In the introduction and background to the
Vera Institute of Justice [VERA] report on the use of Solitary Confinement by the Virginia Department of Correction by the Virginia Department of Corrections [VADOC]
Released on December 2018, we are told and I quote "in recent years, a diverse range of corrections practitioners, national and international organizations, policymakers, and the public have called for reform of restrictive housing [also known as segregation or Solitary Confinment] in prisons and jails." Peculiarly, what is missing from VERA's listing of the call to account of the practice of Solitary Confinement is the prisoners, their families, and friends who have labored and suffered tirelessly to bring focus and scrutiny on the prison condition of Solitary Confinement through infinitude of litigation, protest, demonstrations, and political activities and from this omission the tone is set instructing us that
VERA's work it's titled report, 'The safe alternatives to segregation initiatives: Finding and recommendations for the Virginia Department of Corrections.' has nothing to do with laying bare the barbarity of Solitary Confinement which the U.S. Supreme Court as far back as the 1890's; recognized as an "infamous" practice in it's
In Re: Medley ruling. But instead is a
$2.2 million propagandizing public relations gambit, which is what VERA received as commission. A front opened in 2011 by certain elements within VADOC's executive Directorate as justification for their taxpayer furnished
Per Diem. (2016)
Prison, Solitary Confinement and Political-Economy
Let me begin with: VADOC's antagonistic realities with its Solitary Confinement practices are self-inflicted, always were as long as it's operational philosophy is schizophrenic, will be.
Virginia's prison experiment has at its roots as all things American, the hypocrisies and tensions of Political-Economy and what the VERA December 2018 report on VADOC's Solitary Confinement has done, court jester-like is laud the VADOC sovereign of forward thinking for pseudo-reform of its self made and created problems. While neglecting to state the obvious, these pseudo-reforms are gambits specifically designed to exploit Political-Economic opportunities presented by the federal government in its ever ingenious habit of wealth redistribution via the two specifics of state-organized violence 1. The justice system, law, and order and 2. Defense and the military.
Whether the practice was banishment, marooning or imprisonment, the expulsion, seclusion, isolation, and removal from the body politic of its members whom for whatever reason had run afoul of the organizing Political-Economy, the politics i.e. socio-norms and traditions has always existed in one form or another upon the emergence and its cognition of object and subject within the human condition and it's value-speculations. The question, however, has been as society recognizes and understands it's myriad aspects and nature of itself, what then is the least unhypocritical and unidealsitic treatment it can bestow on its members it finds cause to be at odds and at war with, whether in principle or in deed.
Prison isn't any different and VADOC as sovereign over it's imprisoned prisoners has since its inception found cause regardless of legitimacy, idealistic or materially to remove certain prisoners fro it's prison general population and segregates them in Solitary Confinement. The question this practice of Solitary Confinement has always presented to society at large or the body politic in whose name the practice is done has been two fold 1. The antagonism of the practice, specifically it's import on the rule of law and 2.Treatment of the prisoners suffering the condition.
A Collaboration With The Repackaging of VADOC's Practice of Solitary Confinement
The VERA Institute of Justice collaborated with the Virginia Department of Corrections [and I am correct in characterizing the association as a collaboration and an unholy matrimony because nothing in the 2018 VERA report for VADOC suggest, it was anything but] In repackaging the intent and practice of Solitary Confinement and towards these ends,the report presents nuanced distortions, outright deception and lies.
The VADOC Solitary Confinement reform project known by it's deceptive and distortive moniker, segregation reduction and Step Down Program is according to VADOC's press releases and procedures, [Local Operating Procedure IOP 830A] and
Operating Procedure, OP 841.4 restrictive housing, intended to reduce the prisoner population in Solitary Confinement detention.
