THE REAL QUESTION IS IMPRISONMENT IN VIRGINIA A PRODUCTIVITY AND HUMAN CAPITAL DESTROYING HARM ? By William Thorpe

Pictures are taken from the internet and are used for illustrative purposes only

I BEGIN: Virginia State and Federal Courts have fundamentally recognized, loss of earning capacity, human capital, opportunity and liberty as economic harm. Nonetheless, Courts have treated the loss of liberty as a primary baseline cost of imprisonment, but when conditions of the imprisonment exceed Virginia and United States Constitutional limits, causing measurable physical or psychological injury or deprive the prisoner of opportunities the State is not entitled to take then the harm becomes compensable and once harm is compensable, loss of productivity becomes a valid economic measure of damages. The question is also this, Virginia legislators along with the Courts bandy about supposed jurisprudential definitions of primary Social Contract terms as Liberty, Human Capital, Opportunity and Productivity that only are reflective of biases and interests, that require a general baseline of acceptance from the People of Virginia, in other words, if imprisonment is practiced in the name of the People of Virginia, it must and should require a denominator of cognizable purpose that is firmly in pursuit of the "unity of the people", yet its absence is what we have as observable facts of Virginia's Social Contract. So when the Commonwealth or State of Virginia deprives the Prisoner of opportunities it is obligated to provide, as codified in Virginia Law at Title 53.1,as mandated education, vocational training, rehabilitative programming or imposes conditions that destroy human capital, despite the fact that this formulation of issues of Virginia's imprisonment scheme is the least developed, the prisoner can then argue, you didn't just confine me, but you destroyed my productive capacity which you had no right to do. But because the Virginia citizenry isn't cued in on what is required for that perfection of the unity of the people or simply put that pursuit of unconditional equality under law, there isn't the necessary scrutiny of Virginia's imprisonment scheme, that will excavate it with clarity that it isn't a crass availability, a means of satisfying sadistic impulses. If imprisonment is supposed to be only a loss of liberty and the actual conditions destroy human capital, because the State of Virginia has purposefully and deliberately left vague and ill defined what its imprisonment conditions are beyond the deprivation of a relative and approximate freedom of action, what it presents then is the argument that Prison is not merely a deprivation of liberty but a State-engineered destruction of human capital. The State in its pursuit of Imprisonment may seize liberty, but it may not destroy the person and when it does the economic value of that destruction is compensable, because the State of Virginia primarily already sees the human being categorically in the political-economy terms of value. The State of Virginia as intimated and hinted by debates and fights over its imprisonment scheme in debates over overcrowding, solitary confinement, reentry, Department of Corrections budgets, rhetoric over Rehabilitation vs. Punishment. All of this reveal that Virginia knows that imprisonment destroys more than liberty, it destroys capacity, opportunity, and long term human potential. However no mainstream Virginia figure has the courage to say such outright, because saying it forces a moral and fiscal reckoning the State isn't prepared to face. Nonetheless every time the Virginia Politician talks about, workforce shortage, the need for "second chances" or the economic benefits of reentry programs is an implicit admission that the prison system suppresses human capital and reduces future productivity.

