Holding The Virginia Prison Official Accountable By William Thorpe

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin just signed into law, a prison Oversight Ombudsman. He signed it into law after vetoing other prison reform bills. I've been making this point over and over, that the lawlessness and impunity of the Virginia prison official isn't for want of laws or lack of. This newly minted Ombudsman law will not stop or deter the corrupt prison official from denying prisoners in solitary confinement outside exercise then lying about it or depriving prisoners of meals or giving prisoners meals in violation of The Virginia Department of Corrections Food Service Manual and The Master Menu, then lying about it or refusing a prisoner in solitary confinement a shower and then lying about it and on and on and on it goes. I'm not being sarcastic, but that's the reality. Now what has to be done to establish an unambiguous and unequivocal mechanism of introducing accountability to the prison official is the creation of a verifiable grievance process. What I mean by verifiable is simply this, the grievance filing process provided prisoners by the Virginia Department of Corrections depends on the honesty and integrity of the prison official. Instead of you the reader taking my word on the honesty and integrity of the prison official relative to processing prisoner filed grievances, I'll let a United States Federal Judge tell you, in the case (which isn't an outlier) BLOUNT v. FLEMING 2006 U.S DIST. LEXIS 44413, Red Onion State Prison Officials claimed that, Blount (who is a prisoner) hadn't exhausted administrative remedies, which is legalese for the prisoner hadn't complied with the law requiring the filing of grievances before one can go to court. So the Judge ruled that, "Blount produced additional evidence at trial to further diminish the credibility of Taylor. "(Fonnie Taylor at the time was grievance coordinator for Red Onion State Prison) Now what the Judge diplomatically said was, Taylor lied. Now the reason a prisoners ability to access the grievance process is so fundamental and essential is without satisfying the process, the prisoner cannot take the prison official to court or hold the prison official accountable. Both Federal and Virginia laws demand the grievance process is fulfilled before there can be any type of court action and the prison official of The Virginia Department of Corrections is well aware of this as such they go to extreme lengths to deny and deprive a prisoner the ability to file grievances or complaints. Another thing grievances do is they serve as records of the prisons maladministration, which cannot be simply swept under the rug. Now look I get the nuances of advocacy, but man we gotta be practical. Just because someone has been imprisoned doesn't necessarily mean they have actually experienced the unmasked face of Virginia's organized violence. There are those who could've done 20 to 30+ years in prison and never spent a day in none of Virginia's solitary confinement concentration camps as such their perspective of the Virginia prison system is comparatively night and day with for example mine, me who has been entombed in solitary confinement for approximately 39 years of this ongoing 44+ years of Virginia imprisonment, despite the fact Virginia has exiled me to the Texas prison system, it is still keeping me in 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

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