Virginia Prisons Accountability Committee

Thursday, March 28, 2024

Put an End to Communication Deprivation By Kimberly Zittlow

Good afternoon,

Can someone within the VADOC PLEASE explain to me the value of taking the inmates' phones away from them for months, sometimes even years at a time? 

How in the world is destroying important relationships that provide positive support and reinforcement with loved ones helping anything or anybody?

All that you are doing is creating angry and emotionally deprived inmates and upset loved ones. Many will walk away and forget about the inmate after such prolonged absences of communication. Leaving the inmate with no viable affection, love or support with anybody meaningful outside of the prison walls.

This punishment tactic promotes a sense of abandonment and isolation that invariably translates to extremely violent outbursts. And for what? What exactly is the VADOC gaining from this practice?

A growing number of other states have put a stop to this barbaric practice for more forward thinking and obvious reasons. The only thing this action speaks of is cruelty and vindictiveness on the part of the Virginia Dept of Corrections towards both the inmates and their loved ones alike.

Based on what I know of this practice, the VADOC as a whole should really reconsider this barbaric practice and put an end to using communication deprivation as a torture and punishment tactic. It isn't working, nor has it ever worked to create anything positive for the inmate or the facility as a whole.

Just my 2 cents, spoken out of sheer frustration.
--

Sincerely,

Kimberly Zittlow 

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

YES, Sec.1985 (3) OF 42 USC OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1871, AKA THE KU KLUX KLAN ACT SHOULD BE USED TO HOLD THE VIRGINIA PRISON OFFICIAL ACCOUNTABLE..... by William Thorpe

The majority of imprisoned Virginians will return to society and the treatment experienced under the imprisonment conditions created by the Virginia prison official will henceforth determine and dictate the subsequent realized all around development of their humanness. I'm not speaking of the typical gibberish pablum super long handled ladle fed us by the idealistically delusional and insidiously inclined, support functionary of the status quo narrative laboring to assembly line like provide occupants for Virginia's prison cages. But what I want to focus on is the contradiction of Virginia's imprisonment premise. What I'll use to get the point across are the pillars of the Nations' and The Commonwealth of Virginias' Social Contract. Because the manner in which the prison official violates every aspect of it's very basis that even allows proximity with the prisoner is the fundamental problem or antagonism. In other words the people of and the Virginia tax payer cannot surrogately, through the prison official behave just as deviantly as the "convicted" and imprisoned while expecting "what"? Of the imprisoned, because as I will show with a listing of law suits by Virginia prisoners. The Virginia prison officials 'behavior during the performance of their duties is vilely antebellum old and savage that it is haplessly in violation of laws borne of the Nations most destructive and bloodletting war, The Civil War. Now, section 1985 of UNITED STATES LAW 42 USC is Titled, CONSPIRACY TO INTERFERE WITH CIVIL RIGHTS. Paragraph (3) of section 1985 states, DEPRIVING PERSONS OF RIGHTS OR PRIVILEGES. IF TWO OR MORE PERSONS IN ANY STATE OR TERRITORY CONSPIRE...and what the below listed cases will show is it's gratuitous violation by the Virginia prison official and I ask the reader to study the cases.

Vaughn v. Watts Dist. Lexis 51898. Tokley v.Ratliff 2007 U.S Dist. Lexis 24896. Davis v.Lester 156 F.Supp.2d 588. Barbee v. Anderson 2020 U.S Dist. Lexis 43133 Hessing v. Brunelle 2016 U.S Dist. Lexis 63026 Bennett v. Stirling 842 F.3d 319 Parker v. Proffit 1995 U.S Dist .Lexis 15941 Peyton v. Carico 2011 U.S Dist. Lexis 54243 Talbert v. Smith 2007 U.S Dist. Lexis 17108 Howard v. Stidham 2019 U.S Dist. Lexis 30704 Riddick v. Moore 2023 U.S Dist. Lexis 52822 Riddick v. Moore 2023 US Dist. Lexis 55162 Delk v. Moran 2018 U.S Dist. Lexis 50534 McCurdy v. Va.Dept.of Corr.2017 U.S Dist. Lexis 142788 Smith v. Ely 2015 U.S Dist .Lexis 175360 Farrakhan v. Johnson 2009 U.S Dist. Lexis 40342 Woodhouse v. Duncan 2018 U.S Dist. Lexis 53332 Woodhouse v. 2017U.S Dist. Lexis 211528 McCoy v. Young 2012 U.S Dist. Lexis 71547 The above are examples of the Virginia prison official's racist animus, using "nigger" while assaulting, threatening prisoners, which is element for a violation of 1985 (3) of 42 USC.

By William Thorpe

I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit


Saturday, March 23, 2024

"LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS "......WITHOUT JUSTIFIABLE EXECUTABLES IS CORRUPTION AND IT IS CORRUPT..... by William Thorpe

Recently Governor Glenn Youngkin vetoed a solitary confinement reform bill, that at least would've instructed Chadwick Dotson, Director of The Virginia Department of Correction, that the Machiavellian, "end justifies the means" isn't welcome in modern Virginia governance, which The Department's operations is aspect. Corruption has a couple of expressions (1) Diabolic (2) Fatuous, and regardless of expression, the result/consequence is barbarism. As inexplicably late or early as 1890, in In Re Medley,134 US 160 The Supreme Court of The United States found that, solitary confinement drove prisoners "after even a short confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition from which it was next to impossible to arouse them, and others became violently insane others,still, committed suicide while those who stood the ordeal better were not generally reformed, and in most cases, did not recover sufficient mental activity to be of any subsequent service to the community". THEN in 1988 The 7th Circuit, U.S Court of Appeals found in Davenport v. Derobertis 844 F.2d 1310 "That isolating a human being from other human beings year after year or even month after month can cause substantial psychological damage, even if the isolation isn't total". THEN in 1995 The U.S District Court for The Northern District of California in Madrid v. Gomez 889 F.Supp.1146, found that "Subjecting individuals to conditions [solitary confinement] that are "very likely "to render them psychotic or otherwise exacerbate a serious mental illness cannot be squared with evolving standards of humanity and decency.....A risk this grave---this shocking and indecent---simply has no place in civilized society". THEN in 2005 in Amicus filed by a group of Psychologist and Psychiatrist in a case before The Supreme Court of The United States, Wilkinson v. Austin #04-495 also 545 U.S 209 stated "No study of the effects of solitary or supermax-like confinement that lasted longer than 60 days failed to find evidence of negative psychological effects". THEN in 2015 in Incumaa v. Stirling 791F.3d 517, The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled" [Prisoner] had liberty interest in avoiding solitary confinement in security detention. The 4th Circuit, which Governor Youngkin is well aware, speaks the Supremacy of U.S law for The Commonwealth. THEN in 2019 in Porter v. Clarke 923 F.3d 348, The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals held," Solitary confinement posed an objective risk of serious psychological and emotional harm to inmate". THEN in 2022 in Thorpe v. Clarke 37 F.4th 926, The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled "Severe isolation alone can deprive prisoners of the minimal civilized measures of life necessities, violating The 8th Amendment", [ibid] Wall v. Clarke 2023 U.S Dist. Lexis 58937, [ibid] Carter v. Ely 2024 U.S Dist. Lexis 38334.To put it bluntly, Governor Youngkin's veto of the solitary confinement bill doesn't comport with the hard gleaned realizations exemplified by, the over a hundred years of criticism of the practice as illustrated by the above listed authorities. A primary function of The Executive, which Youngkin as Governor is, is illustrative and illuminating governance and such isn't achieved by enabling and defending the barbaric practice of solitary confinement in the prisons that literally inculcates insanity, suicides and imbecility to paraphrase The Supreme Court of The United States. Bad governance is an expression of corruption

