Advocacy For Reform Of The Virginia Prison System Shouldn't Become Idealistic By William Thorpe

The Virginia Department Of Corrections has an encyclopedia of Operating Procedures, Policies, Standards, Memoranda and Practices. The Commonwealth Of Virginia has a Constitution, then a universe of laws, statutes, Executive Orders, advisories, Opinions of The Attorney General and Practices. Then there is the Constitution of The United States, its executing laws and Practices. Now the Virginia Prisoner as all others animating the American existence of life and death are a construct of and subject to all of the above laws, traditions and practices. None of what I'm saying is insight, its just that you the reader are not caught up in the attention of its daily granular detail. I start with this, because I speak to this ahistoric tendency exhibited by advocacy, which is a tension, but can also be characterized as contradiction. Advocacy for reform of the Virginia prison system relatively falls into a couple of categories, which are (1) Idealistic and (2) practical. This isn't criticism in itself but an understanding of purpose. It's with this issue of purpose, meaning the focus of the reform that the question of tension and contradiction are factors. Because the approach taken by a number of those advocating for reform of the Virginia prison system underscores whether their understanding for any number of reasons is tethered to their anticipation. No objective and serious-minded person will argue against or disagree that the Virginia prison official is extra-judicial and behaves outside the scope of Law, so reformation of the system and holding the prison official accountable hinges on the practicality of its means and mechanisms. Idealistically the solution to the question of holding the Virginia prison official accountable has been presented as, creating independent oversight of The Virginia Department Of Corrections. But the reason this is Idealistic, and a gambit played, is laws already exist to investigate and hold the prison official accountable. What will set any oversight mechanism apart from the ideal, is to what degree is its remedial reach practical. Because the extra-judicial and above the law behavior of the prison official, which the creation of a purported independent ombudsman is expected to inhibit and even prohibit, is inherent to what it means to be a Virginia prison official. In other words breaking the law is organic to and an inescapable fact of being a prison official. Yet the creation of a Virginia Department of Corrections specific independent ombudsman presents nothing unique to the preexisting Virginia Code 2.2-309, detailing the duties of the State Inspector General anymore then the already existing laws. With practical measures to hold the Virginia prison official accountable, we firstly begin with a prison grievance process, that a prison's grievance department cannot dishonestly claim that the prisoner didn't comply with the requirements. The grievance process is a Virginia and United States law requirement. What is more fundamental is the political reformative action of excising the scapegoating narrative impulse of Virginia's Justice Infrastructure towards the prisoner. This scapegoating narrative has allowed its exploitation for political gain by those who are utterly disinclined from ameliorating deviance and criminality. Virginia's political landscape is historically stamped with, gambits purposefully designed to coopt practical prison reform .Thats what we have to change.

By William Thorpe

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