By William Thorpe
I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit and if you feel any kinda way about this work contact me by Securus email using the Texas prison number #2261982
Sunday, June 22, 2025
VIRGINIA REPUBLICAN OBSTRUCTIONISM AND OPPOSITION TO VIRGINIA PRISON REFORM IS NOTHING BUT THE QUICK SAND OF MINDLESSNESS By William Thorpe
Thursday, June 19, 2025
THE JOHNNY COME LATELYISM TENDENCY OF PRISON REFORM IN VIRGINIA IS A RETROGRADE INDULGENCE By William Thorpe
Yes, Virginia is in the vanguard of reform polemics Nationally. But thats not the point. I continue: Too many good people, since my imprisonment in 1980 Black and White Guys, stood up and are still standing up against this Virginia injustice machine, that takes off its mask and reveals drooling fangs every time it imposes an extra-judicial, an unlawful dictate through its Virginia prison official on the Virginia prisoner. Too many came into the Virginia prison system with relatively short sentences and in response and reaction to the savage and barbarous treatment of the Virginia prison official and their sadistic urges and impulses accumulate(d) vindictive and inordinate increases on the original sentence and people you know what, each and every act by those Virginia prisoners then and the Virginia prisoner now has its cause, its determinant, its basis in the extra-judicial and above the law behavior of the Virginia prison official and its excuse by the supposed "oversight" Virginia Politician, specifically, the Virginia Republican. I challenge anyone and I mean anyone to disprove, this, I respond with access the chronicles of claims and allegations against the Virginia prison official, by the Virginia prisoner, their Families and Estates held in the innumerable law libraries and study and encounter the allegations that are clearly unbefitting those embodying office of The Sovereign Commonwealth of Virginia, yet the prevailing narrative deployed in that identical Military at War, Psychological Operations manner, enabled by Virginia mainstream media, specifically The Richmond-Times and Dispatch, maligns and accuses the Virginia prisoner.
Another form of maligning the Virginia prisoner, is Johnny Come Latelyism and this indulgence is another instance of that adage, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions", because those guilty of Johnny Come Latelyism are besides their mindlessness, good intended. What I mean by 'mindlessness', is simply this, they haven't factored in with its requisite seriousness, or given the appropriate thought to the fact that the Virginia Prisoner is first and foremost in the activist trenches and on the advocacy front lines, because all immediate reactions and responses by the Virginia prisoner to the lawless behavior and practices of the Virginia prison official constitute ACTIVISM and ADVOCACY, despite that always present violence from the prison official. I recall a 1998 incident at Koncentration Kamp Red Onion State Prison, where the "gun man", or officer with the gun shot a prisoner in the shower, in A-Building, with rubber bullets on the pretext that the prisoner was refusing to leave the shower. Now the shower is about the size of one of those porta pottys, with a steel gate and if a prisoner was actually refusing to be handcuffed and shackled to leave not just a shower stall, but anywhere at Red Onion they have their procedures, which summary rubber bulleting a prisoner sure as hell isn't it. I cite this anecdote, to underscore the fact that its dismaying when there is a level of sentiment bubbling and gurgling among some of those who advocate for us prisoners out there in the free world that the Virginia prison landscape was a zombie waste land of mutes without agency, simply at the bigoted whim and its sadistic fantasy. Yes the Virginia prison official embodies the bigoted whim, with sadistic fantasies that are dementedly acted and carried out, but Virginia prisoners haven't simply been, as one Mother of a Virginia prisoner recently put it, her son is not a "punching bag".