Since its relative emergence in 2011, the StepDown Program as I've already indicated was a sham because if the objective was how to reduce the Solitary Confinement prisoner population, then
VADOC Operating Procedure 861.3 and its process already existed to do just that and all VADOC had to do was abide by it's own rules and procedures. More specifically
United States Const. 14th Amendment and
Virginia Constitution Article 1 Section 11 on Due Process of law, equal protection Clause and the other Constitutional prohibitions against Ex Post Facto and Cruel and Unusual Punishment already existed with ample enough jurisprudence, which if not outright lecturing prison officials that prisoners cannot be willy nilly subjected to the type and sort of Solitary Confinement VADOC practices, it informed them their prison experiment was beyond the pale. So VADOC and its executive elements knew perfectly well that it didn't need another burdensome bureaucratic construct, whose promulgations it would not comply with as it already doesn't comply with all the other existing ones simply to manage release of prisoners from Solitary Confinement and what it most definitely didn't need was a fraudulent, sham prison program, dealing with Solitary Confinement that had nothing to do with what caused the confinement in the first place.
Imagine this scenario: Cell partners in general population setting, not getting along for whatever reason. The cell house or building Unit Manager, building Lieutenant, Sergeants are all made aware of the situation by the cellmates asking for a cell change. The prison officials having been made aware of the situation ignore it, they are indifferent and do nothing about the situation despite the moral and ethical repugnancy of their indifference, they're Constitutionally obligated to provide a safe prison environment viz
U.S. Const. 8th Amend. So one day the cellmates fight one injures or even
kills the other. The surviving prisoner is now placed in Solitary Confinement, to make it out of Solitary Confinement, the prisoner is now informed he/she has to go through a
Step-Down Program The logic being something is wrong with the prisoner and from the line of discussions presented in the program's books titled T
hinking For a Change and the
Challenge Series The logic being something is wrong with the prisoner and from the line of discussions presented in the program's books titled Thinking For A Change, not only is something wrong with the prisoner but per virtue of the imprisonment is so dysfunctional, they cannot think or work their way out of the metaphorical societal wet paper bag. Nowhere in this taxpayer-funded Solitary Confinement reduction programming which has created and established it's own Political-Economic eco-system is there any hint of the fact: had any of those prison officials responded as their professional authority commanded and required they had done. The cellmates would have been separated and there wouldn't have been a fight, injuries wouldn't have been sustained and a prisoner wouldn't have died. So the only question any serious and responsible minded human has to ask is if the prisoner behaved logically [otherwise society would not have self-defense laws] then VADOC must have another reason for exercising it's coercive imperative with demanding, a prisoner whose actions that landed him in Solitary Confinement which had nothing to do with the cartoonish and moronic elements of the Thinking For A Change Program is subjected to it under the guise of release from Solitary Confinement.
The VERA report unsurprisingly is silent on this portal, the reason for the placement is Solitary Confinement, instead, the VERA report is a classic example of the
strawman argument, an affirmation of a dubious narrative utilized as a legitimate cause for response. The question then to be answered is what "Safe Alternative" was VERA reviewing when the only context facing any Virginian and American is compliance with the rule of law and prison officials as others in the justice system class, more than any other class of citizens are morally, ethically and professionally bound to follow and comply with the rule of law and there isn't any Virginia or American law that allows and permits the indefinite Solitary Confinement of a prisoner under sham and arbitrary process, which is what VADOC under the applications of its 861.3 was doing and despite the fane fare and pompom waving by VERA [see pp.10 reforms prior to during VERA's assessment, of report] and other deluded apologists of the new restrictive housing OP 841.4 as a reform of indefinite Solitary Confinement, nothing in its language says so.
What I'm illustrating is analogues in practice to vehicular offenders required to undertake courses in driver education as part of judicial action. But principle is connivingly askew in its VADOC segregation reduction programming and one would think that if VERA, was an honest broker actually reviewing a formulation and practice of an aspect of state-organized violence: The restriction and deprivation of liberty which is what Solitary Confinement dow and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Circuit Court, which VADOC is under its jurisprudential jurisdiction has asserted in a number of cases, i.e
Incumaa v Stirling, that a prisoner has a liberty interest to be free from Solitary Confinement then responding to the antagonistic basis within VADOC's operational philosophy would have been the first thing VERA would have and should have done. But the pursuit of vain glory and greed were too much for VERA to pass up. So once again we find ourselves dealing with another set of presumptions and suppositions that do nothing for social clarity on a crucial and pivotal question, that is at the heart of the social-contract: how society wields its violence against its members.
