Prison and Criminal Justice Reform In The Commonwealth requires A Commensurate Politics And Will

 

It comes as no surprise that if we are to enjoy equality under law and its accountability then the politics and its reality, the actuality of what the Constitution of Virginia, in Article 1, Bill of Rights states.....A DECLARATION OF RIGHTS made by the good people of Virginia....and it's continuation in Section 1. (titled) Equality and rights of men.....That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights,.....has and must be clearly understood by those who ask for and seek our votes.....which Section 2. (of the Constitution of Virginia) states, People the source of power. (to which we're instructed) That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people, that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to them. Anyway it's not our intention to analyze our State Constitution, in a vacuum, it speaks for itself. But it was necessary that we state what we have above. Because as we considered the upcoming elections, as it relates to the Commonwealths scheme of imprisonment which impacts hundreds of thousands of Virginians, firstly the crime victim, their family, then the convicted prisoner whether justly or unjustly, their family and then generally the legitimacy of the Commonwealths Social Contract. We decided upon a course of action which was to ask those wanting our votes some questions and unsurprisingly a few responded (below are the questions we asked those who would presume to lead and govern us) but what is important, those who didn't also responded by their silence which speaks volumes. Because it reveals the world view that isn't conducive to and as a matter of fact at odds with the reality of accountability. Listed below are the politicians who responded along with responses. We at VAPAC endeavor to always present the community with information upon which insight can and will be gleaned. As a last word the Commonwealths media has a role to play also.

Questions

1. Do you commit to a comprehensive review of VADOC and the philosophy of its Dir. Harold Clarke #OnTheRecordVA
2. Why should taxpayers vote for you, when you don't know what to do about VADOC? #OnTheRecordVA
3.  A practical way to bring accountability to VADOC is establishing office of prisoner grievance independent of VADOC, will you work for this? #OnTheRecordVA

Here is what some of the potential candidates said in response to the questions of those who answered.

Delegate Cia Price

Jade Harris

Victoria Luevanos

Monica Gary

Dave LaRock

Here is the listing of nonresponsive candidates:

Emily Scott    Timmy French    Kathy Beery    Mark Obenshain    Christopher head    Dave Suetterlain

Todd Pillion    Bill Stanley    Frank Ruff    John Ruff    John Mcguire    Creigh Deeds    Philip Hamilton

Natan McKenzie    Glen Sturtevant    Lashrecse Aird    Lamont Bagby    Ghazala Hashami

Schuyler VanValkenburg    Siobhan Dunnavant    Clint Jenkins     Emily Brewer     Louise Lucas

Tony Goodwin    Angelina Williams Graves    Aaron Rouse    Mamie Locke    Monty Mason    

Danny Diggs    Jolicia Ward    Richard Stuart    Ryan McDougle    Joel Griffin Tara Durant    Jason Ford

Bryce Reeves    Jeremy McPike Nicki Rattray Baldwin    Danica Roem    Bill Woolf    Russet Perry

Juan Pablo Segura    Suhas Subramanyam    Greg Moulthrop    Jennifer Carroll Foy    Mike Van Meter

Scott Surovell    DaveMarsden    Stella Pekarsky    Julie Perry    Saddam Azlan Salim    Jennifer Boyso

Matthew lang    Adam Ebbin Sophia Moshasha    Barbara Favola 

Patrick hope    Alfonso lopez     Charniele Herring    rip Sullivan     Kathleen Murphy     Ken Plum

Karrie Delaney    Dan Helmer     David Bulova    Marcus Simon    Kaye Kory     Paul Krizek

Kathy Tran     Eileen Filler-Corn     Luke Torian     Elizabeth Guzman     Suhas Subramanyam

David Reed     Wendy Gooditis     Todd Gilbert Tony Will     Chris Runion     John Avoli    Terry Austin

Chris head     Sam Rasoul     Joe McNamara     Israel O'Quinn     Terry Kilgore     Les Adams

James Edmunds    Kathy Byron     Sally Hudson     Rob Bell    JohnMcGuire    Rodney Willett

Buddy Fowler     Scott Wyatt     Micheal Webert     Nick Freitas    Roxann Robinson    Carrie Coyner    Jeff Bourne     Schuyler VanValkenburg     Emily Brewer     Jelon Ward    Don Scott Clint Jenkins Cliff Hayes    Kelly Convis-Fowler    Barry Knight....