As I've been making the point, the issue of Prison Reform and holding the prison official Accountable is primarily, Political. Because prison and imprisonment in Virginia as Nationally serves a core Social Contract function that has nothing to do with the "justice" myth and narrative which the Governing status quo, would rather leave undefined so subjects or the people of Virginia can fill in that proverbial blank, using their ignorance's and biases as that controlling "self-check", mechanism, that is fundamental and a priori to the political-economy and it's Social Contract. Historically, the Virginia prisoner has behaved as all natural entities when subjected to impunity. Over the course of The Commonwealth of Virginia applying its subordinating function in pursuit of its core interest, which it tried its maintenance with the tactic of secession and the eventual Civil War. Minds and Hearts have risen and clearly stated," not in our name", which the Virginia prisoner as subject has in constructive, destructive, positive and negative expressions also echoed. I say this to give value, to those Virginia prisoners, who cracked open the door on reform in Virginia in the case LANDMAN v. ROYSTER 333 F.Supp. 621, which was so comprehensive that Virginia's status quo couldn't even pull the stunt of appeal. Nonetheless The Supreme Court of The United States, couldn't leave The Old Dominion flailing, so it came to as we expect, status quo's defense, with a disclaimer in a subsequent ruling in COX v. COOK 420 U.S. 734, as cited in RUSSELL v. DIVISION OF CORRECTIONS 530 F.2d 969, stating that the determinations in the LANDMAN case are limited to the EASTERN DISTRICT of Virginia.
The meaning and consequence was unambiguous, Virginia prisoners in the Eastern District had the benefit and privilege of the reformative ruling of the LANDMAN v. ROYSTER case, while those in the Western District didn't, yup thats the idealistic and conditional nature of our Nations jurisprudence and we still see it today, in the same Courts ruling delegitimizing affirmative action in the Nations Colleges, Universities with the inevitable spill over into private businesses, yet The same Supreme Court that gave us the anti-affirmative ruling said its okay for the Military to continue using affirmative action. So the Court in one instance delegitimizes the history necessitating affirmative action, while in another instance it validates the same history it relatively and virtually mocked. I've went all into this affirmative action anecdote because its exemplary and illustrative of this social fact of prison, imprisonment, the reform motive and the accountability dialectic and its emergence in Johnny Come Latelyism. Now I continue: I understand the maxim and I paraphrase, if you can't or won't speak for yourself, someone else will and that is the work of my writing. What Johnny Come Latelyism idealistically but insidiously does is, it, thoughtlessly and naively, discounts and dismisses that very springboard it is leaping into its prerogatives of action from. I'm originally from Detroit, I came to Virginia ,Norfolk to be exact in 1980, when I was locked up on armed robbery. I was in Norfolk City Jail in 1980 when it was taken over by a number of guys. I entered the Virginia Department of Corrections at its Powhatan or State Farm Receiving Unit in August 1980.I lasted around 5 days in C-3, before an incident with prison officials during clothing exchange the Saturday of my first weekend, landed me in Solitary Confinement, till I was released back into C-3 after months in solitary because a multiday protest occurred on the main prison's General Population and they needed the cell or cage I was in to detain others. This multiday protest brought out The State Police and I think the National Guard. So here I was 20 years old in Virginia, experiencing Norfolk's SWAT team storm the 7th floor of the Jail, then in prison I m watching heavily armed elements of Virginia's Organized Violence encircling the prison's fences.