Nonetheless, collaboration in its myriad forms can be exposed and called to account despite being a lackey for the sovereign. So despite VERA's relatively correct summarization of the Step Down Programs procedural description. Vera's assessment, however, is solely based on the words on paper and not their actual, organic and material applicative fact. So when, for example VERA writes "an integral part of the Step Down Program model is the requirement that incarcerated people be assessed regularly by multidisciplinary teams of staff using
validated instruments to determine criminal risks, underlying, reasons for behavior that led to placement in security level S and motivation to change "[
pp.10 Vera Report-my emphisis]
Can VERA vouch that what it is presenting to the public is correct? Has VERA sat in on any review/hearings, with their jargonistic acronyms, ICA [Institutional Classification Authority], ERI [External Review Team], MDT [Multidisciplinary Team], BMC [Building Managment-Committee] UMT [Unit Management Team], DDT [Dual Treatment Team] and experienced by witnessing the application of the words of the various VADOC Operating Procedures, Op 861.3, LOP 830A, OP 841.4?
Can VERA explain to an ignorant and illiterate public [to the machinations of VADOC] why a prisoner can be placed on IM [Intense Management] status, allegedly using "validated instruments," and then 6 years later switched over to SM [Special Managment] status, again allegedly using "validated instruments" yet nothing changed in the prisoners circumstance other than the passage of 6 years spent in Solitary Confinement? And thas a problem.
VERA so enamored with the possibility, in its self-revelatory characterization, of being "excited to partner" [pp.5 of VERA report] with VADOC that not only did it not grasp the gratuitous for itself barbarity, because VERA in a stockholmesque syndrome manner apes the VADOC sovereign, it accepts VADOC's narrative and values without any tint of circumspection, that it is unwilling to question VADOC's declarations as an impartial entity merely pursuing the mandate given it by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Because it could not, it had sold out whatever vantage it had for that proverbial bowl of gruel, and therefore had no standing, any basis none whatsoever to purportedly review, assess and recommend changes or alternatives to a practice which I have already shown is strawman based.
Vera Recommendations: An Idealisic Academic Indulgence
If the "validated instruments" VERA accepts as mechanisms of VADOC reforms are it's EBP God [or evidence-based practice] or better put that old carrot and stick or carrot on a stick ploy. Then VADOC's Step Down Program can simply be reduced to participation in it means the prisoner can watch T.V. and buy snacks from the commissary and after a passage of years and sham, pro forma reviews and hearings and the prisoner greyed and grizzled, they might be released to a general population. This incentive, moral hazard, aversion manipulation based theory is as old as that first time a caveman brained another. So why are we being given the hard sell by VERA that VADOC has finally solved the problem of mind reading and it's human subjective.
Secondly, by conflating programs i.e
Reentry [A program intended to prepare soon to be prisoners back to society, and even this program is a sham]
STAR [pp.10-11] [Steps To Achieve Reintergration].
SAM [pp.11-12] [Shared Allied Mnagment] and Mental Health [Secure Diversionary Treatment
which by the way can be a consequence of Solitary Confinement] with the singular specific issue of indefinite abject Solitary Confinement under conditions intended to dehumanize and degrade the prisoner in all forms and manners [see
ACLU OF VIRGINIA May 10th 2018 Report"
Silent Injustice, for more transparent accounting of Solitary Confinement at
Red Onion State Prison What I will also add is the daily, nightly any time a prisoner exits their cell strip and cavity searches, where the prisoner removes all clothing, places it in the traybox , then stands naked in the middle of the cell, turn around, bends over spreads buttocks, squats coughs, show the soles of the feet, turns back around to face the guards at the door, lift the penis and testicles, opens the mouth, all before the prisoner is allowed to exit the cell and this level of strip search is really designed to dicourage and disuade from recieving showers and outside exercise] which VERA does with its love letter report to VADOC. It also confuses and distorts the focus of handling accountable the governmental activity of Solitary Confinement an activity with the propensity to be opaque and deceptive, distracting an already unfocused, inattentive public with obfuscation and lies because it can only maintain the integrity of it's self-interest and existence by the old "Business as usual" repackaged as reform so when VERA writes glorifying of Red Onion State Prison [ROSP] and it's
IM and SM Program [pp. 5-8] and in particular the existence of the IM closed pod as if it is born out of a legitimate need only enables the farce of its strawman genesis. Were VERA an objective and honest broker it would've cautioned VADOC not to engage in extra-judicial activity that violates and is outside the scope of its authority of "legal" imprisonment. Despite the authority granted the
Director of Corrections at Virginia Code Section 53.1-10, the Nixonian assertion of "if the president does it, it's legal" isn't a totalitarian-fiat granted the VADOC sovereign, where because the sovereign assert it as need it is then fact. So as such engaging in a game of recommendations, as VERA has when the only conclusions to be reached on all aspects of VADOC Solitary Confinement practices is abolishment and complete shut down of the Step-Down Program not only is mystifying but more telling, an idealistic and academic indulgence.