Whether Governor Glenn Youngkins' veto of the solitary confinement reform bill was diabolic or fatuous is an idealistic exercise in intellectual indulgence that distracts from the one and only relevant fact, it was deleterious on Virginias' social contract, by adding on and compounding the inherent corruption, which the aspirational logic of Government claims amelioration. I list here reference examples of law suits filed by Virginia prisoners held in solitary confinement at Red Onion State Prison attempting to petition Government and seek redress of the extra-judicial nature of the detention, which the vetoed bill was intended to reform and correctly prohibit. These law suit examples are just a bit showing of the dirty laundry, rotten underbelly, fetid corruption Governor Glenn Youngkin's veto feebly attempts to conceal. CARTER V. ELY 2024 U.S DIST.LEXIS 38334 HOEHN V. GIBSON 2024 U.S DIST.LEXIS 41087 REID V. CORIZON HEALTH SERV.2024 U.S DIST.LEXIS 38333 CARTER V. STITH 2024 U.S DIST.LEXIS 22032 ARRINGTON V. MULLINS 2023 U.S DIST.LEXIS 183703 WILLIAMS V. GILBERT 2023 U.S DIST.LEXIS 126015 GODFREY V. DAVIS 2023 U.S DIST.LEXIS 108421 CARTER V. ELY 2023 U.S DIST.LEXIS 79927 WARD V. KISER 2023 U.S DIST.LEXIS 41663 JONES V. WHITE 2023 U.S DIST.LEXIS 186345 GRAY V. ENGLISH 2023 U.S DIST.LEXIS 27282 CARTER V. COLLINS 2023 U.S DIST.LEXIS 99160 CARTER V. KISER 2023 U.S DIST.LEXIS 6655 WALKER V. KISER 2022 U.S DIST.LEXIS 56878 DURAN V. HOOVER 2022 U.S DIST.LEXIS 196931 WALL V. CLARKE 2021 U.S DIST.LEXIS 224916 ALEXANDER V. COLLINS 2021 U.S DIST.LEXIS 75805 GEORGE V. PUCKETT 2021 U.S DIST. LEXIS 30899 EDWARDS V. KANODE 2020 U.S DIST.LEXIS 41300 LEE V. VA. DEPT. OF CORR. 2020 U.S DIST.LEXIS 231921 BARBEE V. ANDERSON 2020 U.S DIST.LEXIS 43133 JORDAN V.MCDUFFIE 2020 U.S DIST.LEXIS 46318 JOHNS V. LOVELL 2020 U.S DIST.LEXIS 15922 FARABEE V. LEE 2019 U.S DIST.LEXIS 170179 REYES V. CLARKE 2019 U.S DIST.LEXIS 150854 RICHARDSON V .R O S P 2017 U.S DIST.LEXIS 119133 MAKDESSI V. CLARKE 2015 U.S DIST.LEXIS 152925 AWE V. R O S P 2014 U.S DIST.LEXIS 35448 ODIGHIZUWA V. STROUTH 2007 U.S DIST.LEXIS 28397 RIVERA V. MATHENA 795 FED.APPX.169 DEPAOLA V. VA.DEPT. OF CORR.703 FED.APPX. 205 STICKLAND V. HALSEY 638 FED.APPX.179 The above listed cases are just a drop in the bucket of efforts from prisoners who in no form or fashion are lawyers and needless I add, judges who the cases are presented to joyfully and gleefully take delight in dismissing them. Not because Virginia prison officials didn't for example assault the prisoner by slamming the prisoner's head onto the floor, or refuse to provide food, showers, outside exercise and all the this and that, which the prison official receives a pay check to perform as legal duty under contract to the Virginia citizenry which the fraudulent refusal then subsequently necessitates (and the failure to perform their legal obligation opens up that other can of worms, which is fraud, Yeah defrauding the Virginia tax payer, which is also theft) the filing of the law suit. What enables and maintains the above the law presumptions and behavior of the Virginia prison official are apologetic actions by leaders in Virginia's Government, Institutions, businesses, like the recent veto of reforming the unambiguous and unequivocal barbarism of solitary confinement by Governor Glenn Youngkin. I asked, by way of title to this work what exactly are the means and mechanisms anticipated by the myth enumerated in the National and Commonwealth's Constitution. Because Governor Youngkin has to explain to the people of Virginia on what basis is he endorsing the abrogation of the democracy of law.

When the Supreme Court of The United States made its critique of solitary confinement in the 1890 case, In Re Medley. Its efforts only spoke to effects of the practice of solitary confinement on its victims, the prisoners. The reality, however is corruption corrupts completely and solitary confinement is corruption. It is a corrupt set of relations impacting both points of the relation or interaction, meaning the prison official, subjective, regardless of the avail of the Nuremberg defense rationale, is also corrupted completely even as the imposition on the prisoner-object is the corrupt solitary confinement condition. Consequently the corruption expands to include and envelope all and whomever defends and apologizes for its practice and existence thereby also exposing that the operative of the solitary confinement practice is Government and Law undermining ITSELF under the guise of exercising the primacy of its police powers. Which brings us to the spectacle of Governor Glenn Youngkins' recent veto of reform of its use by The Virginia Department of Corrections. As the former Soviet dissident, Alexander Solzhenitsyn formulated and I paraphrase, lies and state organized violence go hand in hand, which true to form, we now see reflected in Glenn Youngkins' veto. The condition of solitary confinement is quintessential, State violence and if as the Supreme Court of The United States realized in 1890 that it drove prisoners insane, then it also means that its architects and practioners are just as and demonstrably insane, because they are the ones, which in this instance, the Virginia prison official, are subjecting, imposing and forcing a human being, the Virginia prisoner into a condition, a set of relations that causes insanity which is not, the least of all of the other effects that are not anticipated by and are at odds with Virginia law, yet that's what a Governor of Virginia by exercising the executive privilege of veto has supported and endorsed. The question, nonetheless, isn't whether The Commonwealth can subject prisoners to solitary confinement under due process of law, but whether its with the extreme recognition that solitary confinement is an extraordinary and barbaric state action and must be treated as such, with demanding and compelling focus on limits of use. Virginia's Justice Infrastructure of which the prison system is function is a fact of The Commonwealth's political-economy. To which it's fundamental purpose and primary focus is establishing and maintaining mechanisms for functioning control. This need for functioning control is what comes up against and is at odds with the application of the Social Contracts "equality under law", which like an unseen star in a binary star system revealing its existence by the behavior of its seen sister star, we experience as Government disregarding law as embodied by the prison official's barbaric use of solitary confinement and its thorough violation of law and the intrinsic integrity of governance and Government. The proof of this is, again, the exercise of veto powers by politicians, that betrays the progressive interest of society its people and the instinct of governance. There is distinction between corruption and criminal violation. While the Virginia prisoner is imprisoned as a result of criminal violation, the Virginia politician on the other hand in betraying governance is covered in corruption.

By William Thorpe

I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Advocacy For Reform Of The Virginia Prison System Shouldn't Become Idealistic By William Thorpe

The Virginia Department Of Corrections has an encyclopedia of Operating Procedures, Policies, Standards, Memoranda and Practices. The Commonwealth Of Virginia has a Constitution, then a universe of laws, statutes, Executive Orders, advisories, Opinions of The Attorney General and Practices. Then there is the Constitution of The United States, its executing laws and Practices. Now the Virginia Prisoner as all others animating the American existence of life and death are a construct of and subject to all of the above laws, traditions and practices. None of what I'm saying is insight, its just that you the reader are not caught up in the attention of its daily granular detail. I start with this, because I speak to this ahistoric tendency exhibited by advocacy, which is a tension, but can also be characterized as contradiction. Advocacy for reform of the Virginia prison system relatively falls into a couple of categories, which are (1) Idealistic and (2) practical. This isn't criticism in itself but an understanding of purpose. It's with this issue of purpose, meaning the focus of the reform that the question of tension and contradiction are factors. Because the approach taken by a number of those advocating for reform of the Virginia prison system underscores whether their understanding for any number of reasons is tethered to their anticipation. No objective and serious-minded person will argue against or disagree that the Virginia prison official is extra-judicial and behaves outside the scope of Law, so reformation of the system and holding the prison official accountable hinges on the practicality of its means and mechanisms. Idealistically the solution to the question of holding the Virginia prison official accountable has been presented as, creating independent oversight of The Virginia Department Of Corrections. But the reason this is Idealistic, and a gambit played, is laws already exist to investigate and hold the prison official accountable. What will set any oversight mechanism apart from the ideal, is to what degree is its remedial reach practical. Because the extra-judicial and above the law behavior of the prison official, which the creation of a purported independent ombudsman is expected to inhibit and even prohibit, is inherent to what it means to be a Virginia prison official. In other words breaking the law is organic to and an inescapable fact of being a prison official. Yet the creation of a Virginia Department of Corrections specific independent ombudsman presents nothing unique to the preexisting Virginia Code 2.2-309, detailing the duties of the State Inspector General anymore then the already existing laws. With practical measures to hold the Virginia prison official accountable, we firstly begin with a prison grievance process, that a prison's grievance department cannot dishonestly claim that the prisoner didn't comply with the requirements. The grievance process is a Virginia and United States law requirement. What is more fundamental is the political reformative action of excising the scapegoating narrative impulse of Virginia's Justice Infrastructure towards the prisoner. This scapegoating narrative has allowed its exploitation for political gain by those who are utterly disinclined from ameliorating deviance and criminality. Virginia's political landscape is historically stamped with, gambits purposefully designed to coopt practical prison reform .Thats what we have to change.

By William Thorpe

I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit


Monday, March 11, 2024

Father Forgive Them


Guest Audio
Cell Double L is the final cell in Oklahoma State Penitentiary. It is the cell you occupy before your execution. We speak to three men and their loved ones as they move through death watch row. This episode includes references to penal executions and strong language. Please take care while listening. Huge enormous thanks to Bigler Stouffer, Wade Lay, and Donald Grant for sharing your stories. Also major thanks to the loved ones, on the outside, for allowing us inside their lives. Produced by Ellie Lightfoot and Gaby Caplan Gaby Caplan and Ellie Lightfoot reported this story while participating in the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism's National Fellowship and the Kristy Hammam Fund for Health Journalism. Season 15 - Episode 11

Saturday, March 9, 2024

The Black And White Of Holding The Virginia Prison Official Accountable Is Politics By William Thorpe

Okay, Virginia Code Section 53.1-30 (A) allows any member of Virginia's General Assembly, including the Governor access to any of Virginia's Prisons. There isn't any excuse why Delegates and Senators of The People of Virginia rarely exercise the right. Considering the fact that even under a rock, isn't Rip Van Winkle removed enough to be oblivious that what is being done by Prison Officials of The Virginia Department Of Corrections in the name of The People has nothing to do with a primary function of preparing The Virginia Prisoner for social reentry. Virginia Code Section 18.2-10 specifies punishment for convictions of felonies in The Commonwealth of Virginia which are imprisonment and fines. Virginia Code Section 53.1-1through 53.1-267 gives a generalized idea of Virginia's imprisonment scheme. I have given the basic laws dealing with Virginia's prison and imprisonment scheme, but the laws are not the basis, the foundation of Virginia's Justice Infrastructure of which the prison system is function. The basis however is The Politics. The Politics is what stops and inhibits The Peoples Representatives or Virginia Politician from going to Virginia's Prisons i.e Red Onion, Wallens Ridge, Sussex I State Prisons, even if its a Photo Op, as President Barack Obama's with his visit to a Federal prisoner at a Federal Prison during his push for reduction of drug sentences and focus on solitary confinement, to take seriously the fact that the "above the law" behavior of the prison official is a rot on Virginia's Social Contract. I have listed Va .Code 18.2-10, the punishment for felony convictions law to highlight that the sentence and fine is the punishment. Everything else and I mean everything else the prisoner experiences as condition of the imprisonment is based on ideas and speculations of what The Director of The Virginia Department of Corrections thinks and feels will serve the ruling political masters interest. So to hold the prison official accountable requires the narrative of political reform. Political reform isn't necessarily about Republican or Democratic critique, but its about an accounting of relations within Virginia's Social Contract that indicts reaction and its anti-reform insentience. Classic Virginia politics has nauseatingly exploited the Justice Infrastructure at the expense of remedying its aggravating circumstances, while pursuing the unoriginal scapegoating of the prisoner, as diversion from its true subject or focus of its political energies, which is maintaining an iron grip on the mass demographic from whom the Virginia prisoner is born. My position is, this is known and clearly understood by those who perennially seek votes from the prisoner's family and the victims of crime and their families. The reality nonetheless is the exploited demographic of that political same ole same ole has to come to terms with their complicity and accept not as petty criticism but the realization that every relationship or point of interaction had with the social contract provides opportunity to assert and attest that the requisite politics is specifically an understanding of its common interest. The law is politics, its extension or expression. The civil rights act of 1871 was passed to stop Klan terror of Black people yet it wasn't enforced till 1961 in Monroe v. Pape 365 US 167, appx 90 years after its passage because the politics in 1961 permitted it.

By William Thorpe

I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit


Thursday, March 7, 2024

To The Attorney General Of The Commonwealth Of Virginia Jason Miyares Is Unhinged By William Thorpe

 

No one likes the rule breaker. Virginia's prison cages are full of those who summarily responded to personal violations (which is their sovereign right) but as members of the social contract, such right is transferred and surrendered to the collective as laws of the Commonwealth. No one likes the thief, even as Jesus Christ ascribed value to "the thief in the night" (Matthew 24:43-44). I begin with this, let me add one more anecdote, the Nations founding Fathers, specifically, the 56, who signed the Declaration of Independence with oath, ["And, for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor"]. beginning with John Hancock to Georgia's, George Walton. All, of em, every last one were petty crass criminals, traitors from the vantage and position of Great Britain, who they rebelled against and there is nothing more fundamental a crime than the relativity of treason which is what the 56 declarators of the Nations Independence committed, but to quote James Clavell in SHOGUN, "there is no excuse for rebellion.....there's one if you win" [pp.1147] and the 56 signers of The Declaration of Independence won. As such exist eternally as historic paragons of virtue, totems of quintessential self-determination. These anecdotes stand as reminder and basis of why Virginia's Justice Infrastructure and the prison system requires reform as the sunflower follows the arc of the Sun. Because reactionaries as Jason Miyares in his role as attorney general of the Commonwealth of Virginia, for whatever reason would rather we forget and gloss over the fact, deviance and criminality or rule breaking are organic facts of the dialectic of the human condition. A couple of days ago, Jason Miyares sent the entire Virginia General Assembly a polical tract in pursuit of the typical tough on crime scapegoating of the Virginia prisoner. To excerpt some of what attorney general Jason Miyares sent, "Recent history of Earned Sentence Credit Legislation prior to 2020, as then set forth in Code sec.53.1-202.3,The Commonwealth maintained as part of its sentence credit system a longstanding truth-in-sentencing rule whereby all inmates sentenced to serve on felonies would serve at least 85% of their sentences......Although the sentence credit system, as amended excludes many violent felonies. It alarmingly permits inmates to earn the enhanced earned sentence credits......"(Jason Miyares) Notwithstanding the disinformation of Jason Miyares, tract. What I want to focus on is, what social contract dynamic is animating Jason Miyares? Because for example there are real reasons, why the likes of William Wilberforce, Frederick Douglas to name a couple opposed chattel slavery or why Cesare Beccaria critiqued crime and punishment. There are reasons why participant administrators in the modern American prison experiment as Robert W. Dumond write it's exposé or why prison jurisprudence is a mockery of The United States Constitution and Virginia law. Virginia's scheme of awarding "good time" or credits applicable to a prison sentence are affirmative recognition by the people, yes the Commonwealth that even Solomonic wisdom factors in the nuance of causality. But the Miyares of Virginia would rather dictate to the Mother of the convicted and in extension the victim of crime what is Justice at the expense of its distortion.

By William Thorpe

I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit


Monday, March 4, 2024

A Careful Study Of 34 USCS 30309 And 108 P.L.79, 117 Stat. 972 Detailing The, Prison Rape Elimination Act Of 2003 Is Astonishing By William Thorpe

Conventional wisdom, opines that Politicians, law and policy makers are apathetic and even deaf to the commonsensical and practical observations delivered by Prison Reformist, that the typical treatment meted out to the American Prisoner and the conditions of the imprisonment, which is akin to the activity of the colloquial "snake oil" salesman is counter intuitive and self defeatist on all levels of the American Prison experiment. So when one encounters, analysis and unambiguous declarations in this milieu, reminiscent of the futility and reaction of the 19th century's "Know-Nothings", it must be acknowledged. Because it presents us with that axiom, the"genie is out of the bottle" and no amount of sophistry can deny the fact, ignorance as defense doesn't exist anymore. Which is exactly what the 108th U.S. Congress revealed with their work on The Prison Rape Elimination Act. Because all one has to do is replace the word "rape" in the Act with any circumstance of prison that is systemic and a DeFacto condition and the findings and conclusions hold true and factual. So the only question is why are, Prison Officials allowed to run prisons as they do when law makers and policy makers are firmly grounded in the knowledge that the operations and current management of prisons are Sisyphean in their singular focus on aggravating and worsening the circumstances of the imprisoned? And as a matter of fact, it is fraudulent and a betrayal of the public's trust that the prison official are for example taking control of a 18 yr. old sentenced to prison on account of a conviction of drug dealing and treating the 18yr. old in that manner, which Philosophers as Cesare Beccaria (1739-1794) criticized 259 years ago. Now as this relates to Virginia law makers and politicians, all I ask is they reread and study 34 USCS 30309, the findings, replace the word "rape" with for example the Virginia prison officials habit of sicing dogs on Virginia prisoners, or starving prisoners then lying about it, denying prisoners outside exercise, then lying about it, refusing to process prisoner complaints, then lying about it, employing a pro forma rubber stamp for what should be a honest process of prisoner release from solitary confinement. In other words terrorizing the prisoner. Or how about we scrutinize the Virginia lawmakers behavior in passing laws concerning the imprisoned that render the ex prisoner socially dysfunctional all along scapegoating the resulting and inevitable pitfalls. In other words the realization of Article 1 of The Constitution of Virginia is that proverbial, cutting off the nose to spite the face. Because thats exactly what the unwillingness of all of Virginia's Institutions, from its law schools, churches and places of religion, to all sectors of the Social Contract to face up to the fact, that something is seriously awry in a society when the dominant and major outlay and expense of its productivity is for confining humans in cages. In 1965, Lord Chancellor Gardiner of the British House of Lords, had this to say to his bewigged brethren, over the state practice of killing people. It is apt for this work."When we abolished the punishment for treason that you should be hanged, and then cut down while still alive,and then disemboweled while still alive and then quartered, we did not abolished the punishment because we sympathized with traitors, but because we took the view that it was a punishment no longer consistent with our self respect ",

By William Thorpe

I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit


Sunday, March 3, 2024

You Gotta Be Kidding Me, Virginia Republicans Again, Allow The Virginia Department Of Corrections Veto Over Oversight ? When Will Virginians Wise Up To This Fox Guarding The Hen House Politics ? By William Thorpe

Virginia Republicans are well aware that The Commonwealth Of Virginia (taxpayers) reportedly pays out $2 million yearly to private attorneys, on top of whatever settlement levied against the State in lawsuits brought against The Virginia Department Of Corrections. Because Sen. Dave Marsden, D-Fairfax, highlighted it during the recent legislative fight to get The Virginia Department Of Corrections in compliance with and to abide by laws all Virginians are subject to. The Republican Party, Nationally and Locally, (Virginia) has created a cottage industry of polemicizing against governmental spending it disagrees with and abhors as wasteful. And there isn't a Virginia taxpayer (save for the beneficiaries) who would disagree that doling out $2 million yearly to lawyers on top of settlement penalties due to unlawful and extra-judicial behavior by prison officials isn't wasteful, when all the prison official has to do is stop breaking the law. Nonetheless Republicans have consistently enabled and principally supported the prison officials presumptuous above the law activities and practically accorded The Virginia Department Of Corrections veto powers over efforts to subject it to actual and legitimate oversight. During this 2024 Virginia General Assembly Legislative session, again Democrats worked to establish Department Of Corrections specific oversight mechanisms, regardless of how much teeth it would have, it was an unassailable assertion. Sen. Dave Marsden, sponsor of The Virginia Prison Ombudsman-Oversight proposal said, [as reported by Graham Moomaw on 2/13/24] "I think what it will do is cut down on the $2 million we pay every year for outside counsel with the attorney general's office to settle lawsuits". Marsden told the committee. "I think a lot of these can be short-stopped by an ombudsman" . In opposition to the bill/proposal, The Virginia Department Of Corrections Legislative liaison Jerry Fitz, declared how The Department sees itself as an above the law entity, not subject to oversight by the Virginia voter and taxpayer (who by the way not only gives it its authority but funds it) with, "the costs of implementing a more robust oversight system would be unknown", and that ombudsman oversight, "would create another layer of government". Then The Virginia House Appropriations Committee with Republicans in the majority voted straight party line to agree with VADOC that it'd be onerous and a burden for it to comply with the law. I mean seriously, an agency tasked with confining those convicted of breaking laws claiming it should be allowed to break the law, because complying with it "would create... another layer of government" and "the costs of [compliance] would be unknown"? And the peoples representatives, politicians voted for to maintain social integrity under law, agreeing with a state agency that being watchful of its activities is at odds and will impede its functioning? And politicians tasked with the responsibility of ensuring oversight of all of Virginia government outsources the privilege to the subject? At the expense of that laboriously gleaned realization, absolute power corrupts absolutely? Hasn't VADOC taught us that enough?