This isn't a proto-Autobiographical work. The point however is engraving facts on our terms, that on all fronts of Virginia's status quo's deployment of its organized violence, within its justice infrastructure and prisons, Virginia Prisoners, Black, White, male and female, contrary to the revisionism of Johnny Come Latelyism,"Spoke", Yeah that same speech resistance to impunity, historically has always asserted, along with its consequence. Some martyred, others having physical and mental health failings with this salient point, that with the exception of those sentenced to die, when Virginia used the death penalty, no Virginia prisoner is sent to prison to die due to prison official machinations or lose their mind or contract a debilitating disease--yet, thats par course and the nature of the prison official's "orderly operations". At this juncture I resurrect AHOTO TAYSIR MULAZIM aka HAROLD CARPENTER. Ahoto passed on March 2, 2022 after The Virginia Department of Corrections kept him locked up for over 40 years and promptly upon his release in 2022, his nephew allegedly shot and killed him, the understanding is it was over an argument. Now here is the crux, his nephew might have been the one who shot and killed him, but the reality is the Virginia Department of Corrections and its prison official, killed Ahoto, just as they have killed and continue to kill Virginians they imprison. Ahoto was born on August 13, 1963 in Richmond, Virginia and he was from the same Neighborhood, Churchill, which Virginia Delegate Rae Cousins, eloquently spoke of in her 2024 TED TALK at GREENROCK CORRECTIONAL CENTER.I met Ahoto at C-Building [The Solitary Confinement Max security Unit] of The Virginia State Penitentiary aka The Wall. He had a weird funny name none of us had ever heard, this was in 1982 and we'd joke him over his name and he'd respond with he had a comb if I needed one. I had just started growing dreads, just as his name was alien to us, dreads were also alien to him and the rest of the fellows. Remember this was 1982 and not only were the average fellow, black or white ignorant to Reggae music and Bob Marley, but they were also ignorant to the entire Rastafarian cosmology, Marcus Garvey, Black Nationalism, Emperor Haile Selassie and Pan-Africanism. Yes there was deep knowledge and grasp of The Black Panthers, of course Frantz Fanon, George Jackson, The Nation of Islam, The Moors, The Five Percenters and of course, both Prince Hall and Albert Pike's Scottish Masonry. There was also recognition of the writings of my fellow Detroiter, Donald Goines, then Iceberg Slim, Charlie Avery Harris all precursors to the Urban Legend litreature monetization. I have went a bit into it like this to paint a bit of the formative culture of Ahoto, for one his Father named him based on his grasp of Black Self-Determination and the last thing the Virginia prison official then wanted was to contend with opposition to that impunity dynamic of "do as I say, not as I do". For a bit of context, let's remember that Virginia was Capital of The traitorous Confederacy. The Virginia State Penitentiary not only held Vice-President Aaron Burr but was in existence during the Civil War. Ahoto is illustrative of us, we are imprisoned at early ages, subjected to conditions and circumstances that breed resistance. There are too many names to be resurrected, for example, Malik Akbar Wakil aka Randolph Flueller aka Cup Cake, Rico Frederick Holiday aka Doc Holiday, Roscoe Lawson aka 'Scoe, Donald " Tree" Sutherland. Paul "Gum Gum" Coomer and lastly but not least, Joe Giarratano. All of these guys have passed and all spent inordinate amount of time not just in Virginia prisons but Solitary Confinement. For example Tree aka Don Sutherland and I were in Norfolk City jail together, in 1980.We were in The Wall, together, at Mecklenburg, State Farm's M-Building together, when I finally got released from long term solitary confinement in 1992, from State Farm's M-Building and I was sent to Augusta Correctional Center Tree was already there. These were exceptionally good people, who got maligned by the Virginia prison official because they resisted, meaning they, we had the temerity to require the Virginia prison official comply with their very own procedures and policies. What I'm saying is analogous to a patient in a hospital put in the position of having to require Nurses and Medical professionals do their job. Let me say this about Joe Giarratano, Koncentration Kamp Red Onion State Prison had just opened in 1998 and Virginia brought him back from the Illinois Prison System where in typical Virginia fashion the holdover slave overseers had shipped him to. Joe and Ahoto were on the A-2 and 3 rec yard and I was on the A-4 and 5 rec-yard, we were yelling at each other over the wall and steel girder roof like enclosure, then I heard Joe yelling at the "gun man", prison official holding the gun, who was up in the A-1, 2, 3 gun window," that if you wanna shoot him, you'll have to shoot through me". What was going on was the gun man had issues with Ahoto and he wanted to fabricate a story, in order to shoot Ahoto and he thought, because Joe was White and Ahoto was Black, Joe would look the other way. But he was mistaken, we were all at Mecklenburg, Ahoto and I, we were in solitary confinement, Joe was on death row and on many occasions when the Mecklenburg officials would literally drag him on the floor from C-Pod of Building 1 (which was the death row-pod) we were the ones who would go to his aid by letting the Officials know that, no they couldn't mistreat him like that and this went for all of us. A many times Joe was my neighbor and I would be in solidarity with defending him. So his defense of Ahoto on that Red Onion rec yard was just our solidarity culture. Let me again stress this everyone I've listed in this work is dead. There are just as many alive who have the same solidarity cultural ethos and forthrightness and another motivator of this Johnny Come Latelyism work has been my encountering advocates and activist, who do speak for us, the Virginia prisoner and I'm as much a Virginia prisoner despite my exile to the Texas prison system because I'm still under the jurisdiction of The Commonwealth of Virginia, bad mouthing, speaking dismissively of these remaining guys who have literally bled in the trenches of activism against the Virginia injustice machine in Virginia's prison cages. I've heard guys character assassinated by those in the free world, without the grasp that in our human condition, there are no Saints, save the loyalty of purpose. As I bookend this work, I want to again resurrect the irrepressible Marie Deans, a voice for us, who I spoke of in length, in a work also on Elizabeth Alexander. Once again yes Virginia is in the vanguard of Prison reform polemic Nationally and there isn't higher work than our own critique for ourselves.