For reasons which VERA didn't explain yet, it used as basis was its acceptance of VADOC's "administrative Data,, which included demographic, sentence information, disciplinary, incident records," without questioning it's accuracy, considering some of the claims against VADOC, are the veracity of its data. The consequences of this data are its use. For instance, why prisoner U with a comparable administrative data with prisoner R was selected for IM status and R wasn't if as VERA proclaims, VADOC's practices are "validated instruments" based. Now had VERA actually and comprehensively spoken to and interviewed prisoners, particularly, that special class, the level S prisoner at ROSP, who in particular are subject to such selective classification. The issue and it's realization would've dawned on VERA, that placement in the IM program by those initial architects of the Step-Down Program had nothing to do with "validated instruments" but everything to do the reptilian instinct of retaliation, vindictiveness, crass racism, settling scores and a prisoner simply being conveniently present: all constructing block for that fundamental opportunity, those original VADOC architects of the Step Down Program perceived as they stumbled upon a Politica-Economy availability, a trough of taxpayer largesse to support their chieftainship, to which since 2011 has been exploited.
When VERA writes on pp.8 [
VERA Report] "
staff that had been at ROSP since the Step-Down program's inception explained how the expectations of leadership had changed, as staff are now responsible for helping to reduce the use of segregation." [my emphisis]. What VERA isn't telling us is the meaning of "expectations of leadership
had changed" and what that technocratic innocuous sounding word combination conceals is: ROSP officials and VADOC executive elements were pulling back from their en masse Solitary Confinement practices for reasons I have thoroughly illustrated and it's mechanisms of framing, lying, fabricating bogus and contrived infractions and charges against prisoners to keep prisoners in Solitary Confinement. Any simple and cursory review of ROSP records, specifically, incident reports, use of chemical agents
[i.e OC Pepper Gas] , cell extractions, stripped cells, infractions, restricted feeding [
i.e Diet Loaf], use of ambulatory, 4 & 5 point restraints [i.e prisoners chained and strapped to bunk] alleged assaults on ROSP guards resulting in prison officials beating the prisoner, incidents with feces, denials of showers and outside exercise under the pretext of prisoner failing to comply with the extreme nature of ROSP strip search procedure
would reveal that from 2011 through 2016 there was an inordinate and exponential amount of what I've listed occurring, to also include the purported discoveries of contraband and weapons in prisoners cells and on person. Which are all schemes prison officials in Virginia use to either stack on and increase a prisoners sentence or keep a prisoner in Solitary Confinement. Also through the same period, VADOC will also claim a
ridiculous and dramatic decrease in prisoner complaint and grievance filing even though it was at the height and zenith of ROSP official and guard. criminality and malfeasance. The fact is prisoners were filing complaints and grievances daily, but ROSP grievance department in collusion with VADOC executive elements were simply refusing to log, record and process the complaints and grievances by stealing and destroying them so VADOC could then claim that the Step-Down Program, with its TV access and commissary snacks, had so thoroughly pacified level S prisoners [who were as I've listed above being brutalized in all forms and manner] that Solitary Confinement had instantly ceased being the "infamous" practice the in RE: Medley court had declared, so there wasn't any violations to be complained of, no grievance to be filed. Yet the numerous litigations filed by ROSP prisoners and petitions sent to the Governor of Virginia and other politicians and prison reform advocates and activist during that same period belie VADOC contentions.