`Note` Some candidates have been omitted due to not having a social/twitter platform, this is an evolving post, should any candidate decide to respond, we are open to your response.

vapac

        

The Injustice Of Prison And Criminal Justice Is To Quote Supreme Court Of The United States Associate Justice William Douglas In Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co. 392 U.S. 409 "A Spectacle Of Slavery Unwilling To Die" By William Thorpe

Facts are stubborn and no amount of Supremacist gibberish, whether it's from Glenn Youngkin and Jason Miyares aping Ron DeSantis Denys it. So listed are Justice Douglas reminder: (1) Lane v. Wilson 307 U.S.268 (2) Strauder v. West Virginia 100 U.S.303 (3) Johnson v. Virginia 373 U.S.61 (4) Brown v. Board of Education 347 U.S.483 (5) Pennsylvania v. Board of Trusts 353 U.S.230 (6) Sweatt v. Painter 339 U.S.629 (7) Loving v. Virginia 388 U.S.1(8) Buchanan v. Warley 245 U.S.60 (9) Shelley v. Kraemer 334 U.S.1 (10) Plessy v. Ferguson 163 U.S.537 (11) New Orleans Park Improvement Assn.v. Detiege 358 U.S.54 (12) Lombard v. Louisiana 373 U.S.267 (13) Mayor of Baltimore v. Dawson 350 U.S.877(14) Holmes v. City of Atlanta 350 U.S.879 (15) Griffin v. Maryland 378 U.S.130 (16) Gayle v. Browser 352 U.S.903 (17) Brown v. Louisiana 383 U.S.131 (18) Hamilton v. Alabama 376U.S.650 (19)Bond v. Floyd 385 U.S.116 (20) Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States 379 U.S 241 (21) Reitman v. Mulkey 387 U.S.369...Books, journals, marked, unmarked graves and history of the subject demographic attest to the fact that the systemic injustices of prison, the criminal justice are not an anomaly.

By William Thorpe

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

Temporary Ombudsman Of The Virginia Department Of Corrections Is A Three Card Monte Hoodwink By William Thorpe

I begin with Governor Glenn Youngkin should first and foremost do a prime time explanation to the people of the Commonwealth, why Virginia prisoners are consistently alleging an infinitude of criminal acts committed against them by Virginia prison officials in the voluminous chronicles of court filings in Federal and Virginia state courts. The Virginia Department of Corrections has an entire directory of Operating Procedures, Standards and all sorts of executive memorandum, that one would think lends to accountability of its work imprisoning the sons and daughters of the people along with the requisite administrative transparency. The Commonwealth of Virginia beginning with its Constitution, its Code of executable laws along with Executive Orders and Directives establishing facts of Process, which notwithstanding the stench of Ruffin v. Commonwealth and its slavery retrenchment, reminds us that the Virginia prisoner is a creation of the State and not some outside of history force. As such the lawfulness of the imprisonment, its condition, isn't a one sided narrative dependent on the mere fact of conviction. In other words the lawfulness of the confinement and detention of the Virginia prisoner has to be the quintessential embodiment of Virginia law, its Social Contract. However it is now being revealed that the Virginia prisoner prior to this conditional and temporary Ombudsman law has been held unlawfully, illegally and extra judicially. Because this Ombudsman law is tacit affirmative that The Virginia Department of Corrections has been functioning above and outside of the law. In other words the state has a priori forfeited whatever claim of authority it presumes to exercise. The Virginia Prisoner is not in prison because of judgement on their existence as a human, but on the simple fact of conviction of a criminal code. The Virginia prison official is also bound to the exegesis of law the Code of Virginia 53.1 as authority for the privilege of receiving tax payer payment for working in Virginia's prisons. According to Virginia laws and when such laws are systemically violated and Virginia politicians have to scramble, by tossing us the crumb of an Ombudsman to cover and conceal the fact that Virginia prisons exist unlawfully, evidenced by the violations of its prison employees thus rendering the imprisonment of the Virginia prisoner illegal then it is nothing short of dictatorial arbitrariness and rule by might and not a functioning within the parameters of the Social Contract, but we are simply saying that a type of Virginian, a demographic only has the historical role to be imprisoned.

