Ms. Paulettra James 8/17/22; op-ed "Why Lawmakers Should Visit a Prison," on Richmond.com rest on: How do Virginia politicians see the Virginia prisoner. This question expands into certain specific truths about the state's history that must be admitted then accepted. But human interest being as it is, unless we are compelled to accept those truths we will not. So the question Ms. Paulettra James presents transforms into how do we compel politicians and those who have presumptions of political leadership in Virginia into doing what is commonsensical and logical, as their law-making position requires. The situation and problem underscored by Ms. James's op-ed are that of political opportunistic exploitation of the Virginia prisoner and the response to it is action by the Virginia voter and citizenry.
2022 as a year has exposed societal details that try as national and Virginia state status quo beneficiaries will, that proverbial genie is out of the bottle and no amount of resurrected racist book bannings, revisions, and denials of history will distort what is in plain view.
Virginia voters elected Democrats who in 2020 commonsensical reformed certain aspects of Virginia's imprisonment and its prison experiment scheme that rests squarely on the injustices of the state's history. Then in 2021 Republicans were elected and they promptly embarked on attacking and modifying those reforms Virginians for in Democrats. Now of course each political party upon assumption of political power is free to express its world view as it sees fit. However, the as it sees fit can become idealistic if its world view is to resurrect a conservative politics that relegates a majority of Virginians to those discredited suppositions of the past that requires the deception of revisions and denials of the state's history, but this is exactly what Ms. Paulettra James tells us in her op-ed with "a recent example is the state legislatures reversal of a program that would have brought thousands of people in prison home earlier because they completed rehabilitative programs." Now this reversal which Ms. James indicts Republicans of doing reveals the discredited mind-set, Republicans and their allies in pursuit of supremacy and its tyranny of totalitarianism are pathetically stuck in at the expense of what is society. The question of what is society isn't answered as it being an objective existence outside of human affairs or to correctly state, history. Society exists as an understanding of our organic relationships, which upon transition of political power from one political party to another, there won't be any wily nily reversals and animus towards legislative acts of the former party unless the acts were egregious to the point. the very existence of society was in jeopardy.
We Reject the Virginia Republican World View on Criminal Justice and the Prison Experiment
Virginia Democrats in 2020 passed laws which voters wanted, that reformed aspects of how Virginia prisoners earned reductions of prison sentences, described as Earned Sentence Credits ESC. As such it was law, just as the same law that permitted the transformation of a free Virginian into one imprisoned. This point that the Virginia prisoner is no more no less a creation of Virginia law is one Republican politicians and certain opportunistic politicians act as it they are incapable of comprehending and inversely the Virginian prison official and allies ignore the fact that law also created them to which they are accountable.
The reforms of Virginia's imprisonment scheme by those commonsense and logical Democrats in 2020 were what reasonable Virginians in whose name the Virginia Department of Corrections, the Virginia Parole Board, the entire criminal justice apparatus does its work, wanted and asked for.
Regardless of where one falls on in understanding the relative application and consequence of Virginia's criminal justice scheme, its academic to argue that it has anything to do with justice in as much as we speculate justice to be without recognizing its controlling imperative, which is what the republican world view confuses and distorts justice with.
Ms. James in her op-ed work reminds us of a factor of justice, when she writes "Virginia officials have said to the media that they believe in "second chances". Do they truly mean what they say? The definition of second chances is: You believe people can earn another chance to be productive citizens in society. Second chances implies that policymakers and society are willing to forgive people who have outgrown the mistakes and bad choices of their past."
On 7/11/22; Fair and just prosecution a national network of elected prosecutors announced that 65 of their members had pledged to visit their local prisons of which 9 are from jurisdictions in Virginia. The stated logic is "prosecutors hold immense influence over whether someone becomes incarcerated and for how long, but many have never set foot inside a prison or jail and do not fully understand how conditions of confinement can impact an individuals rehabilitation efforts and in turn, the safety of the communities to which they return."
Ms. James in her op-ed, asked:" How can you decide the fate of people's lives without taking the time to speak with and understand them? Yet many of those same lawmakers can be quick to judge and pass legislation that often harms those who are incarcerated."
Now this: On 5/17/22; Virginia Department of Corrections Director Harold Clarke told members of Virginia Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee that 54% of scheduled for release prisoners have a medium-to-high risk of violent recidivism. So why are the people of Virginia funding a $1.3 billion prison system if its chief has powers of which it took Tom Cruise in Minority Report and Hollywood movie lots to depict?
I'm William Thorpe, Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system in 2019 and I'm still in Solitary Confinement since 1996
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