We also see this tacit admission in the fight against Solitary Confinement as exploited and deployed by the Virginia prison official, with opponents standing on arguments that show cognitive decline, psychological deterioration, and long term-functional impairment, which is the logic of "loss of productive capacity", just expressed in clinical terms. Virginia's wrongful conviction compensation is based on the idea that the State took more than it was entitled to take and the "economic value" of that loss must be repaid. We also see it in Juvenile Justice Reform, with the argument that Youth incarceration destroys, educational trajectories, earning potential and life time opportunity which are explicitly without euphemisms describing human capital destruction. What all of this shows and reveals is that systemic fly in the Social Contract ointment of The Commonwealth of Virginia, which fundamentally is an unwillingness to unconditionally without qualification recognize Human Life. Because the recognition of human life is due to the acceptance and understanding of terms of interaction and its stability as Law and its process that is due in its application. But because human life is recognized "conditionally", meaning it isn't accepted equally under law, which then reveals impunity or abuse, mistreatment, violations under the generality as, dehumanization. In otherwards even as the Social Contract as political-economy valuation and terms of relation of human life are firmly grounded as basis of the human condition and its variegated expressions. We see it accorded distinctions, classes, groupings, characteristics that show an extreme form of intellectual dysfunction and conceptual confusion irrespective of basis, even though purporting to realize the intellectual work of maintaining the social contract, what we see is just a crass indulgence of cutting off the nose to spite the face. In other words, even as human life is denigrated and dehumanized, it still is the only means and mechanism of actualizing value or that one and only purpose of it as the business of creating those conditions and circumstances for the existence of human life. Now, despite these herculean efforts of misinformation we as a people are bombarded with, by all the idealistic reactionary agents of futility, we are not stuck and caught up in an informational black hole of decrepit models of the ignorance's of the human condition. As a people we might not readily posses the characterizing language of our experienced antagonisms, but that doesn't mean that for example we are blind to the fact that if The Commonwealth will use the imprisonment model as application of its justice, the imprisoned shouldn't be subjected to conditions and circumstances that destroy their humanness. There is nothing about Virginia's construct of imprisonment that can be shown to be nothing less than sadism as implicit attitude towards human life and this isn't even indictment based on Virginia's history of the chattel enslavement of Black People, instead what we state is imprisonment cannot continue as its surrogacy.

By William Thorpe

IMPRISONMENT IS THE HIGHEST FUNCTION OF THE PEOPLE OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA IMPLICITLY REQUIRING UNITY OF SPEECH By William Thorpe

Pictures are taken from the internet and are used for illustrative purposes only

Speech for purposes of our Human Condition and in extension, formulations of the Social Contract is everything. In the Commonwealth of Virginia, it is the governing administration of Government meaning, compulsion and its organized violence medium, which is expressed and for purposes of this work takes on the character of imprisonment and the function of the Virginia Prison Official. As such there has to be a unity of understanding among the people of what is being done in their name by the Virginia prison official, who is privileged with the task of administering imprisonment. This unity of understanding among the people is, primarily and basically achieved and realized as "equality under law and its due process" or holding the Virginia prison official accountable. Despite the fact the Commonwealth has a lattice of the availability of process, implying that potential of accountability or the accountability-function of the governing imperative it exist idealistically, meaning it is not satisfying its intended function and this impracticality is the achilles of Virginia's Social Contract. My motive is how do we subordinate the Virginia prison official to the will of the People of Virginia, meaning that actuality of accountability. I BEGIN: The Commonwealth of Virginia is a constituent of the People, but when we get into the nuts and bolts of not only is what, but who are the people, that's when we are confronted with layers upon layers of its compromise or impunity, meaning who falls into the category of the controlled and the controlling, which naturally has its logic and sophistry in defense. What I want to introduce with this work is this. The Governor or Executive of the Commonwealth is Constitutionally required to declare, "what is the state of the Commonwealth ", to the People via both branches of Virginia's Government, specifically both houses of their elected Representatives in the Legislature and The Virginia Supreme Court. This address is a sort of pro forma availability to the People of The Commonwealth and its implicit satisfaction of a level of the accountability-function. However it is idealistic and has long lost its intended function and intent. Because not only are the people alienated from its substance, even when asserted, they don't experience and feel that there is any illusion that they are considered and taking into account and to give the Commonwealth credit, this unity of understanding compromise isn't a deliberate ploy and insidious calculation on the part of the system in general, but its a result of the means and forum of availability. What we expect and require of Virginia's Government is responsiveness and its ensuing natural state of under actual due process of law. So what we as the people of Virginia ask for is a Constitutional amendment and legislation requiring, that the Governor and all Department heads or designee, post state of the Commonwealth address immediately present and make themselves available to the People of The Commonwealth at locations representing the Central, Northern, Eastern and Southwestern parts of The State, for no less than an hour to answer questions from the people or representative groups based on practical formula. This availability should not be construed to relitigate electoral issues that were completely, thoroughly and exhaustively debated during the campaign process, which the people resolved by stating their intentions with the ballot. This presents the People that specific opportunity for example to publicly question.

