental hospitals
5. Over 50% of those incarcerated had a monthly income of less than $2000 in the month prior to their arrest
6. On any given day one in ten African-American males below age 30 will be behind bars.
7. 2.7 million children under the age of 18 have a parent behind bars
8. There are more African-American men behind bars or on probation/parole than were enslaved in 1850 before the Civil War
9. 65 million Americans have passed through the adult or juvenile criminal justice system (that’s almost one out of every five citizens)
10. There are more mental health patients in prisons than in all hospitals combined.

  

Mr. Holton understands all that. “I once was blind but now I see.” I get his conversion. See, its easy being “tough on crime” when you don’t know the truth, when you’re comfortable in your perfect American life. That was me. Then, everything came crashing down. I stood before a judge, remorseful (not just my opinion, but a state-employed forensic psychiatrist). The judge sentenced me to fifteen years of active time, more than most second degree murderers, more than most child pornographers and sex abusers. It was, pure and simple, a sentence built on punishment. There is no “rehabilitative” program available for me; no job retraining or education. It certainly won’t help with the restitution owed to my former employer. It has cost Virginia’s taxpayers over $200,000 to keep me behind bars these past six years. Is the Commonwealth safer? Were there alternatives? Will I leave here a “better” man?

            Holton writes what I see daily. Prisons are refuse centers. They are dumping grounds. For most of the pathetic men I’ve seen in my time in here, their incarceration was a forgone conclusion. The proverbial deck – with poor schools, dysfunctional families, economic inequality – was stacked against them. And their trip – or trips – here makes them even less likely to become productive citizens. And those who work here? They spend their time “minding” – watching over men, performing rote, perfunctory tasks. This isn’t skilled labor; it isn’t meaningful work. It just is … a check.

            Mr. Holton didn’t suddenly come to his epiphany. No, it was his years in the system that told him something just didn’t seem quite right. It took a while, but Mr. Holton finally heard the “who.” Do you hear it?

 

 

Saltine Boxes and Nonsense

It finally came around--"Lockdown." And for what? I'm not sure. So, last Monday morning--with just 4 days to go before the graduation and with a selected 10 guys in here studying like crazy to complete a national IT certification program, the security chief decides to put the compound on lockdown. As I've written before, lockdown at this level is nothing but a waste of time and resources--its money not well spent--to conduct quick searches of lockers and turn a building into total disarray.

What goes on? The officers come in and snatch any cardboard boxes they find--"contraband" they call them-- even though they are used to store pens, letters, everything we have that needs to be organized. And it pisses guys off--their stuff is pawed and dumped on their beds. Nothing of significance is found--no drugs, weapons, porn--that stuff can be easily hidden or flushed.

It's costly and it's wasteful and it accomplishes nothing. That's why at other level 2s the wardens (who have discretion to even hold lockdowns) waive them. But when you have a guy in charge of security who wishes he was running a Supermax (the irony of that is, if he acted at a Supermax like he acts here he wouldn't last a day) and you let him handle things, nothing good happens.

The officers get worn down; the guys lay around for a week, and programs--precious time for schooling--gets put off.
That's DOC--no one knows how wasteful and foolish so much of this is. It’s just the same thing over and over and no one--not the officers or the inmates--change.

Lockdown is necessary at some locations. Higher level prisons, after gang fights or deaths or stabbings, use lockdown as punishment or to find the remaining weapons. But here, that isn't going on. What is going on is a battle to get men ready for return to the real world. Only, it's a losing battle because the hearts of the people in charge aren't with fixing things; and therefore, the hearts and minds of those behind bars are still closed.

Why is it that this silliness continues? I'd like to think I'm wrong, but the sad truth is politicians don't give a shit. They talk big talk about being "tough on crime" and making people pay for their lawbreaking; but they don't have the foggiest idea what goes on in here. They create a political system that rewards incompetence with promotion and lets little prison fiefdoms grow; they pay little attention to actual programs that will help; they release inmates still bitter and resentful and lying to themselves about their own responsibility and need to change; and then they bemoan the fact that released inmates commit new crimes.

The crime is the way DOC is allowed to function without adequate oversight. The crime is the waste in lives which becomes generational. But what do I know, I'm just trying to find few new saltine boxes to pick up my letters and envelopes!

Trial Date

This blog was written in November, 2014. 