At recommendations #4 on pp.17- [
conduct an in-depth, independent process and impact evaluation of the Step-Down Program- VERA report] Do we encounter a knee jerk realization by VERA that to save a hint of objectivity it "recommends that VADOC consult with an external researcher who would have the ability and capacity to
further evaluate the Step-Down Program...This researcher could closely examine all relevant data, interview numerous staff and incarcerated people..." [my emphisis] to spare us the spectacle of VADOC touting validation of its Solitary Confinement practices repackaged, the above excerpt should have been titled by VERA : Memo To Self Before Release of Love Letter To and Propaganda For VADOC.
VERA's recommendation #1 on pp.27
[to support successful management without the use of disciplinary segregation....] [
A. Consider a "swift and certain" response model with a structured response matrix, as an alternative or supplement to the formal disciplinary process] Also #1 on pp. 20
[Increase the use of designated "cool-down" spaces VERA report]
Both of these recommendations reveal a troubling aspect of VERA and it's either naive or insidiously cavalier attitude towards due process and the rule of law.
Prison and the imprisonment are the facts of the rule of law and its process. This statement makes no comment on the justness and appropriateness of the law asserted. What I'm focusing on is the fact that prison and the imprisonment are governmental activity and as such, as it encounters the individual, which the prisoner is a "process" has to exist. Prison officials and guards exist in the imprisonment scheme as organic entities of the rule of law or the organized violence of the state and its process so to suggest and recommend that a prison official and guard can simply ignore and brush aside "process" and summarily "punish" the prisoner regardless of euphemism used to characterize the punishment, it is still a deprivation of either property or liberty and due process of the law has to, regardless of limited and de minimus prison context exist. The U.S. Supreme Court in Wolf v. McDonald ruled this. VERA might not make much of this and it is obvious that it doesn't. But the perennial short-sightedness and myopia of prison official, who hasn't encountered "punishment" they couldn't label EBP will simply accelerate societies acculturation to the Fascist expedience and convenience which prison already straddles and we already see the prison officials jargon openly used in society, with
"locking down" schools and
entire cities.
I find it strange that the authors of the VERA report, Byron Kline, Elena Vanko, and Leon Digard are ignorant of this fact of which the entire prison construct and its imprisonment application is based on.
As I've already pointed out conflating the various VADOC programs with the specific issue of Solitary Confinement under conditions intended to dehumanize and destroy the prisoner, does not resolve the issue. Instead what happens is construction upon construction of responses layered upon the other which VERA's recommendations reveal. But to get at the Solitary Confinement antagonism VADOC and it's VERA collaborator have to honestly and finally face up to the contradiction and as VERA's report shows nither is willing.
Yes the mental health consequences of VADOC's Solitary Confinement practices is an extremely important, if not the most important issue which the In Re: Medley Court also recognized as creating a "fatuous" condition in prisoners and just as prisoners not under a capital sanction are not sent to prison to die so are prisoners not sent to prison to be driven mad and insane by the state, it's government and VADOC. So making anecdotal comments as VERA does from
pp. 29-33 in it's
Love Letter report to VADOC is insulting and a disservice.
For starters, VADOC and its primarily security oriented staff shouldn't have anything to do with mental health in its prisons. The QMHP [Qulaified Mental Health Professioanl] position is particularly egregious in its apathy and fraudulent, simply checking the box to get a paycheck attitude i.e
Red Onion State Prison and
Sussex 1 State Prison.
Again I have to ask has VERA carefully reviewed the practice of the QMHP and SDTP [ Secure Diversionary Treatment Program] to actually see the specialized and professional words in the various VADOC OP on Mental Health in action? It is alleged that promptly after the opening of the SDTP
Mental Health Unit at
Wallens Ridge State Prison in 2018; a prisoner committed suicide in it. Mental Health in free society is challenging and provocative. Now imagine the prison setting where every facet is antagonistic and combative and VERA expects us to applaud VADOC sovereign dor having given its prison guards, mental health first aid, correctional crisis intervention training along with the Step-Down program treatment officers as
solution to mental health issues which its Solitary Confinement practices created in the first place?