By William Thorpe 

I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit and if you feel any kinda way about this work contact me by Securus email using the Texas prison number #2261982

William Thorpe and the Long Arc of Virginia’s Carceral History

 

How one incarcerated writer diagnoses four centuries of punishment in Virginia

William Thorpe’s writing does not merely critique the modern Virginia Department of Corrections. It anticipates and exposes the entire historical character of imprisonment in Virginia, from the colonial era to the present. When you place his arguments alongside the documented evolution of Virginia’s punishment system, the continuity is unmistakable. Thorpe is not describing an aberration — he is describing a 400‑year operating system.

Below is the full comparative analysis.

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I. Colonial Virginia (1607–1776): Punishment as Social Control

Historical Character

• No real prison system; jails were temporary holding pens.
• Punishment was public, corporal, and meant to humiliate.
• Law existed to protect hierarchy, not justice.
• Enslaved Africans were controlled through violence, not courts.

Thorpe’s Anticipation

Thorpe repeatedly argues that Virginia’s system was never designed for justice, only for domination. His insistence that the state’s power structure is inherently corrupt and self‑protective mirrors the colonial reality exactly. He writes as if he knows — intuitively — that the system’s moral foundation was rotten from the beginning.

Thorpe’s core claim:
“This system was built to control, not correct.”
That is precisely the colonial model.

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II. Antebellum Virginia (1776–1861): Two Systems, One Logic

Historical Character

• Virginia builds the Richmond Penitentiary in 1796.
• Reform rhetoric for white offenders; labor discipline for them.
• Enslaved people remain under a separate, extrajudicial regime of violence.
• Criminal law is selectively applied.

Thorpe’s Anticipation

Thorpe’s writing is obsessed with dual systems — one for the powerful, one for the powerless. He describes:

• selective enforcement
• manufactured criminality
• racialized punishment
• the state’s refusal to apply its own rules to itself

This is exactly the antebellum structure:
a penitentiary for whites, and a plantation prison for Blacks.

Thorpe is diagnosing the same split logic: punishment as a tool of racial hierarchy.

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III. Reconstruction & Jim Crow (1865–1900): Criminalization Replaces Slavery

Historical Character

• Black Codes and vagrancy laws criminalize freedpeople.
• Convict leasing and chain gangs extract labor from Black bodies.
• The penitentiary becomes a racial labor machine.
• The state discovers the economic value of incarceration.

Thorpe’s Anticipation

This is where Thorpe’s writing becomes prophetic.

Thorpe argues that:

• conviction is the new slavery
• prisoners are commodities
• officials profit from captivity
• the system is racialized by design

He is describing the exact logic of convict leasing — the most brutally exploitative period in Virginia’s penal history. Thorpe’s analysis of economic extraction, racial targeting, and bureaucratic cruelty is a direct continuation of the post‑war carceral economy.

He is writing from inside the afterlife of slavery, and he names it with precision.

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IV. 20th Century: Bureaucratic Expansion & Administrative Violence

Historical Character

• More prisons, more categories of offenses.
• Parole boards, classification systems, administrative layers.
• Racial disparities deepen.
• The system becomes more “professional,” but not more humane.

Thorpe’s Anticipation

Thorpe’s critique of:

• administrative opacity
• procedural cruelty
• “policy as punishment”
• officials hiding behind paperwork

…is exactly how historians describe the 20th‑century shift from overt domination to bureaucratic domination.

Thorpe understands that cruelty no longer needs a whip — it only needs a form, a policy, a signature.

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V. Post‑1995 Virginia: Abolition of Parole & Permanent Warehousing

Historical Character

• Parole abolished for new offenses.
• Truth‑in‑sentencing entrenches long‑term confinement.
• Pre‑1995 prisoners stranded in a system that pretends to offer release.
• Mass incarceration becomes the default.

Thorpe’s Anticipation

Thorpe’s writing on:

• the collapse of parole
• the political weaponization of “public safety”
• the abandonment of rehabilitation
• the moral bankruptcy of VADOC

…is a direct continuation of the historical arc. He is describing the logical endpoint of a system that has always preferred control over correction.

Thorpe sees that Virginia’s modern prison system is not a break from the past — it is the past perfected.

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VI. The Continuity: Thorpe’s Central Insight

Across all eras, Thorpe identifies the same structural traits that define Virginia’s punishment system:

1. Control over justice

From colonial whipping posts to modern classification systems.