            Less than 30 days from now a Federal Court will hear a suit brought by 5 female offenders at Virginia’s Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women. The class action lawsuit, filed in 2012, seeks injunctory relief from VDOC for its mismanagement of medical care for those behind bars. Be ready Virginia; VDOC will lose this case and the budget woes already affecting the Commonwealth will only worsen. Look no further than the bloated, arrogant, mismanaged bureaucracy that is VDOC when you ask “why.”

            At a time when the voters of the Commonwealth were quick to elect any politician who said they were “tough on crime,” DOC realized it had a problem. Everything has a cost and that’s especially true in prison. You want to lock up virtually anyone for anything (after all, a majority of those behind bars are there for non-violent crimes) there is a cost. And a major cost associated with longer sentences, with mass incarceration policies, is the cost to provide medical care. The Commonwealth knew they had a burgeoning problem years ago.

            What was their solution? Outsourcing. VDOC concluded that it was cheaper to contract out offender medical care than provide staff doctors. So the state entered into a sweetheart (for the for-profit corporations anyway!) contract first with Armor, later with Corizon, both “players” in the booming prison-industrial complex that has seen U.S. corrections expenditures go from $6 billion in 1980 to $80 billion today. The state agreed to pay these companies $76 million per contract year to provide medical care and case management for the incarcerated. That sounds like a lot of money (and it is) except those companies had their own staffing costs. They also had a population they were servicing that was less healthy than the general population, with diabetes and mental disorders rampant. Keeping costs down became the benchmark. Forget Hippocrates; their mantra was, “every buck saved is a buck for our bottom line.”

            Then, VDOC gave almost no thought or care to the “work” these private contractors did as long as the department was not responsible. Trouble is, VDOC – and the Commonwealth – can’t shirk their obligation to provide medical care to those in its custody. That’s the law. Funny, isn’t it? All those “law and order” types suddenly became very “shades of grey” when it comes to government doing what they are legally obligated to do.

            That provides background to the suit – government ineptitude followed by sweetheart contracts with no oversight. But, to the women involved, it is more personal. To the patients – and their families – who were ignored and mistreated, their poor care, the 3 or 4 deaths each year resulting from negligent health care at Fluvanna, it was personal. You break the law, you go to prison. You shouldn’t end up dying because of bad medical care, which the state is required to provide when they take away your freedom.

            My first year here I befriended a bright, young redheaded kid. He had gone drag racing one night with three other cars. These were county roads in Augusta County. And these 18 to 20 year-olds were going way too fast, being reckless. Then it happened. He lost control and his car went airborne. His girlfriend lay dying in his car. The charge was vehicular manslaughter; the sentence was four years. I make no judgment on the leniency – or severity – of his time. Parents lost a daughter. Four years or forty, that will never be made whole.

            They sent him here and late in ’09 he began having severe stomach pains. He ran a fever. He passed blood. Medical refused to see him. “You’re on the sick call list,” he was told. His mother called and complained and Medical gave him an appointment. Stomach virus was the diagnosis “Take Mylanta.” That night his fever spiked. The floor officer rushed him down to medical and he was immediately taken to the hospital with a ruptured appendix.

            That story isn’t an aberration; that story is day-to-day medical care inside. “Care” is not the right word. Every year men and women die behind bars from medical neglect. That is criminal and should not be tolerated. That is the basis of these five women’s lawsuit.

            How has the government reacted to the suit? They have stonewalled. This past summer the court was so incensed by DOC’s refusal to comply with discovery that it awarded the Plaintiffs over $16,000 in attorney fees. Ironic isn’t it, the purveyors of the law, those charged with administering the law, ignore the law. Who pays? The taxpayers.

            The late Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post cited Walter Lippmann in a lecture he gave in 1997 at the University of California. Lippmann, Mr. Bradlee noted, believed that “In a democracy, the truth emerges. Sometimes it takes years … sometimes it seems to take forever, but it does emerge.”

            Mr. Bradlee, the Executive editor of the Post from 1968 to 1991 knew a little something about the truth and the attempts over and over again by government to spin it and shape it and distort it. But, at the end, the truth will emerge.

            For far too many years the Commonwealth of Virginia’s politicians, supported and greased by companies like Corizon and Armor have told voters you are safer with more people behind bars. These politicians have lied about the true costs the people of Virginia incur with these reckless policies built on greed. But the truth will emerge … and it may start on December 1^st in a Federal courthouse when the Department of Correction’s medical contracts are exposed for what they are.

Shut It Down

            Back in my other life, I had a number of Johnny Cash albums and CDs in my music collection. Cash, “The Man in Black” was not just a country musician; he was a pop culture icon and his story – his rise, fall, and resurrection – was the stuff of Hollywood (“I Walk the Line with Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon). Cash would perform inside some of America’s worst prisons. It was because he knew what it was like behind bars. He’d been there. He had a conviction on his record – possession of pills – and he did time. He never forgot.