By William Thorpe

I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit


Friday, March 1, 2024

Virginia It's Time To Exercise Your Referendum Rights Under Article 1 Section 2 Of The Constitution Of Virginia, To Put A Stop To Suicides, Forced Starvations At The State's Concentration Camps, By William Thorpe

The Virginia Supreme Court recently ruled in Williams v. Legere 77 Va. App. 422, "A referendum is an exercise by the voters of their traditional right through direct legislation to override the views of their elected representatives as to what serves the public interest". There isn't a more clear cut and divergent speech of what The People want from that declared in the confines of Virginia's General Assembly by the elected representatives, than on the issue of Virginia's prisons specifically and the justice infrastructure generally. (and when I say The People, I include Prisoners, those confined within the State and those its exported out of State under interstate compact and those released, but disenfranchised). Our ancients cogently and wisely have instructed that when the issue is, one encompassing, the fundamental authority of the State, it's assertion and exercise of police powers or 'organized violence', there cannot be a specific indictment but a general one.What this means is a distaste to act as if causality isn't within the historic confines of Social Contract. As an aside, the habit to ignore causality, is an inexorable operative of impunity. Not to get all into a history lesson. Prior to the civil war, 1861, the Nations prisons had a different character from the post war one that emerged, particularly after passage of The 13th amend.and it's nationalization of slavery. Pre civil war Black people weren't imprisoned and if they were, it was negligible, because the majority were chattel enslaved. It defeated the purpose of the enslavement to imprison an enslaved. But post defeat of the Confederacy and passage of the 13th amend. that purportedly outlawed slavery, prisons across the Nation saw an explosion of black prisoners, because imprisonment meant a return to what slavery meant, which was free unpaid work and the Nation needed free unpaid labor. On this character transformation of the American prisons, impunity and its above the law tendencies recreated the organic conditions of slavery which currently exist as the barbarity of prison. As it concerns Virginia, Republicans have revealed themselves to be nothing more than neo-confedrates, pining for Robert E. Lee coming down Monument Ave. so their idea of prison is just as their world view, reactionary with the requsite impunity of the prison official. Democrats on the other hand relatively and idealistically recognize that for the integrity of the Social Contract and it's maintenance as declared in Article 1 section 1, of The Constitution of Virginia a semblance of equality under law, as applied to the prison system and justice infrastructure is required. Nonetheless prisoners are politically scapegoated for access to speculative power, as such the social condition that births and creates them is maligned and exploited, thus imposing, subjecting and treating the "free" Virginian existing in those conditions just as if they were imprisoned. So this recognition for a referendum to finally bring accountability to the maladministration of The Virginia Department Of Corrections is for Virginians who understand and accept that equality under law and accountability of the prison official are a symbiosis of the self-interest necessary if they are not to be constantly and repeatedly exploited by the law and order, tough on crime machinations that breed the environment of deviance.

By William Thorpe

I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit


Monday, February 26, 2024

President Ronald Reagan Gave Us "Trickle Down Economics " Which Enabled Trickle Down Law Breaking Impunity By The Prison Official And Justice Infrastructure By William Thorpe

What lessons are we learning from the current Social atmosphere? What historical blinders are being removed? Virginia's imprisonment scheme has rested on a quasi-unchallenged value of a National character that there is a demarcation between subjects of The Justice Infrastructure, of whom some are imprisoned, which the Supreme Court of The United States, declared in Rhodes v. Chapman 452 US 337 (1981)" The Constitution does not mandate comfortable prisons "conditions that are restrictive and even harsh.....are part of the penalty that criminal offenders pay for their offenses against society". Now what events of a National character since 2021 have revealed is, the based demarcation, which The Supreme Court in Rhodes v. Chapman asserts is as shifty as dry sand and just as speculatively porous. The very basis of the Supreme Court itself was challenged by those declarative events of January 6th, 2021, that inextension said, the Virginia prisoner as all other prisoners across the Nation were mere arbitrary extra-judicial circumstances. The reasoning in Rhodes itself was symptomatically complicit in its preparation for a January 6th lawlessness. Because on what authority is "comfortable" cautioned as being without Constitutional mandate, when the inverse is just as accurate? For one, "comfortable" as legal destination is idealistic due to its subjectivity along with "restrictive", because imprisonment as practiced by an entity as The Commonwealth of Virginia with its inchoate pseudo legal formulations, has to expect the resulting prison official malfeasance and law breaking.

The point is understanding what we must in order to reform Virginia's prison system. Virginia as The Nation, constructed a Justice Infrastructure and prison system in pursuit of a specific political-economic interest and "justice" as an expression of "public safety" is only accountable within its logic and that is what must be changed. Everything we must understand is contained within relations of The Social Contract and what I mean by the Social Contract are our aspirational and deterministic narratives of progress and those we self-check ourselves with, regardless of value. Secondly, we have to come to the unvarnished acceptance that our ignorance is always and I emphasize always used and exploited against us. I've been imprisoned by the Commonwealth since 1980, February to be exact. So despite the fact that the Nation's history as Virginia is choke full and replete of reference markers in the service of extra-judicial impunity, what I have paid attention to due to my imprisonment are those breathed into National existence since 1980 to date, by Ronald Reagan through Joe Biden, their Presidencies and in Virginia, John Dalton through Glenn Youngkins, Governors.Despite major points of existence as, parole on the Virginia Prisoners imprisonment. There has to be the primary realization that prison reform in Virginia is specifically and fundamentally a targeting of the daily extra-judicial behavior of the prison officials interactions with the prisoner. Virginia's Justice Infrastructure, as the Nations' has anticipated the incompatibility that "equality under law" for the people also means the congruent "above the law" contradiction of the Government officials i.e the prison officials 'function and activity. We remember the resulting 2020 National protest of Cop killings of Black Men, embodied in George Floyd's death. We remember the cries for eliminating Qualified Immunity as function, an above the law shield, giving cover to prison officials and Cops who break the law and violate the public trust. We remember how The Republican Party came out against any hint of reforming it as shield giving illiberal protection to the offending Public Official. But Qualified Immunity has a undemocratic origin, as an authoritarian tool employed as all things American in the service of enslaving Black People and maintaining discrimination. See JAMISON V. McCLENDON 476 F.SUPP.3d 386 and the analysis and compleate history of Qualified Immunity by Judge Carlton W. Reeves, then See BLUE BY DAY AND WHITE BY KNIGHT:REGULATING THE POLITICAL AFFILIATION OF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND MILITARY PERSONNEL 81 Iowa L. Rev 1079 by Robin D. Barnes, See PIERSON V.RAY 352 F.2d 213 and PIERSON V.RAY 386 US 547 (Both Pierson cases are Genesis of Qualified Immunity deployed to protect Jim Crow era Mississippi Cops. I bring these cases to light again because if we are to reform The Virginia Department Of Corrections and The Justice Infrastructure we have to understand its nature, meaning its purpose. Here is another point, See this case DOBBS V. JACKSONS WOMEN'S HEALTH ORG.142 S.CT 2228,what I want to point out is check out the Appendices listing all State's historical Anti-Abortion laws, pay attention to Virginia's 1848 law and its Machiavellian construction when it states, "Any free person who shall administer to any pregnant woman......"(what I ask the reader to pay attention to is the emphasis by the law on "free person" considering that in 1848 Virginia was a slave holding state, so a pregnant woman who held people enslaved could get around the law by having her enslaved administer the abortion inducing drugs. The significance of this is it makes the case that the above the law inclination is the dialectic.