2. Racial hierarchy as the organizing principle

From slave codes to Black Codes to disproportionate sentencing.

3. Economic extraction from captive bodies

From plantations to convict leasing to prison labor.

4. Bureaucratic self‑protection

From planter courts to modern DOC administrators.

5. Manufactured criminality

From vagrancy laws to modern “technical violations.”

Thorpe’s writing is not merely commentary — it is a theory of the Virginia carceral state, one that aligns with every major historical phase.

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VII. Conclusion: Thorpe as a Historian of the Present

Thorpe’s work anticipates the entire history of Virginia’s imprisonment scheme because he is living inside its final form. His writing is the culmination of four centuries of:

• racial control
• economic exploitation
• bureaucratic cruelty
• political manipulation

He is not just describing the system — he is revealing its deep structure, the part that has remained unchanged from 1607 to 2026.

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By vapac

VIRGINIA PRISONERS ARE NOT THE ONLY ONES EXPOSING THE LAW VIOLATIONS OF THE VIRGINIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS,SEE WHAT IT'S OWN EMPLOYEES ARE SAYING IN COURT ABOUT THEIR UNCONSCIONABLE EXPERIENCES By William Thorpe

Pictures are taken from the internet and are used for illustrative purposes only

In a recent work, titled, VIRGINIA REPUBLICANS/CONSERVATIVES/MAGA AND LAW VIOLATIONS BY THE VIRGINIA PRISON OFFICIAL.I made the point that the work of holding the Virginia Prison Official accountable needs unimpeachable facts that go beyond the abuse and dehumanization of the Virginia Prisoner. Now just making this point shows and is revelatory of how the cognizance and understanding of the Constituted aspirations of The People of The Commonwealth of Virginia has been deliberately, purposefully assailed and insidiously degraded by the generality of impunity and its concurrent exacerbation and utility of weaponizing the, and ensuring disunity among the people, due to the strategy of conditionality of access to the Due Process of Law and its Equality wielded by the Commonwealth's reactionary elements and forces, specifically the Virginia Republican, Conservatives and their currently manifested Maga spasming, allied with among others, the Virginia prison official as representative and reflective of the actual function of Virginia's Justice Infrastructure, as a pining for a savage, decrepit and counterintuitive political-economy formulation, that has no more a claim to purpose, than a mere fleeting hedonistic gratuitous violence and its name is sadism. In other words Virginia's Social Contract is a rudderless vessel lurching hither, thither in the tempest of impunity, which then is the environment, the work of wrangling the accountability-function of governance on the above-the-lawism of the Virginia prison official, is engaged on. In pursuit of perverting the Constituted aspirations of the People of The Commonwealth, its foot soldiers, the usual reactionaries have successfully associated the work of the equity of equality under law and its anti-impunity function of holding the Virginia prison official accountable, as "being soft on crime", as such the Virginia prison official can be caught red handed committing the most egregious violation against the imprisoned Virginian and the Republican and Conservative ally will be trotted out, spouting and spewing the most inane comments in it's defense and the Virginia citizenry, by being inoculated against recognizing that the prison official's professional behavior is pure, simple and unbridled criminality, compromising the necessary faith and trust they have to have in the Rule of Law will bristle against being reminded that it is. So what the work of holding the Virginia prison official accountable requires is a more complete and practical narrative that reveals and exposes the systemic impunity of the Virginia Department of Corrections from its own employees. Listed are some claims in court actions by employees, ranging from sexual assaults, gender discrimination, hostile work environment, employee on employee assault, racism and all-around egregious behavior.

ALCAZAR v. Va. Dept.of Corr.2024 U.S. Dist. Lexis 156850 PATTERSON v. Va .Dept.of Corr.2024 U.S. Dist. Lexis 72197 BLACKSHEAR v. Va. Dept. Corr. 2021 U.S. Dist. Lexis 264460 GEORGE v. BROWN 2025 U.S. Dist. Lexis 259131 [pay ATTN.to the behavior of Sgt. BROWN] Va. Dept. of Corr .v. COMPTON 47 VA.App.202 HALEY v. Va. Dept. of Corr. 2023 VA. App. Lexis 493 COMMONWEALTH v. NEEDHAM 55 VA. App.316 Va. Dept. of Corr. v. BISHOP 75 VA. App.1 SPICER v. VIRGINIA 66 F.3d 705 FLORES v. Va Dept .of Corr.2021 U.S. Dist. Lexis 31857

KNOSKIE v VA Dept of Corr 2017 U.S. V Dist. Lexis 22719

McCURDY v. Va Dept of Corr 2016 U.S. Dist. Lexis 169611

McCURDY v, Va Dept of Corr 2017 U.S. Dist Lexis 142788 The People would know about these if our Media did their job.

By William Thorpe

I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit and if you feel any kinda way about this work contact me by Securus email using the Texas prison number #2261982

VIRGINIA REPUBLICANS/CONSERVATIVES/MAGA AND LAW VIOLATIONS BY THE VIRGINIA PRISON OFFICIAL By William Thorpe

Virginia Republicans/Conservatives/Maga are yet to encounter law violations by The Virginia Prison Official in their professional behavior that causes them to "act" like they remember that they are the ones who perennially claim to be all about "law and order", which is a sneaky, sleight of hand way of deceiving the People of the Commonwealth, that, law and order means anti-impunity and its equality under law thesis. But the truth and reality is the Virginia Republican/Conservative and Maga have a more backwards and insidious characterization and motive of and for their "law and order" parrot, which has nothing to do with the left to the people to swallow its hook and sinker, self-checking utility by having them fill in its definition blanks, according to The People's naveté, biases, fears, ignorances, illiteracy, suppositions and that ever present, self-interest. In other words, the Virginia Republican "law and order" polemic is your classic Rorschach test. I BEGIN: In our work of holding the Virginia prison official accountable, in extension compelling the accountability-function of our Virginia Government and the administration of governance, our focus isn't to get caught up in the mindless mire of chasing hypocrisies and corruption, because Republicans/Conservatives/Maga haven't cornered the market nor monopolized that human disposition to be "full of it", (which as an aside is the reason why the narrative exposing the all too real crimes of The Trump administration and his merryband, is in this up hill battle of " why can't the people see the obvious".Because, how can a Democrat or Progressive indicit MAGA, when for example that wink and nod of "law and order", is also exploited as, Class Interest ?) But what our work firmly stands on is no one is irreproachable and its above-the-lawism impunity. In other words we are not concerned with idealistic recognitions of humanness, which at this juncture I make my point with this soliloquy as homily from the movie CONCLAVE,as delivered by the character CARDINAL LAWRENCE and I quote, "CERTAINTY, CERTAINTY IS THE GREAT ENEMY OF UNITY. CERTAINTY IS THE DEADLY ENEMY OF TOLERANCE.EVEN CHRIST WAS NOT CERTAIN AT THE END, "MY GOD, MY GOD WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME? "HE CRIED OUT IN HIS AGONY AT THE 9th HOUR ON THE CROSS.OUR FAITH IS A LIVING THING PRECISELY BECAUSE IT WALKS HAND IN HAND WITH DOUBT, IF THERE WAS ONLY CERTAINTY AND NO DOUBT, THERE WOULD BE NO MYSTERY AND THEREFORE NO NEED FOR FAITH" [from THE MOVIE CONCLAVE].So what is the Virginia Republican position? It is "certainty" that the Virginia prison official is irreproachable and above the law and this stance is extended to all law enforcement in general, despite the fact the Virginia Republican isn't that delusional to deny that accountability is an inexorable fact. Still, due to the intoxication of self-interest and its nihilism along with the complicity of The People regardless of reason we lurch from one antagonism to the next, at the expense of our Constituted Social Contractual aspirations. As such what our work requires are unimpeachable facts, on which our narrative of prison reform in Virginia is realized. Our unimpeachable facts are not intended to accomplish nothing less than present to the People of The Commonwealth, that the narrative of accountability of the Virginia prison official isn't simply limited to Prisoner abuse, but is symptomatic of their anti-subordination attitude to the will of the People of the Commonwealth.

By William Thorpe

I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit and if you feel any kinda way about this work contact me by Securus email using the Texas prison number #2261982