Virginia Prisons Accountability Committee: July 2023

Thursday, July 27, 2023

Racism Unleashed: Attack Dogs Maul, Bite & Terrorize Prisoners Across United States By Hannah Beckler Investigative Journalist Via Insider

Credit Democracy Now

A shocking new investigation by Insider reveals patrol dogs in U.S. prisons have attacked at least 295 people since 2017, with Virginia setting dogs on prisoners more than any other state. These attacks can leave people with grievous physical and psychological scars, sometimes permanently disabling and disfiguring them. The report also finds ties between procedures in U.S. prisons and the abuses committed by U.S. troops at Abu Ghraib, where soldiers used attack dogs to terrify Iraqi detainees along with other forms of torture and humiliation. For more, we speak with journalist Hannah Beckler, an investigations editor at Insider, and Xavia Goodwyn, who says prison guards hurled racial slurs at him during a dog attack at Virginia's Red Onion State Prison in 2015. "Everything just went mayhem," Goodwyn recalls.


Guests



Thursday, July 20, 2023

Rehabilitation: To Restore To Good Or To Reinstate By James Avent

 


Rehabilitation: to restore to good or to reinstate
What we see above is the definition of the word (rehabilitation) and how it is used in the Virginia Department of Corrections is not even close or even on the same page. What is the purpose of using such a word (rehabilitation) if the system doesn’t believe in it or use it in the correct manner? Before you can rehabilitate an offender, you have to also do the same with procedures and personnel who run these slave camps they call correctional centers. Watching from the front lines of the battlefield here in Greenville I’ve witnessed on a everyday basis the misconduct and oppression or just plain hatred towards offenders. Wanting to better yourself is a joke inside of the prison walls because you are always lied to or misguided and just passed on to the next for another set of lies. Yes I know there are some offenders who are not looking to change or become better but what about those like myself who are not given no type of help but somehow manage to become modest offenders and a example of a better tomorrow? I’ve heard over a million times I gotta want to change and become better as I serve out my time but I counter that statement with (What happens when the system refuses to change)? There is no I in Team so when will the system be held responsible for their lack of progress and actually put in place a real Prison Reform or Rehabilitation that helps the offenders and not still money?

Victims behind the wall
James Avent

Wednesday, July 12, 2023

What Law and Order? Virginia Prisoners Are Dying In The Care Of Armor Correctional Health Services, Virginia Republican Narrative On Criminal Justice and The Virginia Department of Corrections By William Thorpe


The Estate of Robert Lee Boley was awarded $4 million, see Boley v. ARMOR CORRECTIONAL HEALTH SERVICES 2022 US DIST. LEXIS 56244 and modified at Boley v. ARMOR CORR.HEALTH SERV. 2023 US DIST. LEXIS 60393. Robert Lee Boley was one of the outrageously many Virginia prisoners sentenced not to die yet died and he did so in the care of ARMOR CORRECTIONAL HEALTH SERVICES, Virginia Republican extra-judicial narrative on criminal justice and The Virginia Department of Corrections. There is much already written on the arbitrary and capricious nature and its idealistic consequence of the Commonwealth's industry of imprisoning a type of Virginian whose existence is already anticipated, not because of fate or destiny, but the nature of the Commonwealths political-economy. So what I'll do is let the speech of the Courts state it. Listed are persons who were not sent to Virginia prisons to die, yet died in the care of ARMOR CORRECTIONAL HEALTH SERVICES, The Virginia Republican Party's narrative on criminal justice and The Virginia Department of Corrections.

  1. Boley v. Armor Correctional Health Services (2022) ( casetext.com) (US Dist.Lexis 206656)
  2. Dallas v. Craft (2022) (casetext.com) (US Dist.Lexis 171365)
  3. Liberator v. Armor Correctional Health Services (2020) (law.justia.com_(US Dist. Lexis 883)
  4. Pfaller v. Clarke (2021) (casetext.com) (US Dist. Lexis 75130)
  5. Jones v. Virginia Department of Corrections (2019) (www.leagle.com) (US Dist. Lexis 79107)
  6. Scott v. Clarke (2013) (casetext.com) (US Dist. Lexis 168593).
In conclusion I state, no one is surprised that the Virginia Legislator/politician is a weather vane exploiting that age old scape goat diversion, nor are we flummoxed with the prison officials' malfeasant propensity. If people swooned when another National politician once upon a time said "trust but verify" then it shouldn't be complicated for all Virginians as they trust and have faith in the social contract to embrace the reality of holding the prison official accountable and the only way we can achieve it and its equality under law is Virginia's media enabling us with facts and opinions.

By William Thorpe

I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright. Unit.

Monday, July 3, 2023

Professor Michelle Alexander, Allies and Social Justice Proponents, Respond to Federal Judge James O. Browning by William Thorpe


In United States v. Jabsie Dwayne Lewis, a case about the First Step Act which was nothing less than a veneered Frankenstein ploy enabled by Van Jones [who ever since he allowed reactionaries to brand him a Maoist has been kowtowing to Republicans as if those billionaires whose foot soldiers hounded him out of the Obama White House care whether he was aide to Chu Teh, when decimals of their non-taxed "loans" are derived from unbridled speculation in the PRC] to allow Republicans an obscene talking point of being criminal justice reformers during the Trump midterms [by the way young folks, black, white and Asian women saw through it and rejected, those Republican wolves in their synthetic sheep wool].The investigative journalist, Jane Mayer instructed us in her work, DARK MONEY that law is a function of politics and politics needless I add is the labor of ideas. So for example we can have Clarence Thomas and his intellectual-liberalism raving opportunistically about traditions when he's on losing end of the charade as he was in Moore v. Harper and denouncing it in Dobbs. So as this relates to judge Browning, specifically his analysis at VII of United States v Lewis 432 F. Supp.3d 1237 it gives a pure distillation of what it means to polemicize as such he has in effect dismissed the labors of Prof. Michelle Alexander and the historicity and tradition of her emergence. The value of her work The New Jim Crow, exist as a shiny object ferreting out the Brownings among us, for her and those who are on the just side of Social Justice to then engage.

I'm William Thorpe, Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit