Sex Offender Visits

A new directive was handed down this week by Richmond regarding visitation procedures for sex offenders.  As I have written in the past, the status of sex offenders in this facility presents an uneasy existence.  Simply put, sex offenders are the lowest of low in a prison.  Even the officers hold sex offenders in contempt.  No one is held in lower esteem than child sex offenders and child pornographers.  Sex offenders live in constant fear that their depraved crimes will come to light.  While bounties do not exist for their heads on this compound – as they do at so many higher level facilities – sex offenders are routinely targeted for theft and extortion.  Perhaps it is justifiable.  After all, sex offenders have done – in many cases – unspeakable horrors to their victims.  Still, it is difficult to watch anyone live in fear.

So, this past week Richmond announced a new policy for visits to sex offenders.  Effective immediately, minors will no longer be allowed to visit sex offenders.  That’s no minors, not even the offenders own children.

When I first arrived here at Lunenburg, there were no prohibitions on sex offender visitation. Shortly after my arrival, a new directive was handed down.  Sex offenders were prohibited from having any children on their laps who weren’t their own.  Sex offender visits were closely monitored by staff (yes, the officers know who the sex offenders are.  The inmate “master list” has a code for sex offenders).  Sex offenders didn’t complain.  To do so was to draw attention to yourself.  And, that was the last thing a sex offender would want to do.

That policy has stayed in effect for two years and there have been few – if any – problems reported.  So why the new rule?

As I have disclosed previously in this blog, I struggle with my feelings regarding sex offenders.  I abhor what they did (and contrary to prison “myth”, the vast majority of sex offenders are not incarcerated for “statutory” sex charges, i.e. “I didn’t know she wasn’t eighteen!”)  I also deal with the knowledge that many of the child sex offenders are serving sentences substantially shorter than mine.  Those frustrations are tempered each day by the knowledge that in God’s eyes I’m no better nor worse than that man and God’s grace shines on child sex offenders, embezzlers, and law-abiding folks the same.  None of us are deserving, yet all can receive.

Still, it’s tough to not jump on the “those sick bastards get what they deserve” bandwagon.  But, in looking at the new rule, a number of questions popped into my head.

First, if sex offenders are so awful and their behavior so suspect that DOC can’t trust them in a controlled visitation environment, what are they doing being housed at Lunenburg, a low custody, dormitory-style housing environment?

A fundamental problem with Virginia’s correction paradigm is that the vast majority of facilities – and, by implication, inmates – are low custody.  I have serious reservations about a system that says a murderer or child rapist is a “violent felon”, yet then allows those inmates to serve the bulk of their sentence at a low level.  If sex offenders are so suspect in their proclivities that they can’t be trusted in the Lunenburg VI room, what are they doing here?

And second, how does denying a sex offender access to his children coordinate with Governor McDonnell’s “re-entry initiative” which states that “90% of all inmates will return to their communities”, and “a goal of re-entry is to promote family support for the returning offender?”  It seems to me limiting structured visits is contrary to those goals.

I don’t know what the answer is.  As I said earlier, I’m very conflicted on the issue.  I do believe child sex offenders have a mental illness that needs to be addressed and prison isn’t the best place to address it (then again, prison isn’t the best place to address most nonviolent criminal behavior).  And, child sex offenders tend to also have been victims themselves.  Somehow, that cycle has to be broken

There’s no easy answer.  I’m just not sure DOC’s new visitation policy helps in any way.

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.

Dear M

The other night I received your card.  Thank you for your words of encouragement, inspiration, and prayer.  Ironically, that very week I’d read a series of devotions on the same subject.

I’m not sure you read this blog.  I assume you do because you were able to get word to me.  It meant a great deal to me to read and reread your note. 

It is deeply appreciated.

Larry

Update: Live

In prior blogs I’ve written about a young, bright black IT student named “Live” who was leader of a “blood” gang sect.  He was a funny, personable young guy who was too tied into gang life.  It led to his departure from this facility and removal from the program.  I liked him, though I knew from conversations with him he was ruthless and cold blooded.  Gang trumped even his own kids.  He was expected to lead, and he met expectations.

This week, the Richmond Times Dispatch reported that “Live” was in Federal custody in a maximum security facility.  Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli announced they had intercepted instructions to his “loyal soldiers” to “take out” a few disloyal members.  Gang activity in Richmond is on the increase.  Live’s crew is notorious for their brutality.