The Presidency of Ronald Reagan, from 1980-1988 was one of pure without rhyme corruption, it gave new life to the administration and institutionalization of impunity by the justice infrastructure and I make no bones saying it, because it offered nothing, than a perversion of whatever latent redemption is inherent within the National Social Contract. Simply regurgitating as political strategy, President Lyndon Johnson's well quoted observation that, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell,give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you", wasn't mastery but crass mediocrity which is what Ronald Reagan's brain produced as high function when he practiced his version of the other bigot, Richard Nixon's "southern strategy" by promising to "restore to states and local governments the power that properly belongs to them", which was just another deadender flailing, invoking E. Pollard's, perjurious, shameless,"Lost Cause", a revision of the enslaving Confederacy's Civil War cause, which on August 3,1980 Reagan dog whistled to the "Lost Cause" ears at Mississippi's Neshoba County Fair a stone skip away from the infamous Philadelphia, the 1964 killing zone of 3 damn good people who were resisting the short sightedness of the Ronald Reagan's of the world. So When we talk about prison reform, it means precisely this. When a Virginia Prison Official thinks its a good idea to introduce rabid, savage dogs into the prison environment, for the purpose of controlling prisoners of whom a majority are Black, at the expense of history, as if dogs are not a peculiar and particular totem of the dehumanization of Black people. Then said prison official acts like a savage beast, a flesh tearing dog hadn't just been unleashed and siced on the prisoner whom to let The Virginia Department of Corrections tell us has a core mission of preparing for a return to society? So when we talk about reforming the Virginia Department of Corrections and the prison system, what we are actually confronting is, a brain so corrupt, so degenerate that it presents to the "Jeffersonian candid world", a means, a mechanism as strategy, as objective, when we are told, something as "States Rights" can exist, for itself without purpose or objective and it is accepted. Which is what we are asked to accept from the prison official, that in pursuit of the core mission of preparing the prisoner for return to society, the prisoner must be subjected to daily barbarity, that are in effect violations of law that not only created the prisoner but the prison official and the trust and privilege given by the people of Virginia. The States Rights disclaimer by enslavers and supremacist is the same prison official logic in pursuit of impunity and its above the law presumption, because the prison official, wants to violate law while claiming to be its defender. Check out this anecdote, back in I think 2002, I was in solitary confinement at Wallens Ridge State Prison and I overheard a Captain who had just been acquitted for falsifying state documents say to one of my neighbors that he was taking the word of the floor officer over the prisoner (my neighbor) because my neighbor was a convict and the floor officer was a "sworn correctional officer".I found it ironic because the Captain himself was an acquittal away from being a convict and on top of that prison officials have never turned a snitch word down because the snitch is a convict. The point is what that Captain was expressing was that denigration and dismissal of the prisoner's, our humanness which is the epitome of above the law impunity.

By William Thorpe

I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit


Thursday, February 22, 2024

Prison Reform In Virginia Is About Politics. So How Many Mothers, Loved Ones Of Prisoners Have Voted For Anti-Reform Politicians? By William Thorpe

 

A Mother, A Loved one of a Virginia Prisoner gets a phone call, a snail mail, a J-Pay/Securus emessage from the prisoner telling the mother or wife, the family member that such and such prison official didn't give them a meal tray or the meal portions are starvation portions in violation of The Virginia Department Of Corrections Food Policy and State Law. Or such and such Sergeant or Lieutenant at the Solitary Confinement housing at Red Onion, Wallens Ridge, Sussex I State Prisons, Green Rock, River North, Pocahontas Correctional Centers refused them showers, outside exercise, again in violation not only of prison policy but State Law. What I've illustrated are just a moment in the every day unceasing violations by The Virginia Prison Official of The Virginia Department of Corrections Operating Procedures, Policies, Memoranda, plus The U.S Constitution and Virginia Law. Or the prisoner has an abscessed tooth, gout, stomach pain (which could be "fill in the blank" issue), symptoms of some sort of onset infection, which the prisoner has complied with prison policy, and made the appropriate medical and security staff aware yet the prison isn't fulfilling its obligations of providing the requisite medical care, again in violation of The Department Of Corrections Operating Procedures, Policies, e.t.c plus U.S. Constitution and Virginia State law and don't forget Codes of Professional and Ethical Conduct of the various Medical Associations, Boards and Groups. Or the Prisoner tells the family of mental instability and depression and despite notifying the prisons mental health staff, the response has been indifference, even mocking skepticism, again in violation of all the above noted authorities. Or because the Prisoner complained of any number of issues certain cliques of prison officials are now targeting the prisoner, with retaliatory shake downs or cell searches, planting contraband in the prisoners cell so the prisoners sentence will be extended, fabricating infractions in other words prison officials are using cover of law to break the law. Thereby depriving the prisoner of whatever minimal privileges permitted as subsequent punishment. Everything that I've just described are as I've said daily occurrences of violations at all Virginia prisons. The intensity and frequency of the violations are as in the daily organic life experiences of the demographic base producing and creating the Virginia Prisoner dependent on the whims and caprices of the offending perpetrator, who is protected by the reigning politics. The Virginia Prison as extension of The Justice Infrastructure takes on the nature and character of the ruling Politics in other words, the priorities and worldview of either progressive/equality under law or conservative/status quo bias. Now if the family of the Virginia prisoner isn't attentive to this fact that a specific type of Virginia politics is whats enabling the prison official's impunity and as a result all the harm experienced by their loved one and they vote and support those politicians who either overtly or tacitly endorse the above the law behavior of the prison official, then they have no one to blame but themselves.

By William Thorpe

I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Virginia Changed It's Laws So The Director Of The Prison System Could Run It By The Seat Of The Pants By William Thorpe

Once upon a life time ago, Virginia prison law was based on The State Board Of Corrections setting standards for the running of the prison system. Then it was changed to allow and permit The Director Of The Virginia Department Of Corrections, see Virginia Code 53.1-10 (powers and duties of Director) to pretty much free style and implement whatever ideas suited his/hers fancy, even under the guise penology, it is still speculative, because there is nothing empirical or scientific as science is understood about penology. I say this to make a point about some of the claimed philosophical underpinning of what the Virginia prisoner is subjected to. Everything that I say, all my observations are based on 44 years of continued imprisonment by the Commonwealth of Virginia, which for a major part has been in solitary confinement and its maximum and super max prisons and not because I have any crazy, dramatic and atypical convictions, but because I have objected to the extra-judicial treatment plyed by the Commonwealth's prison officials. In other words I know what above the law means for the Virginia prison official.

Upon encountering Virginia Code 53.1, one would think, its title, Prisons and Other Methods of Corrections, indicates a legally cogent and comprehensive basis for treatment of the Virginia Prisoner, till you realize after running into Va. Code 53.1-10, that the Director as Head Honcho of The Prison System is pretty much free to experiment as he/she sees fit (but then Virginia hasn't had a she in the position yet in these 44 years of my imprisonment and that alone should have the Virginia woman furrowing her brow, with why).A number of our ancients have given us the observation that the measure of advancement, development and civility of a society isn't to be found in its well fed or elites, but its marginalized and the marginalized in Virginia are its prisoners and the social environment that produces them. Now the elites would naturally have us it see it the other way around, that their social exclusivity is the measure of Virginia and its civilization, but our humanness won't allow us, the delusion. With this said I can now point out why the authority given the Director of The Virginia Department Of Corrections is the inevitable conclusion of the perversion of Virginia's civilization. Virginia's civilization, its political-economy is built on the backs of the chattel enslavement of Black People and to a lesser degree the indentured servitude of a type of white person. In maintenance of Virginia's society built on the enslavement of human beings an entire set of thinking was created by the enslavers to distort their activities and inure their behavior and its that way of thinking that is the "discretion" given The Director of The Virginia Department of Corrections, by Va. Code 53.1-10. In other words the authority requires the thinking and behavior of an enslaver. See this case, Ruffin v. Commonwealth 62 VA 790, where in 1871 the Virginia Supreme Court ruled, pretty much that the prisoner was less than human. Now this steadfastness to the enslavers thinking exhibited by Virginia's Supreme Court, in 1871 came on the heels of The Civil War, the bloodiest war in the Nations history, to date. Which more than makes my point that, enslaving Black People which was Virginia's civilization, not only distorted the thinking but it inured the enslaver to the offensiveness of their behavior. Because it is almost psychopathic and cult like that despite the well documented perdition of the civil war, by the likes of Stephen Crane which was literally fought to destroy, Virginia and its Sister rogue States affinity and compulsion to enslave, its Supreme Court could still pine for slavery as social class, that it found it in the Virginia prisoner. Despite the fact that the Nation begun to in 1944 (see the case Coffin v. Reichard 143 F.2d 443), repudiate the thinking in the Ruffin ruling and supposedly come to its senses, finding shame that once upon a time a Virginia jurist found it "normal" to give us Ruffin v. Commonwealth and Virginia's Supreme Court itself in 1919 without much fanfare denounced the Ruffin ruling, in Haynes v. Peterson 125 VA 730.The thinking required in The Director of The Virginia Department of Corrections is a resurrection of the enslaver.