By William Thorpe

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

Didn't The Covid-19 Lock Down Make The Argument Against Solitary Confinement? By Wiliam Thorpe

We almost had a civil war over the Covid-19 National Lock Down. Republicans who have never cared about the misery regular people endure on a daily basis in the Commonwealth of Virginia, were all of a sudden concerned about our welfare and rabidly against the Lock Down and its debilitating physical and psychological effects on the Virginia Tax Payer. Well everything that made the Lock Down wrong is what is every day existence for prisoners in solitary confinement. In other words the evils of the Lock Down that almost precipitated a 2d civil war is what Virginia prison officials maintain as "civilized" practice in the name of Virginians. If the Covid-19 Lock Down was harmful, [and Courts of all levels of American jurisprudence have tripped over each other's robes pronouncing such], then maintaining its existence in prison is not a simple violation of opportunistic law but a contradiction of that, "inalienability" of humanness which the presumptuousness of Virginia's criminal justice claims in defense of the social contract. There is nothing to debate, if it was anti-human to subject the Nation to conditions of The Covid-19 Lock Down then it is equally anti-human to subject prisoners to it under guise of solitary confinement.

By William Thorpe

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

Governor Glenn Youngkin's Dismissal of Harold Clarke, Director of The Virginia Department of Corrections is Admission That Republicans Same Ole Same Ole Exploitation of Virginia's Prisoners Isn't Working By William Thorpe

vapac

It's without argument that Virginia's reactionaries regardless of political party have historically seized speculative political power by exploiting the accused, the convicted and prisoner of Virginia's criminal justice system and its present incarnation in Glenn Youngkin and his Republicans Cartelesque cabal are no different. The antagonism presented by social deviancy, malbehavior and criminal violations is a value of the human social dialectic, anticipating response and in a healthy society the response labors towards social assessment. In other words it's one thing for one 16 yr. old out of 100K to get caught up in the criminal justice system, that's an anomaly or an outlier, but when that one teenager is generationally compounded, it then becomes systemic and if the response is the same ole same ole, another devoid of social assessment then we can only conclude that the same ole same ole, is deliberate, purposeful, serving an interest that we see revealed in the classic refrain of vote for me because I'm tough on crime. The historicity of the tough on crime on phenomenon is well documented and I won't waste the readers time with another recount, but as it relates to this work Glenn Youngkin and his Republican Cartelesque cabal seized its refrain during the 2022 elections. The question isn't whether Youngkin's electoral success was due to its bigotry, but what is indisputable is Youngkin attempted to exploit its appeal to his reactionary base as mechanism and means of solidifying his Republican Cartelesque cabal's seizure of speculative political power in Virginia and in 2023 due to a one after the other sequence of developments attesting to the level of cognitive maturity of The Virginia Tax Payer, it backfired and the nail in the Republican coffin was The Supreme Court of Virginia's rejection and repudiation of the petty dictatorial presumptions of his co- conspirator Attorney General Jason Miyares work to undo prison reforms demanded by The Virginia Tax Payer and done during Democratic Party control of the Legislature. Harold Clarke as Director of Virginia's prison system presided over an entire gamut of prison official misdeeds, violations and evils and he was rewarded and lauded by both Republicans, Democrats and most importantly Virginia's corporate and status quo media. Virginia prisoners have been dying and violated under conditions Harold Clarke and his designees created for over a generation and not once were eyes batted at the charnel house existence of Virginia's concentration camps, till this group of Youngkin Republicans realized that Virginia isn't as gullible to that same ole same ole narrative of crime this and prisoner that because the memory is fresh of that 1995 scam by another Republican Governor, George Allen who abolished parole as gambit to provide former South West Virginia coal miners with jobs confining black, brown and poor white bodies from Virginia's cities.

The cover Glenn Youngkin expected he'd have by repeating that tried, tired and well-worn gambit, of exploiting the Virginia prisoner and the criminal justice system existed but it hasn't been enough to lull these mature and wide awake Virginians who are saying enough is enough with the ad nauseum scape goating of their loved ones under the law and order rubric that only works when it serves the interests of reactionaries and as soon as it begins to smell as a liability, it's foot soldiers as Harold Clarke are conveniently dismissed. Scores of Virginia prisoners died under the tenure of Harold Clarke, hundreds were abused by denial of outside exercises, food, medical care, showers, which are all violations of law. The ACLU of Virginia, Solitary Watch, Human Rights Watch, to name a few along with The Federal Court system and in a limited manner, Virginia State Courts all have to one degree and another documented horrendous assaults on the Virginia prisoner by the Virginia prison official, under Harold Clarke's leadership. But as soon as Youngkin and his Republican Cartelesque cabal sensed that Harold Clarke was an albatross around their 2023 electoral presumptions, he was dismissed. So, we are expected to say thank you our Honorable Governor? Nah, Gov. Youngkin this aint that Virginia. We understand that if we are to achieve our just society, including the social assessment necessary for justice and accountability, no narrative eludes interrogation.

William Thorpe

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

Attention newly minted Director Chadwick Dotson of Virginia Prisons

vapac

𝑾𝒆 𝒄𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒐𝒏 𝑪𝒉𝒂𝒅𝒘𝒊𝒄𝒌 𝑫𝒐𝒕𝒔𝒐𝒏 𝒊𝒏 𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒏𝒆𝒘 𝒓𝒐𝒍𝒆 𝒂𝒔 𝑫𝒊𝒓𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒐𝒓 𝒐𝒇 𝑽𝒊𝒓𝒈𝒊𝒏𝒊𝒂'𝒔 𝑷𝒓𝒊𝒔𝒐𝒏𝒔 𝒕𝒐 𝒈𝒐 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒎𝒖𝒏𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒆𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒍𝒚 𝒓𝒆𝒑𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑪𝒐𝒎𝒎𝒐𝒏𝒘𝒆𝒂𝒍𝒕𝒉𝒔 𝒑𝒓𝒊𝒔𝒐𝒏𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒊𝒏𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒎 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒅𝒊𝒔𝒄𝒖𝒔𝒔 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒑𝒆𝒐𝒑𝒍𝒆, 𝒊𝒏𝒄𝒍𝒖𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒄𝒓𝒊𝒎𝒆 𝒗𝒊𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒔, 𝒔𝒖𝒓𝒗𝒊𝒗𝒐𝒓𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒐𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒊𝒓 𝒓𝒆𝒑𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒔 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒑𝒉𝒊𝒍𝒐𝒔𝒐𝒑𝒉𝒚 𝒂𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒊𝒎𝒑𝒓𝒊𝒔𝒐𝒏𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒊𝒏 𝑽𝒊𝒓𝒈𝒊𝒏𝒊𝒂 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒃𝒆.

vapac

To Prison For Poverty

Brave new films

Many people think that debtor’s prisons disappeared from American society just as surely as horse-based transportation. But in fact, people who are too poor to pay fines are still being threatened with incarceration today, but with an all too familiar twist: private companies are making money off people who can’t pay.

THE POWER OF FEAR

Brave New films

Fear-mongering politicians and sensational, stereotyping media coverage has driven bad policies that lock up greater numbers of people. Poor people and people of color are overwhelmingly and disproportionately targeted.

By vapac