In all likelihood, the multi-count indictment will lead to Live spending much of the rest of his life behind bars.  It’s a shame really.  Much like the fictitious Michael Corleone of “Godfather” fame realized, it’s easier getting in the life than getting out.  I’m left to wonder, what might Live become?  A veterinarian (his dream)? Or, an aging gang banger, living and ultimately dying, in prison?  I wonder.

The Visit

Last Monday our “Campus within Walls” hosted the Chief Deputy of the Virginia Secretary of Education.  We’d expected the Secretary to be here.  “She had a commitment arise from the budget conference” we were told.  And our initial reaction was one of disappointment.  We thought it was just another example of our program, and in particular the work the instructors and aides do, just getting lip service from Richmond.  Especially for the aides, this is a thankless job.  We’re paid 45 cents per hour and many of us are devoting 60, 70 and sometimes 80 hours each week helping guys with their assignments.  Yet, we are only allowed credit for 50 hours each week.  Nothing we do gets us closer to release.  Virginia doesn’t provide extraordinary good time, even when you’re helping make possible the Governor’s vision for successful re-entry.

So, our initial reaction to the visit was muted.  We were, we thought, the “red-headed” step child again.  But then the Deputy Director engaged us and, to our pleasant surprise, things were better than we’d hoped.

The Deputy Director was a school principal before becoming the second in command at the Department of Education.  He spoke at length with the aides as he sat in our Excel class.  He talked candidly with our instructor.  He asked well reasoned questions and was genuinely impressed by the efforts of the men and the instructors.  “I’ve never been inside a prison before”, he told us on the way over to tour our building.  “I never imagined it would be like this.”

The building tour:  the warden, the assistant warden, the president of the Community College and our principal led our Richmond VIPs over to our “dorm”.  Our IT instructor, Ms. T – the most dedicated faculty member I know to this program – asked me to escort her over to see the building.  “I’ve always wondered how you guys do it, the conditions you live under”, she told me as we walked over.  Then she slowed and asked, “Will it make me cry?”  I laughed.  “No more than it makes me cry every day.”  And they all came in and saw the 96 bunks and gray paint and Ms. T leaned over to me and said, “I’ll never forget that first view when I walked in.”

And there were pictures.  All of us photographed by the Education Department’s photographer with the warden, the assistant warden, our teacher, our principal; all of us aides standing with the Deputy Director in front of our building, in front of our sign, “Campus Within Walls…A Learning Community”.

“I’ll be back”, the Deputy Director told us.  “And I’ll bring the Secretary.”  And our principal was thrilled.  She told me the next day that visit will mean more for our program, for our future, than we can imagine.  “The Governor will hear what we’re doing.  Things will change.  Wait and see Larry.”

I hope she is right.  I hope all this matters.  I hope the visit is the start of a new way for the Governor and politicians to view what’s going on in here and not just another pass through photo op.  Only time will tell.  And the aides all have plenty of that …time.

Raising Caine

As usual, what happens in prison in the name of “justice” turns out to be a caricature of everything wrong with calling this place a “corrections” center.  The people who run this place, the people in charge of the Department of Corrections, cut corners, use threats of investigation and going to “the hole” to intimidate, and daily break the very rules they put in place to comply with constitutionally dictated minimum standards of conduct.  It’s all done in the name of corrections. It’s all done in the name of justice.  And, it’s all done wrong.

On Wednesday, “Caine” – named for his dealership expertise in powdery substance – was led out of the building in handcuffs and taken to the hole.  He’s under investigation for “inciting a riot”.  Next to murder or sexual assault, no charge in prison is as serious as inciting a riot.  But, inciting a riot doesn’t mean mayhem.  No, in prison-speak inciting a riot means attempting to organize any collective action on the part of the inmate population.

Inmates are prohibited from organizing.  There can be no petitions for redress of grievances; no hunger strikes, sit downs, work stoppages, collective requests to the administration.  Anyone caught engaging in that behavior is subject to immediate “isolation confinement”, having your good time taken, and seeing your security level raised to “max”.  In short, you end up at Red Onion (Virginia’s notorious level 6 Max security prison). 

So what did Caine do to incite a riot?  In January, the Warden sent out a memorandum announcing that inmates were no longer permitted to own weight lifting gloves.  “All gloves must be shipped home through property or disciplinary charges will follow.”  So Caine did the right thing.  He filed a grievance.  In it, he noted that the Constitution does not allow property to be taken by the Government “without due process granted and just compensation paid” (sounds like a lawyer wrote that doesn’t it?).  Caine pointed out that DOC’s own regulations require it to compensate an inmate when property legitimately purchased is later ruled contraband.

Thirty days after every inmate mailed their gloves home without compensation, the Warden found in Caine’s favor.  He was reimbursed.

Caine realized no one else had been paid.  So, he had a contact make dozens of copies of the grievance decision with his name blacked out.  And, he gave copies to guys in every building.  And just like that inmates around the compound began to request reimbursement.

“Where’d you get the copies?” they asked him as they were going through his stuff and hauling him away.  Making copies, you see, is also prohibited.  Information is power.  Information exposes the reality of this disgustingly pathetic, failed system.

Later that afternoon, I was assisting our computer class when the investigators came through.  They went back to the school office and pulled Craig in.  “You making copies for people?”  Of course Craig wasn’t.  Neither he, nor I, would jeopardize what we’re doing at the school.  Still, the heat Craig felt was real.  Get guys to snitch, tie the school in, ruin the educational opportunities being related.  It happens all the time.  It’s a constant battle.  Ignorance drives most of the criminal behavior evidenced by the inmate population.  Ignorance is job security for the rank and file who work at DOC.

As I write this Caine sits in isolation.  He’ll be fine.  He’s done twelve years already.  He knows in a week or two he’ll be back in college classes.  He didn’t incite a riot.

The same day Todd received his “update sheet”.  Update sheets are the summary of our annual review.  They are based on a 100 point scale.  Hold a job?  20 points.  Have a vocational/treatment plan and meet the terms?  40 points .  Stay infraction free?  40 points.  Everything included in the annual review, including the setting and awarding of security level and good time earning level is controlled by a department operating procedure, DOP 830.3.  Prisons may not arbitrarily act for or against any prisoner; that is a fundamental tenet of the law.  Depriving a man (or woman) of their freedom does not give the government carte blanche to do anything they want.  DOC must follow due process and 830.3 sets out specifically what must be done.

But rules are regularly ignored and violated by the administration.  In Todd’s case, last March he received two charges:  one a 200 series charge for crossing a restricted line.  The second charge was for taking an onion from the chow hall.  This was always considered a series 200 contraband charge until two days before Todd was caught.  Then, it was elevated to a 100 series “stealing charge” (question:  how do you steal food off your tray?).

So Todd wore two charges.  And 830.3 specifically states that a 200 series charge leads to a 10 point deduction and a nonviolent 100 series charge leads to a 20 point deduction.  And 830.3 further states you must have 85 points (minimum) to earn full good time (4.5 days per month).  70 points to 85 and you earn 3 days per month.  Under 60, no earned good time.

So Todd works all year; he becomes a certified dog handler; he completes the IT program with honors and becomes A+ certified (a national IT certification); and, he gets admitted to a four-year Virginia university on his release.

But, his counselor and the administration change his good time level.  They don’t deduct 30 points based on his charges as DOP 830.3 requires.  No, they deduct 50 points.  Why?  The counselor told him, “we’re not gonna give you full credit for school because you pulled these charges.”  That’s not what 830.3 says.  Their response?  You’ll have to make Richmond tell us.”

Ironic isn’t it.  Governor McDonnell tells the press “inmates have civil rights” then his corrections department personnel act in illegal ways to “manage” the facilities.  Disrespect for their own rules breeds disrespect in the inmate population.  It’s time people outside demand better from those paid to enforce the law and guard the rights of citizens, even the incarcerated.  It’s time to “raise caine” for real justice, even in the prisons.

Empty

Easter, 2012.  Another “new” season and yet, so much this year is like the last three Easters.  All of them spent incarcerated; all of them spent removed from what I knew, what I cherished.

Each year as Easter approached I’d try and find meaning, try and understand why, why was I going through this, why had I lost so much, where was the loving God I prayed to each day in the midst of struggle?  On a simple level, I knew I was guilty.  I was paying the price, serving the sentence, imposed by a legitimate court following my guilty plea for the theft of two million dollars.  And, I knew I deserved to be punished.  I knew all along I was breaking the law.  I knew I’d lose my wife and friends.  I knew it all.  Yet, the punishment was worse than expected.  The swiftness and finality of rejection beyond what I could imagine.  I was paying more than a just price for my conduct.

I have felt so alone, so abandoned, rejected, and betrayed that no one, I feared could comprehend the depth of my suffering.  I would cry out, over and over at night alone in a stank cell, “help me, God.  Please help me.”  And my tears, my pleas would fall on deaf ears.  Everything I had feared my whole life, everything I believed about myself, that no one did love me, that everyone was dependent on me giving them something or they would abandon me, proved true.  It was, on more than one occasion almost too painful to bear.

On more than one occasion, especially in that first year of living in a jail cell with no physical contact with friends or family other than the all too infrequent thirty-minute “how are you doing?” through Plexiglas, I actively planned my own death.  Death, I believed, was better than prison, divorce, rejection.  I was empty.  Nothing could change my circumstances.  It is the worst position to be in.  Hopelessness kills.

Each year, as the Lenten season began, I vowed to renew.  I’d sacrifice some silly pleasure and devote myself to meditation and prayer.  I’d try and meet God halfway, try and understand what all of this meant, try and hope when every rational fiber in me said hope is gone.  Easter would arrive; I’d hear the words from my years of church attendance ring in my head.  “The Lord is Risen”, and the rote response, “He is Risen indeed”, and I would wait expectantly for the miracle to unfold.  I wanted, I craved that “come thou long expected Jesus” moment, the one that would restore me to family and friends.  It never came.

Tough.  Painful.  Lonely.  Survivable?  I wasn’t sure.  I cried to God, I argued with Him; I tried everything I knew and then I concluded nothing I could offer or promise would matter.   My life was beyond my control.  The only decision I really had to make was, do I hope or do I just go on. 

I thought of a man in Texas as I tried to figure out what to do.  He served over fifteen years in a Texas prison, convicted of murdering his wife.  He told anyone who would listen he wasn’t the killer.  He loved his wife, he told the jury.  But the evidence, the prosecution argued, was overwhelming.  It was cold-blooded murder.  Life in prison was his destiny. 

I heard Michael Morton speak about his time in maximum security, how close he came to breaking.  There was the time his son turned twelve and wrote him and announced “I don’t want to visit anymore”.  And the pain from that letter seared his heart.  It got worse.  At seventeen, his son wrote again.  “I’m going to be adopted” by the family raising him.  He was changing his name.  “My heart broke”, Morton said.  He gave up.

Then a miracle happened.  The Innocence Project heard about his case.  They petitioned the court to examine the prosecution’s file and discovered evidence exonerating Morton that was withheld at trial.  And then DNA evidence proved conclusively Morton was not the killer.  Another man, already doing life in Texas for murder, had killed his wife.

Michael Morton walked out of prison a free man.  But, he wasn’t truly free until he was able to forgive all those people who put him in that hell, all those people who abandoned him.  Nothing he went through made sense and yet, in God’s infinite wisdom it all made sense.  He had survived the valley, stared into the abyss, and was made whole.  More importantly, Michael Morton found peace.  He mattered and what he’d gone through mattered.

This Lenten season I embarked on another time of renewal and spiritual cleansing.  I gave up potato chips – my weakness in here, and coffee.   Each morning I began with reading one or two Psalms and an Old and New Testament lesson.  Ironically, three times I read Psalm 77, a Psalm of crying out to a silent God and then finding strength remembering His prior amazing deeds.

More ironically, I read the story of Joseph, sold into slavery, imprisoned for thirteen years, and then he saved both Egypt and the Israelites.  “You intended it for evil, but God intended it for good.”  I read the Exodus story.  God heard the cries of His people and sent Moses, a murderer of an Egyptian, abandoned by his own people, to go and announce to Pharaoh, “God says, Let my people go.”

And I listened as I prayed waiting for God to tell me what this all means.  I heard silence, but the silence gave me comfort.  I cried out some nights, I hurt, I was lonely, but somehow each morning the silence sustained me.  Did anyone know what I was going through?  Did anyone care?  I read the Gospels and saw it, the suffering, the rejection.  His twelve most trusted friends; one betrays him, ten run and hide, afraid for their own lives; only one – John – shows up at his execution.  He knew what I felt.  He knows what I’m going through.  He is with me.

This morning I awoke to a cloudless Easter morning.  I went out and ran.  Over and over I heard the words from the Gospel of Luke, “and they went to the tomb and it was empty.  And the angel of the Lord said, “He is not here.  He is Risen.”  I thought about that empty tomb.  I thought about all I’d been through these past four years.  And I realized I’d never felt closer to God than I did this morning.

I don’t know what tomorrow will bring.  I don’t know when this trial will end or what will be in my future.  I know what I pray for each day.  There is hope in suffering; there is hope in emptiness.  “The tomb is empty.”  There is hope.