It's a well kept but in the open secret that Virginia's as the rest of the Nation, prisoner population exploded after The Civil War and through The infamy of Jim Crow, because imprisonment as it was becoming a more palatable mechanism for slavery allowed it's resumption without the accompanying vulnerability to the criticism that had wrought The Civil War. We see its Faustian bargain in the enumeration and existence of The 13th Amendment to The Constitution of The United States, where if slavery had been relegated to The Rogue States of The Rebellious Confederacy, prior to the Civil War upon its conclusion it was Nationalized under the pretext of punishment for criminal conviction. So if the Civil War was fought to rid the Nation of slavery (which in actuality it was) why then would the victors permit its Nationalized resurrection? The answer is found in what those newly freed former enslaved black people, as prisoners became, workers and laborers rebuilding the Nation under the guise of penal punishment. All of this are facts which The Virginia Department of Corrections conceals under the euphemism, "public safety" as core mission. Virginia is a whole entity and regardless of its disparate components, regardless of the shortsightedness of its reactionaries in whose world view and interest, its Justice Infrastructure and Prison system labors. What the Virginia public, its taxpaying non elite have to ask is what exactly is The Director of The Virginia Department of Corrections accomplishing, when the philosophy deployed and effected by the Department is practically at odds, even at war with contemporary grasp and cognition of The Human Condition? So for example its not even debatable anymore that the Prisoner's stable family contact is fundamentally as important as nutritionally adequate meals, because for one, a stable family connection prepares the prisoner for reentry into society (which The Department claims is a core mission) more than the pro forma pep talks it gives prisoners, just as nutritionally sound meals saves the taxpayer, the State, Health cost (unless the State of Virginia, perversely wants to redistribute wealth into the medical and health care industry, by paying for prisoner health care that could've been prevented by giving prisoners nutritionally adequate meals to begin with) yet what we see The Director and Department doing is the opposite. It perverts, family association by subjecting it to averse and punitive treatment, which it also does to food, by deliberating starving prisoners at Red Onion and Wallens Ridge State Prisons and its all tantamount to the prison official withholding health care medication from prisoners as punitive sanctions, notwithstanding the fact that such medications are obligations on The Commonwealth of Virginia to ensure a wholesome treatment of the prisoner. But what we have is because The Director is left to keep on resuscitating that depraved husk of the enslaver mindset The Virginia Department of Corrections is stuck in this wormhole of professing "public safety", while doing all that it possibly can to undermine and betray it. Because what exactly is it teaching the prisoner, who will be released that lying, fabricating false infractions, planting contraband, denying meals and even when meals are provided, its a violation, posing its own set of questions of fraud?

By William Thorpe

I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit

Tuesday, February 13, 2024

Glenn Youngkin Exploited Parental Rights To Become Governor Of Virginia, Then He Betrayed It At The Virginia Department Of Corrections By William Thorpe

What is more of Parental concern, than the fact ones child is imprisoned? Virginia's Prisons are choke full of children, regardless of age but sadly to say the majority are so young that they don't meet the drinking age requirements of Virginia Code Section 4.1-304, which is 21. Glenn Youngkin along with Virginia Republicans exploited parents concerns over their kids to political success, he became Governor of Virginia. Then apparently he and The Republican Party promptly and conveniently betrayed it by ignoring the fact that Virginia's largest agency, The Virginia Department Of Corrections imprisons children, whose parents also have concerns about what is being done to them just as those parents who attacked schools and teachers to gain him the Governorship. The Virginia, Brain, Mind, Heart and Soul has a daily encounter with accounts of violations of prisoners , by Virginia Prison Officials, whom have swore oaths not to behave in the law breaking manner revealed in the one after the other law suits, media stories, pleas by parents, family and loved ones to their Representatives. Yet despite it all and the fact Governor Glenn Youngkin as Executive of The Commonwealth of Virginia is principally responsible for the extra-judicial practices and subsequent law breaking fest done with impunity by The Virginia Prison Official, we don't see the recognition that the abuses subjected to prisoners, who also have parents will not be overlooked and swept under the rug of indifference as misdeeds by the prison official has historically enjoyed. Look if one is convicted of violating law and imprisoned it should then on the, public trust merits of the police powers of the State introduce them to paragons of compliance with law in the prison official and not this reality of Virginia prisons where the prison official deploys law, functioning under its cover to break it and pervert it in every manner imaginable, thereby enabling the only pertinent, relevant and socially destructive question, whatever happened to "equal under law".The issue isn't about the conviction of a violation of law, but the fact that the prisoner is a prisoner because of law and despite this fact and its understanding being latent within Virginia's politics and politicians of both Parties have historically compromised it, because those Virginians impacted by it are consistently betrayed, doesn't mean it isn't there, it is. Virginia law and its jurisprudence traces its substance and logic to Anglo-Saxon or British Common law and practices, stemming from the Magna Carta .I make this point to say this, Virginia's Justice Infrastructure, its Laws and Jurisprudence appreciates and recognizes history and causality. Yet when it encounters its objective or its subject, the accused it conveniently and insidiously ignores history and the inescapable causality and it presents its work as what I'll describe as pretzel logic it ties itself into idealistic knots, which in turn births the offending and violator prison official. Virginia's history anticipates Glenn Youngkin's dismissal of the concerns of Parents of Virginia Prisoners, but with every revelation of prison official misdeed and violation, the common interest of Parents as opposed to its politicization emerges.

By William Thorpe

I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit

Sunday, February 11, 2024

Locking Humans In a 6x8 Concrete Box For Days To Weeks At a Time Equals 🟰 Inhumanity At Its Worst

My loved one was originally at Green Rock Correctional Center. He was able to make daily calls. He was eating a Muslim diet and seemed somewhat situated considering the circumstances. While he was at GRCC there were no reports of rape, stabbing, suicide, drugs, or racism. He was transferred to Wallens Ridge State Prison last June. He too was a healthy weight. He lost in a matter of TWO WEEKS 16 pounds and in total 34 pounds. He’s trying his best to gain weight, but SOY served on a consistent daily basis doesn’t help. BTW Muslims are restricted from eating SOY and SOY BYPRODUCTS. Let’s talk about the bi-weekly if not weekly LOCKDOWN. I’ve not heard from him for over a week. WRSP just did an inspection/shakedown in January. They were lockdown for 17 days. During ANY lockdown it’s NOT a guarantee that showers will be allowed and hot soy meals served. I have learned that weekend calls, showers, and rec time depends on the CO’s mood. Virginia’s DOC policies on these issues clearly state:

ALL incarcerated persons shall have access to daily hygiene care. ALL incarcerated individuals shall receive 4-FOUR hours of recreational time. ALL incarcerated people shall be treated with dignity, respect, compassion, and humanely. Individuals shall be allowed to participate and practice their Religious Beliefs. However, at WRSP Muslims aren’t permitted to participate and practice prayer every Friday. Again, it comes down to the CO’s attitude. During Ramadan WRSP didn’t allow nor recognize the diet and fasting time. WRSP may spew that Muslim fasting and prayer is allowed, but it’s a BOLD FACE LIE. 