            My favorite Johnny Cash album was one he recorded live from California’s notorious San Quentin Prison. During the show, he told the inmates he wrote a song about the prison. A line in that song came to the other night:

            “San Quentin may you rot and burn in hell

            May your walls fall and may I live to tell”

            I thought of those words as I watched Virginia’s Governor announce the closing of Powhatan Correction Center. My buddy DC smiled when he heard the news. He had been in there, in the hated “M building” solitary lock up over top of the boiler room. “F – that place,” was all he said. I nodded in agreement. “Shut it down,” I thought. “Do the right thing, Governor and shut most of this bloated corrupt system down.”

            That was my visceral reaction. See I was at Powhatan; I saw what a pile of rubble it is; I saw what the true meaning of oxymoron is – calling a place a “correctional center” when no “correcting” is contemplated by the process; how “receiving” and “classification” and “counseling” are terms which mean absolutely nothing positive or constructive in DOC jargon.

            I saw how low custody offenders were put in cells with high custody, anti-social, violent predators. I saw how obviously mentally ill offenders were overmedicated – that was medical care for DOC at Powhatan Receiving. I saw the packs of young gang bangers have virtual control of stairwells while officers hung near the booth. I saw fights, and beatings, and worse. It all made me question my notion of humanity; it made me question my notion of fair justice; at times it made me question my sanity.

            There was one day. I had received the final decree of divorce. For weeks I’d help out hope that somehow she would find it in her heart to forgive me and remember what was so long ago. That wasn’t to be. And the prison – like so much of its ineptitude – lost my legal mail and it sat in an office for over three weeks until it was delivered to me (“sign here”) at 3:15 am in my dark, rank cell.

            Like dozens of other days, I lay there and was convinced I needed to give up. Nothing would give me back what I’d lost. No amount of atonement would be sufficient. I made it outside for rec, and in my prison jumper and Velcro sneakers. I began running 1/10 of a mile laps around the dirt track. “This isn’t right,” I kept saying to myself. And I began to get angry – angry at all that was transpiring, all the hypocrisy that was prevalent in “corrections.” “Punish me?” I thought. I’ve punished myself by losing family, friends, social status. “Correct me?” I was a decent, compassionate, loving man who broke the law and I deserved prison, but this was beyond “justice.” I vowed then and there that I was better than that place and I would overcome what was dealt to me.

            I remembered that day and I muttered under my breath “Fuck Powhatan,” and I didn’t really care that 500 DOC employees were being laid off from this bloated, inept, money-sucking department. Like I said, that was my visceral reaction.

            But here’s the other side: First, there are a lot of decent people who work for DOC. I have met many men and women officers who are honest and treat those behind bars with dignity and respect. For all the bad in this corrupt, politicized system, the vast majority of officers I’ve met have always treated me (and others) fairly.

            Those men and women are losing their jobs because they were sold a false bill of goods by dishonest politicians who told them prison expansion (1) made their communities safer and (2) was a realistic economic plan for disadvantaged, rural Virginia’s arrogance about its “tough on crime” approach. Prisons – for the most part – don’t deter crime, nor are they a cost-effective means of dealing with most lawbreakers.

            Second, there are some who need prison. I have met men who are evil. They lack basic empathy, basic humanity. You see it in their eyes. They would kill you (or do something far worse) and never blink. They are, as my friend DC says, heart – dead sociopaths. They must be segregated from society.

            So the Governor announced cuts to DOC. I hope and pray more are on the way and this Governor has the courage to institute real prison reform in the Commonwealth. There are better answers than just locking people up. That is neither justice nor corrections. There must be real economic investment in Southside Virginia, not low-skilled, low-wage prison jobs.

            “San Quentin may you rot and burn in hell

            May your walls fall and may I live to tell …”

            Ol’ Johnny Cash understood. Yeah, I smiled a little bit when I heard they were shutting a few prisons down. And I hummed Cash’s song as I walked around the compound.

The First Casualty

            Aeschylus, the great Greek Philosopher, wrote, “Truth is the first casualty of war.” (words to think about as our nation begins yet another military action). In truth, “truth” is the first casualty of all our follies: broken/failed relationships; dishonesty in business and government; failure in corrections. So often, it is easier to lie and distort and to imprison the truth from the light of day than to admit our failures – and the active role we play in them.

            The Virginia Department of Corrections, a behemoth of money and manpower, is broken. That’s the truth. It is as clear as the blue sky on a crisp fall day. Yet, the politicians in Richmond won’t say it because to do so would be to admit that a few have gotten rich off contracts and sweetheart deals; that corruption permeates the departments core; and that prison neither makes society safer nor rehabilitates the offenders it holds. DOC is a failure of monumental proportions. And, when cast into the light of truth, when exposed for what it really is, you can see the waste in money and lives.

1.     There is no statistical correlation between harsh sentencing and crime rates, between abolishment of parole and recidivism. Crime rates have nothing to do with, “tough on crime” sentencing. In fact, in states where there is more liberal use of alternative sentencing (i.e. not prison) and community-based corrections (i.e. parole and probation) crime rates have dropped significantly more than in Virginia.    

       

2.     All harsh sentencing does is sends more people to prison, for longer sentences, at greatly increasing cost. It doesn’t make Virginia any safer. Worse, in “people issues” it actually harms communities. Harsh sentencing creates an attitude of victimization among many offenders. You send a small-time drug user or nonviolent larceny convict to prison and he (or she) is subjected to violence, humiliation, and arbitrary behavior on the part of some guards, and you create an angry inmate, a person who believes he is being treated unfairly.

There are over 100,000 children in Virginia who have a parent in prison. Statistically, those children are less well off economically and have lower education levels. They also are more likely to find themselves on the wrong side of the law. There is a generational component to prison. You send a father to prison and there is a statistically significant likelihood that one of his children will end up there as well.

3.     Corrections uses sweetheart contracts to prison/industrial corporations which, in turn, pay huge dollars to Virginia lobbyists and candidates’ campaigns in even sweeter deals. The state outsources major portions of its corrections apparatus at ever increasing cost to the taxpayers with worse oversight and results.

For example, DOC no longer provides medical care for the incarcerated. That process has been contracted out to medical companies who are paid millions of dollars for “primary” care of inmates. If specialists are needed, those costs are still paid by taxpayers. Forget the moral argument, namely should government be able to take a person’s liberty away by incarceration, then outsource that function; instead, look at the pure dollars and cents. It costs the state more to have private contractors provide medical care than to do it itself.

            These contracts are all big dollar and add to the huge, billion dollar plus expenditures DOC makes every year. They also lead to multitudes of lawsuits, which the state must defend.

            Medical care in prison is poor at best. There is no “Hippocratic Oath” (“do no harm”) at play in here. No, it’s “churn and burn” to make a buck. Then, when the lawsuits begin to mount, the contractor bails out. Think I’m kidding? Ask the women inmates at Fluvanna who successfully sued in a class action suit over the lack of adequate medical care.

4.     Prisons – individually and as a totality – are corrupt. They say it’s all about public safety; they lie. The public isn’t safer with nearly 40,000 people jammed into Virginia’s prisons. Every day in here lives are wasted. The state spends millions to just sit and watch; there’s no rehabilitation or re-entry (real, meaningful programs that actually matter). Over half of all offenders lack high school diplomas and basic job skills yet those programs – talked about all day long in here – aren’t stressed or adequately funded.

Some may argue, “Prison is about punishment not rehabilitation.” Fair enough. Then make the punishment fit the crime. Don’t run violent, drug and gang-filled facilities where corrupt officers bring in the drugs or look the other way at cases of sexual assault or stabbings and say that is the result of those locked up. No, you take a man’s – or woman’s – freedom, you bear responsibility for them. DOC has not been required to be responsible for those in its custody.

5.     Economic realities: Most of Virginia’s prisons are in rural counties. The prisons become the only significant employer in those areas. Do you ever see a private employer decide to build in Lunenburg, or Mecklenburg, or Buckingham, or Brunswick because the state puts a prison there? No. And what happens in those communities when the prison closes? Nothing but economic despair.

Prisons in those rural counties are a con job run on the locals. They think the state is “investing” in their economic future. They aren’t. Those counties, like the men and women housed in their prisons, have lousy schools and poor job opportunities. Those counties are economically as shackled and imprisoned as those behind the wire.

Truth is a casualty. It is time for an honest discussion about Virginia’s prison system. Lives – both inside and outside the walls – are being lost; money is being wasted. The truth is, one day inside here tells you things are not as those in Richmond want you to believe. The politicians, and the senior people at DOC won’t tell you the truth because it will cost them money. But, as another “philosopher” once said, “the love of money is the root of all evil.” Money drives prison policy; it’s corrupt money that destroys lives. That is the truth.