REFORMING VIRGINIA PRISONS ISNT COMPLICATED By William Thorpe

Power, Rights, Authority, Legality, Culture and all the myriad mediums of human existence and The Social Contract come from The People, based on what The People want to understand. The Virginia Department of Corrections and the prisons under its administration are a realization of, once again what The People want to understand. Do we all understand stuff to the same degree, with equal clarity and grasp of nuance? No. However what we all do have is a common denominator of recognizing when we are clueless and ignorant of something and as it relates, to reforming Virginia prisons, cluenessness and ignorance are assets. Because those who speak for and advocate for us prisoners are not boxed in under the adage, one with half a knowledge poses more harm than the completely ignorant, because you can't tell them nothing. Now what I mean by cluelessness and ignorance are assets is this. There are always two perspectives to acts and activities and I'm not saying sides, but perspectives. Because let's take for example The Virginia Department of Corrections, which is what this work is focused on, it isn't that there are two sides a la Jekyll and Hyde to its activities but there are two perspectives thus revealing purpose and the point I'm making is, critics of The Department and advocacy for its reform are always clueless and ignorant to either of the perspectives fueling its activities as such the basis of scrutiny and interrogation of the social good or legality of the activity must be based on other honest or transparent and knowable aspects of Virginia's government. This distinction is fundamental because, then the application of that other adage, catching stuff with honey doesn't fly and as a matter of fact it is down right idealistic when the focus is on the reformation of Virginia state organized violence, which is what the prison system is and The Virginia Department of Corrections is administrator. Now there is this vernacular, "self-check", denoting a type of social behavior, where one on interacting with governmental bureaucracy becomes pathetically obsequious which is necessary and must be present in order for government to indulge in its inherent corruption. The operative of self-checking is instead of the advocacy for reform wielding cluenessness and ignorance contextually as an interrogatory, it instead gives The Department the benefit of the doubt by behaving and acting as if it is knowledgeable of The Departments perspectives thereby legitimizing and giving it value. As I've been making the point The Virginia Department of Corrections as an aspect of Government is inherently corrupt by no fault of its own, but such is the dialectic of all bureaucracies and its on those wielding cluenessness and ignorance to hold it to account and make it accountable. What The Department presents as logic and reasons of its actions and activities never square with the actions. Here is a simple one, a Virginian is sentenced to 10 years in the custody of The Department and for whatever cookie cutter reason the prisoner is held in solitary confinement and completes the 10 years in solitary confinement because The Department claims it cannot release the prisoner into its general populations, yet the prisoner as soon as release is due, is released back into society. What I've just described isn't outlier, but the norm and we cannot simply accept the logic of the prison official because it lacks redemptive value and that's the authority of The People

By William Thorpe

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