Since arriving at WRSP to current date there has been 3 stabbing/murder, several sexual assaults, multiple violent assaults, 4 suicides, and multiple drug overdoses. My concern with ALL of Virginia’s DOC facilities is the fact that ALL incidences are reported yet nobody seems willing to fix it!! Instead the solution is “LOCKDOWN!” Doesn’t anyone other than me see this for what it is- 
Modern Day Slavery. Locking humans in a 6x8 concrete box for days to weeks at a time equals = inhumanity at its worst. Why hasn’t the DOC figured out that constant lockdowns are a form of oppression and torture. Why are those who are incarcerated and haven’t committed any act of violence punished the same as those who are guilty of violence? The DOC has given each incarcerated person a number and labeled them useless for society. Unfortunately, our judicial system is corrupt, broken, and incompetent. There’s innocent people incarcerated because of our broken corrupt system and laws. Discrimination against color, race, gender, and religion is so rampant throughout our judicial system. Bottom line if a person isn’t wealthy, white, powerful, and holding a position of privilege they are AUTOMATICALLY GUILTY IN OUR JUDICIAL SYSTEM! I know because my loved one’s life was taken away by a corrupt prosecutor because of his Religion. ALL the physical evidence proved his innocence. Even the judge acknowledged it throughout his trial. Our justice system doesn’t truly understand it’s NOT only the people incarcerated whose life has changed, it’s also the lives of those who love them. My loved one has missed 5 graduations, 2 marriages, 2 family members deaths, 2 children buying their first home, and a grandson. 

God be with those who seek to destroy the lives of others. May God’s mercy be upon those who change the course of life for others only to serve their own needs. 

By Diana

Saturday, February 10, 2024

There Are Two Motive Forces, Speculative And Applied So Prison Reform In Virginia? By William Thorpe

What do we mean by oversight of The Virginia Department Of Corrections? Instead of explaining, let me give illustrations. First of all let's understand this, no one is in prison because of deed or behavior, The prisoner is specifically and solely a creation of law and the process of adjudication. Why is this significant because prison is full of prisoners who are found to have been victimized by fraudulent adjudication and its travesty. The point being the entire construct of prison is an embodiment of law. This point is understood in a couple of ways, the first as a misunderstanding by the mass person and the second, a deliberate distortion by those who benefit from the resulting social confusion and distortion. As a result conventional understanding of imprisonment is weirdly animated by the acceptance that the administration of prison requires a suspension of law which we encounter as a universe of colloquial retorts defending the extra-judicial, above the law behavior of the Virginia Prison Official. To the extent that the prison official begins to believe as if its a religious prerogative that violating law and its authority of defining terms of interaction with prisoners is his quintessential function and is to be expected and anticipated. This is the logic underlying and compelling oversight of the Virginia prison official

Okay lets get into it. If Virginia Governance cared about holding its Prison Officials accountable, the privileges inherent in and accorded the position and the accompanying immunities would lend equally as access to the position. But instead the reality is, the contradictory and antagonistic nature of Virginia's Social Contract bestows on its prison officials, and members of its Justice Infrastructure, what we know as that maxim, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. So what we have is prisoners imprisoned for violating Virginia laws are then in turn subjected to its absolute violation by prison officials who enjoy absolute immunity in the performance of duties of the daily administration of prison. So for example the Virginia prison official, denys the prisoner food,outside exercise, showers, adequate clothing,medical and mental health care, contact with family, loved ones and friends. Rule breaking and infraction violations are fabricated and contrived, to add on and extend the prisoners prison sentence and the deprivation of privileges, the prisoner is under the daily reality of assault by the prison official under the guise of "control and management of prisoners", (at for example Red Onion,Wallens Ridge and Sussex I State Prisons, prisoners are under the State indulged "terroristic" logic of guns and savage dogs. Now whatever the logic of the Virginia prison official the only practical conclusion, based on what history has instructed is such accouterments, are arbitrary). What I'm pointing out is when the Virginia politician touts the purported production of a mechanism for oversight of the prison official, its measure by the Virginia prisoner isn't the simple appearance of text but what is the hazard for the violating official, what is the medium of accountability? Virginia Code 8.01 deals with civil remedies, Virginia Code 53.1 is an entire book of laws on prison and jails.The issue isn't necessarily "the reinvention of the wheel" laws, but how are we to hold the prison official accountable for the every single moment of the job performance, violations. To access law and its process, the Virginia prisoner has to satisfy and compleate a United States and Virginia mandatory process of law, called exhausting available administrative remedies. In other words the prisoner has to file complaints and grievances stating for example, Officer such and such on this day and time denied my breakfast meal. Then the prison's grievance department gets to play the game of claiming,"oh we have no records of receiving it". The prisoner is now in that proverbial catch-22, because as soon as the prisoner tries to access the courts (now don't forget that all of this is a result of the initial denial of a meal and if the prison official denys a prisoner a meal the violation doesn't simply stop, the prison guard keeps at it) so when the prisoner tries to go to the courts to simply get meals. The offending prison official who has been denying the prisoner meals, will have the Attorney General of The Commonwealth of Virginia, representing and defending his law breaking and the first thing the attorney general will say is the prisoner didn't comply with the law by "exhausting administrative remedies", when the reality is the prison or the State of Virginia through the prison's grievance department, obstructed, got in the way of the prisoners ability to take the violation to court and expose the law breaking by the prison official.

Virginia's Justice Infrastructure of which the prison system is a function treats its subjects, the adjudicated and prisoners as enemy combatants in an idealistic and strategicless conflict, imitative of the typical character of the nations recent wars, as if the primary function of Virginia's justice scheme is firstly to distribute money in economic-dead-zones, under the logic of Statism. Then as scape goat, diversion for the antagonistic nature of terms of The Social Contract. Because how else are we to understand a predicate based on the democracy of law, yet objectively violating it principally? What we find in the Virginia prison official and the administration of prison is the antithesis of law and the due process that created the Virginia prisoner, while insidiously presenting a face of "good faith and public trust" to the Virginia public.Think about this, Virginia prisons as Red Onion State Prison, literally starve prisoners particularly those it Solitary Confines, in violation of Operating Procedures, Policies, Practices of The Virginia Department of Corrections and its done with a wink and a nod from Executives of the Department, yet as soon as prisoners go on hunger strikes in protest prison officials deploy punitive measures against the protesting prisoners again its all done under tacit approval not only of the Departments Executives but Judges of The Federal and State Court systems. But for the most part the Virginia tax payer, funding the impunity causing the hunger strike, remains practically ignorant to its truth of what is actually being done by prison officials who have swore oaths not to violate and contravene laws. An ignorance thats the result of purposeful and deliberate omissions and failures by corporate media to expose it there by educating the Virginia electorate who can then determine if thats the society it wants along with the betrayal by Virginia politicians, Republicans for the most part and Democrats to a lesser extent. Corruption and hypocrisies in systems and institutions for whatever reason are not novel or strange. The point however is we cannot on the one hand purport indefeasibility of humanness while ridiculously violating it in an indulgence of crass sadisim under cover of, "governmental interest", because the prisoner subject due to specific unchanging histories exist as a Strawman. If the Virginia politician to whom the taxpayers will has been delegated intends, for the first time in Virginia's history, on constructing an actual mechanism for introducing the prison official to "equality under law", then the first step is the creation of an irrefutable complaint or prison grievance filing system, because the prison officials' first step in impunity, is lying about and denying that the prisoner has complied with the law requiring the exhaustion of administrative remedies or in other words filing a complaint. See, the case Blount v. Fleming 2006 U.S Dist. Lexis 44413 where a Federal judge ruled that a prison official at the grievance department of Red Onion State Prison lied concerning process of a prisoner's complaint and grievance. Look people this isn't news not to prisoners ,their families, loved ones and even victims of some of the crimes by prisoners who have come to realize that Virginia's Justice Infrastructure exploits them for political opportunity and expediency and isn't concerned with "justice".What is the meaning of the actions of the prison official, who deprives a prisoner meals or spits in the meals, then lies about it? The punishment according to Virginia law, is the " sentence", the years one spends imprisoned and anything more is extra-judicial.

By William Thorpe

I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit