So here we have Dick Hall-Sizemore in his April 11. 2020;
Early Prisoners Release Will Not Help Much post on
BaconsRebellion.com giving us another scratch your head moment.
Dick Hall-Sizemore begins his work with "Governor Ralph Northam has announced that he will ask the General Assembly for authority to release from prison those offenders with a year less to serve on their sentences in order to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus in prison. He stressed that only those who have demonstrated good behavior and would not pose a threat to society would be eligible." And Dick Hall-Sizemore had so much of a problem with it that he took thirteen paragraphs stating such.
Again we have to move beyond head-scratching to head shaking, because didn't Hall Sizemore tell us that prisoners in question are those with a year or less to serve and have demonstrated good behavior? Let this sink in, "A year or less to serve." Meaning a prisoner could have served 44 years on a 45-year sentence with a year to go and Hall-Sizemore is telling us that 44 pounds of flesh years aren't enough on a 45-year sentence and if that prisoner hasn't been "corrected" and "rehabilitated" in Dick Hall-Sizemore's judgment and to his liking by his Confederates at the Virginia Department of Corrections [VADOC] then release from prison in light of the COVID-19 pandemic is a nonstarter.
I responded to Dick Hall Sizemore, not because his 4/11/20 post is coherent, cogent with insight and enlightenment. But I respond to Dick Hall Sizemore in particular because for too damn long we have been subjected to the schizophrenic intellect of the Hall-Sizemore's of the land seizing the narrative and distorting it to suit and fit their idealistic and reactionary politics and his post is another pathetic exercise.
I begin with the only response the COVID-19 pandemic ask of government, the state and it's prison official is release
not of some prisoners
as the toe testing politics of what is to be done with prisoners is cowardly being practiced by politicians and a sizable but miserable amount of prison reform advocates and activists but release of all prisoners.
Imprisonment Is Conditional on Law and the Underpinning Politics
Imprisonment first and foremost is conditional because it is conditioned by its legality. There is nothing in the circumstance of the imprisonment of the prisoner that gives the prison official unconditional rein to hold in confinement and detention a prisoner unconditionally. Every class of prisoner from those sentenced to be murdered to those on house arrest, the imprisonment is subject to whether government, the state and it's prison officials have the legal right to detain the prisoner. The prisoner during the imprisonment discovers, new facts, new evidenced and presents such discovery to government, the state, its court, and judges either seeking release, a new trial of sentence reduction, a circumstance that can and will alter the condition of being imprisoned. So there is nothing in the imprisonment circumstance that implies, as soon as the prisoner is in the cluches of the prison officials the seizure and condition is final.
Secondly, the legality of the imprisonment is dependent on the viability of the politics underpinning the legal structure that imprisoned the prisoner. So for example and history is replete with examples of as soon as a political system is extinguished whether, by revolution or civil and external wars, prisoners are released from their imprisonment. i.e. America,
France, Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, all revolutions to name a few. The COVID-19 pandemic presents us with such a circumstance. Furthermore, we are informed by our pre-COVID-19 pandemic politics
that the world as we knew it has changed. That there is an emergence of a new social compact, to wit new politics, which is underscored by the socialistic political-economy we are experiencing. From trillions being pumped into the economy by the federal government and the Federal Reserve Bank
to where society at large resembles prison even to the prison jargon of
"lockdowns." And as a final nail in the legality coffin, there is nothing in U. S. Virginia, Texas law that asks a prisoner die during a pandemic as part of the terms of the sentence. As a matter of fact U.S. Virginia, Texas law
prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, but the thrust of what I'm saying is the COVID-19 pandemic is one law and its political underpinning never factored or considered, therefore government, the state and it's prison officials lack any authority from the social-compact to maintain seizure of the prisoner under the illegal condition created by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dick Hall-Sizemore Is Lawless With Reactionary Impulses
It isn't that Dick Hall-Sizemore is incapable of understanding the conditionality of imprisonment and the illegal circumstance the COVID-19 pandemic imposes on the condition. But the fact is Dick Hall Sizemore appraises law in a lawless extrajudicial manner specifically as a mechanism to be wielded in controlling the other. So therefore the extrajudicial expectations and logic of his 4/11/20; post is nothing less than it's continuation.
Naturally, Hall-Sizemore can only support the COVID-19 pandemic and its death by default as an anticipation of his idealistic and reactionary politics of prison and death. Sizemore closes his post with, "To be fair to the Governor, however, he cannot just practically throw the prison gates open as some are advocating" reveals Dick Hall-Sizemore's lawless and reactionary impulses, because unless Hall-Sizemore is suggesting that the COVID-19 pandemic hasn't introduced an illegal condition upon imprisonment which I have shown that it has, then the only cause of action for government and the state is to "throw the prison gates open" and release all prisoners.
William Thorpe is in Solitary Confinement at Eastham Unit of the Texas Department of Corrections
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