Conclusion
In conclusion, much has been made by VERA, VADOC and its apologist including
Brian Moran, Virginia's Secretary for Public Safety and Homeland Security, the
overlord of VADOC about a supposed decrease in level S prisoner from 500 to the current 72. Despite factual disagreements over the figures, the issue is the assertion is made as if this decrease is a validation of the Step-Down program. the truth is anything but and the only thing that the decrease means is VADOC decided for its own ends and ulterior motives to allow it. Because a correct assessment by a truly objective fact finder and not the pompom waving of the likes of VERA, will tell that the release and decrease had nothing to do with the purported workings of a program that is nothing more than a trough for a cabal of prison officials to exploit and grow fat off taxpayer largesse.
So when VERA writes on pp.15 [
VERA report] that it witnessed prisoners in a closed pod walking unrestrained to showers and exercise alone as facts of the performance of the Step-Down program, it is participating as a cog in VADOC's ulterior motive, then it fails to disclose that not long after it made the observation, the practice was discontinued under a sham excuse that a prisoner had contraband and prisoners in the closed pod were returned to being shackled, cuffed with a dog leash and singularly escorted by two prison guards. What VERA then refers to as contact for phase II prisoner in closed pod, ibid pp.15 [
VERA report] as another performance fact, shouldn't be confused with a genuine contact visit on a prison general population. This "contact" visit is with the prisoner shackled to
"a table", the type of metal table VERA describes
as Secure Programming Desk, a description that has nothing in common with a desk as a prison bunk has to do with a bed. Another characterization, quite revealing of the type of ploy of the closed pod is as soon as prisoners are in Solitary Confinement in the closed pod, escorting guards have to wear Kevlar Vest. Yet the same prisoner when not in the closed pod but held in Solitary Confinement in other ROSP detention units, escorting guard do not wear Kevlar vest.
The Step Down Program and I can't stress it enough is simply a ploy, particularly the IM status which has had at least 26 prisoners out of 44 returned from the closed pod to more restrictive or less amount of commissary snacks Solitary Confinement, since 2013, for the purpose of keeping the program going. Because the causes of Solitary Confinement have nothing to do with the existence or lack of it and besides a tweak here and a burnish there, there is nothing and I emphasize nothing new and forward thinking about VADOC's purported reforms.
VADOC's system wide Solitary Confinement during the1970s through the early 1990s and opening of
Greensville Correctional Center are relatively what we are now being told are reforms.
VADOC's Mecklenburg Correctional Center opened in the mid-1970s as the nations first Super-Max Prison [See 1978 Virginian-Pilot article]. Had its phase programs, 1,2,3 and phase 4 being the precursor to the current IM closed pod. Even the current classifications are petty unoriginal knockoffs Mecklenburg had its SM or Special Management pod and prisoner. It also used the S classification and was then what ROSP is now.
Till litigation, riots, protest, demonstrations, political activities brought its entire house of cards
down on those VADOC executives who thought they had it figured as this current group
So in 1998 with the largesse of the
Clinton administration and scape-goating prisoners being the quickest path to Speculative Power for reactionary politicians of all stripes. Virginia as others embarked on prisoners as Political-Economy locomotive for its less-savvy environs, then another Political-Economic wrinkle appeared and prison as industry became less attractive but opportunity for exploitation presented itself in that "business as usual" repackaged as reform, which brings us to this phenomenon of a non-governmental entity aping the governmental sovereign VADOC.
The question and issue is simple: When society begins to hold prison officials accountable for their malfeasance actions and violations of the rule of law when prison officials comply with and follow their very own Operating Procedures and Policies, then society will begin to have clarity and a true accounting of Solitary Confinement practice and it causes thereby saving the trees used in printing reports as VERA's 2018 on VADOC's Solitary Confinement self-inflictions.
By
William Thorpe is in Solitary Confinement at Virginia's Red Onion State Prison.
References
