It would have been refreshing had the
5/16/18 FREE-LANCE STAR Fredricksburg Virginia editorial on VA. MAKING STRIDES ON SOLITARY CONFINEMENT, made the effort to do what editorials and opinions are intended and that makes us think and attain a deeper understanding of an issue. But true to contemporary form the editorial instead plyed the idealistic and easy way out lemming-dive by parroting a narrative that has nothing to do with the nature of the issue. Instead, the editorial behaved as any run of the mill diversionary campaign leaflet pronouncing absurdities.
The question isn't; "really what is a prison to do" as fifth columnesque asked by the Free-Lance Star Editorial. Because the answer to what is a prison to do is simple: Follow the law, comply with the rule of law and obey policies and procedures. But we have to assume that if this answer, is such a conundrum and paradox for the Free Lance-Star editorial to access we have to then presume that the editorial accepts the mythology, prison officials are beyond reproach and above the law.
The prison officials are beyond reproach and above the law narrative, quite frankly is tired, worn and stale and has wreaked more havoc on society than the cumulative and aggregate acts of the prisoners whom prison officials have the professional privilege and responsibility of imprisoning.
Virginia spends relatively
$1.5 Billion on its prisons and if taxpayers who are saddled with poor schools, a health care system that's a travesty and the injustice of an anachronistic political-economy are satisfied with their money funding an opaque prison system that is supported by default tough on crime platitude excusing the unaccountability of its prison officials who behave with lawless impunity, then the tensions and antagonisms of such a social contract will only grow. But if questions are asked and accountability demanded
Then the citizenry of Virginia will have the benefit of "equal justice for all".
The 5/16/18; Free Lance-Star editorial on Solitary Confinement in Virginia was it's irked response to the 5/10/18;
ACLU of Virginia Titled,
Silent Injustice: Solitary Confinement In Virginia. By which the
ACLU called upon Governor Ralph Northam to ban its use in Virginia.
For whatever reason, this call by the ACLU irritated and irked the Free Lance-Star hence the editorial and that tired, worn and stale reactionary narrative with antebellumnesque retorts like"
- "Those who are in solitary had to earn their way there. It is incarceration of last resort". Or [Those] who chooses to do bad things or make bad decisions simply because they are inherently bad people" or "The ACLU is free to make its case.......despite the publics lack of sympathy for how those they see as the worst of the worst inmates are treated".
Are intended to be well-reasoned points, a contribution to the question of solitary confinement, which in 1890 the U.S. Supreme Court in the case
In Re: Medley 134 U.S. 160 declared "an infamous punishment" and in 2018
Porter v. Clarke et al 1:2014cv1588 [Virginia case] ruled that solitary confinement violated the 8th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
Had the Free Lance-Star been intellectually honest and not indulged in colloquial distortions, it would have quickly realized that the ACLU's report spoke of and detailed criminality by prison officials.
Prisoners are not sentenced to prison to be assaulted and battered, their testicles crushed by prison guards or denied outside exercise, showers, and meals or framed with contrived and fabricated offenses and lied on to extend the imprisonment by prison officials or entombed in solitary confinement or restrictive or administrative segregation or whatever euphemism used by prison officials in effort to conceal the true nature of the detention which in turn exposes the fact that prison officials are well aware that something is inherently unjustifiable and abjectedly beyond the pale with the detention and the "incarceration of the last resort" apologetic dismissal of it by the Free Lance-Star editorial is all the more insidious.
What the FreeLance-Starr editorial doesn't tell us is prison officials are not a law unto theirself, despite the fact certain Virginia politicians have attained speculative power by enabling that myth. But Virginia prison officials [as all other prison officials across the nation] are firstly subject and subordinate to the U.S. Constitution then as it relates to Virginia,
The Virginia Constitution and Virginia Law-code 53.1 and lastly
Virginia Department of Corrections [VADOC] Standards, Procedures, policies and Practice Nothing in the U.S. Constitution, Virginia Constitution, Virginia Code 53.1, VADOC Standards, Procedures, Policies, and Practices permits prison officials to operate and behave in a manner the
ACLU Silent Injustice Report describes prison officials at Red Onion State Prison [ROSP] has.
When the Free Lance-Star editorial speaks of [prisoners] earning "their way" into solitary confinement or "because they are inherently bad people". It is a divisionary red herring intended to distract from the fact the ACLU's report detailed ROSP officials criminality and instead reframe the issue as the ACLU wants to coddle prisoners whom society has no and shouldn't have no sympathy for. It also reveals the extent and level to which that reframing narrative is divorced from the fact, prison is a legal construct and regardless of the fact prison officials behave hypocritically and lawlessly underpins prison and imprisonment.
First of all, no one is in prison because they are "inherently bad". People are imprisoned because of a violation of a criminal code, then the subsequent conviction under law and imposition of sentence. There are all sorts of "inherently bad" people in Virginia society and some very well could be on the Free Lance-Star editorial staff. So framing the issue as a simple bad and good contrast is insidiously naive and biased towards a specific and particular worldview that has nothing to do with the questions raised by the ACLU's report.
Prison Reform has never been about society's lack of sympathy for prisoners. Prison reforms instead, is about the work to hold prison officials accountable for their lawless behavior and the ACLU's report made that sternly clear with a damning indictment against ROSP and VADOC officials. But instead of the Free Lance-Star pointing this out, it chose to pull out all the stops in defense of prison officials ignoring the likely probability that statistics generated by VADOC and ROSP, used by the editorial were plausibly spurious.
ROSP which is signaled out by the ACLU report because it is Virginia's primary prison for solitary confinement is subject to and subordinate to the legal authorities listed earlier, U.S. Constitution et.al and more immediately VADOC Operational Procedures.
What all of this, the above show is there are specific procedures or legalities governing the practice of Solitary Confinement which ROSP systemically violates. The consequences of the violations are what the Free Lance-Star and its partisan brethren have typically dismissively characterized as "harshness" of prison that is to be expected and there is no public sympathy for its amelioration. While opportunistically ignoring that they are endorsing lawlessness while claiming to be against it. at the most pivotal intersectionality of all the contradictions of the social contract laid bare Prison. Which is another revelation that the historical antagonism of those who want to under cover of law behave extra judicially while exploiting that same law to subjugate others is the quintessential issue.
If the Free Lance-Star's editorial staff are interested in the practice of Solitary Confinement, the due diligence responsibility is to maximize a qualitative understanding of it and to also recognize that VADOC and its ROSP officials have a vested interest in its either pro or con narrative that is diametrically at odds and not apparent in its pronouncements of reform. Yes, there has been a decrease in the number of prisoners held at ROSP C/Building which is the primary Solitary Confinement Unit. But there are a number of reasons for that, which one obviously being it isn't serving the current 1998 ROSP narrative. Since its opening in 1998 ROSP has lurched and morphed a new reason for its existence every 5-7 years. But that is not the point, the issue is the systemic violations ongoing at ROSP Solitary Confinement. which the ACLU-VA exposed in its report and the Fredricksburg Virginia Free Lance-Star saw fit to ridicule.
*Note*
By William Thorpe is confined in Solitary Confinement at Red Onion State Prison.