By William Thorpe
I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit and if you feel any kinda way about this work contact me by Securus email using the Texas prison number #2261982
Friday, June 13, 2025
WHAT IF VIRGINIA JURYS STARTED BEHAVING AS VIRGINIA'S PAROLE BOARD AND SAID, DUE TO IDEOLOGICAL REASONS IT WON'T CONVICT, WHICH IS WHAT THE PAROLE BOARD CLAIMS, WHEN IT REFUSES TO GRANT PAROLE By William Thorpe
Virginia Parole is a speculative and subjective process directed at an objective anticipation. So to say it as the Courts have said it, "Virginia law give rise to a limited interest in consideration for parole, but not in parole release" THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT, which Virginia is under it's Jurisdiction, pretty much validated the speculative nature of Virginia's parole gimmick in the case BURNETTE v. FAHEY 687 F.3d 171, what however is important about the outcome of the case, is Judge GREGORY'S dissent or his disagreement with his fellow Judges who ruled against Virginia Prisoners. Now the reason I characterized the case as I have is the conclusion reached by those Fourth Circuit Judges in the BURNETTE case isn't surprising when they are getting their cue from the gambits of Virginia law makers or politicians in Virginia Parole Law, see: VIRGINIA CODE 53.1-134 through 165.1.Now here is where I reiterate, that politics is law and to reform anything, there has to be a command of the status quo politics. Secondly politics and it's undergirding law is narrative and the corrupted sophistry. So if Virginia's parole scheme is a corrupt sophism, meaning a dictatorship of ideology that despite, etymology is devoid of ideas and the subsequent anticipation, then it is farcical, yeah that classic veneer of enlightenment, progress and civilization, while the maggoty underbelly seethes, writhes and squirms. Only the insidious and delusional will defend adjudicative certitude as such to maintain a modicum of intellectual honesty or that recognition that yes the human condition can sanction without the hubris of "judgement", and in pursuit of," the center must hold "integrity of the Social Contract, our enlightened ancients devised those release valves of, Parole, Probation Pardons, Clemencies and Commutations as a re-ignition of that necessary "faith", which The Schizophrenic in Chief, Thomas Jefferson attested to in the Declaration of Independence....." all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed".So it was with this understanding that Parole and its progeny are intended to pacify. But when the animating motive of the politicization of the parole mitigant is the reactionary's short sightedness which consequently is at the expense of the process and enlightenment of the Social Contract.
Currently Virginia's Parole Board is blatantly and brazenly saying to the Virginia tax payer who pays their six figure pay check, that as inconceivably as it sounds, their "ideology" takes precedence over the expected unconditionality of their job performance. I paraphrase comments by Patricia West, chair of The Virginia Parole Board, that she will never agree to grant parole to cases where individuals have committed serious violent crimes, which quite frankly is fraud, because she is being paid to do a job according to Virginia law and not her whim and caprice and as a matter of fact there are a number of Virginia prisoners convicted for doing the same thing, the Virginia Parole Board is doing, which is collecting a paycheck, while refusing to do the job they swore as officials of the Sovereign Commonwealth of Virginia to the best of their ability perform. Once again imagine a Virginia Juror displaying the Patricia West indulgence? The other aspect to the Virginia Parole process is the mockery it makes of certain fundamental truths of Virginia and The U.S. Constitution. So constitutionally, no one should be tried for the same charge twice, because its a "Double Jeopardy", but the Virginia prisoner is double jeopardized, like this, let's say there is a prison rule infraction, which after the prison hearing and punishment the rule infraction is processed by the Commonwealth Attorney for that County as a violation of Virginia's law, the prisoner is subsequently convicted and again punished. Now on the surface you would say thats a classic situation of double jeopardy, but our Nations Court system says, no. The initial prison rule infraction and subsequent hearing is CLASSIFIED AND DEFINED as an ADMINISTRATIVE PROCESS as opposed to the Commonwealth Attorney's Court process. Okay let's concede the logic of the Administrative and a Court proper process, now here is where the mockery of the constitutional prohibitions against being double jeopardized comes in, which is also an end run, because the prisoner is harmed and impacted by the effect both processes have on his parole prospects. However, what I want to stress again are the fact that all of these are political questions that require the electoral process. The question of Parole in Virginia is part of the war being waged against Virginia prisoners and it has nothing to do with how to repair harm to the Virginia victim of crime.
By William Thorpe
I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit and if you feel any kinda way about this work contact me by Securus email using the Texas prison number #2261982
Saturday, June 7, 2025
HALF A DOZEN YEARS AND COUNTING, IN EXILE IN THE TEXAS PRISON SYSTEM FROM VIRGINIA By William Thorpe
I was one of the initial ten guys, from Virginia's original Super-Max, (the now closed) Mecklenburg Correctional Center, who opened up Koncentration Kamp Red Onion State Prison (which is hard at work resurrecting all the evils of Mecklenburg). My current detention in solitary confinement (which I still am in Texas) started after a August 8th-9th,1996 hostage incident at Virginia's Nottoway Correctional Center. Now what I want to use this six years of exile in Texas to illustrate, is, first of all, the administrating philosophy of the Nations prisons are relatively alike and identical, which shouldn't be news to anyone who pays attention with nominal grasp to the fact that one of the hallmarks of The Constitution Of The United States is its reduction of a full person to....."three fifths....",at Article I. Because the fundamental terms of Social Contract, in the Nations and of course Virginia (which was a driver in that demented..."three fifths...."formulation) is political-economy. In other words, Virginia as well as the Nations' Justice Infrastructure and imprisonment scheme was all about the motive and formulations of the demented...."three fifths....", so despite its revisionism and "public safety" calibrated narrative, the Nations prisons and imprisonment schemes are haplessly mired in that which anticipates the Speech of reform, just as that dialectic of the....."three fifths" anticipated the Civil War. I'm also using this half-dozen years and counting of Texas exile to resurrect one of the irrefutable polemics of our ancients, that simply observes the generality of injustice irrespective of specific experience, which as irrefutable principles go, only affirms or proves it. In the work, that I documented my 2019 exile, titled: The Exile of William Thorpe from Virginia to Texas, An Extraordinary Act, I stated, this which I excerpt, "The question my exile poses besides the obvious Governmental abuse with its deceptive security threat basis which is nothing more than cover for petty and crass extra judicial vindictiveness for the Virginia Justice System is simple and it isn't limited to my circumstance. Besides regardless of the " legality". Of the exile, it's motive details an extra judicial act and its execution underscores an intrinsic aspect of our human condition which in a nutshell is: irrespective of the backdrop of law, there isn't a just and democratic accounting of its misuse. People will apply their petty tyrannical impulses, which in this instance prison officials under cover of law but in unlawful ways." I've excerpted this bit of a passage referencing my exile in 2019 and to buttress it, is what is playing out Nationally, in 2025 where, Law, when once upon a time was deployed in its subordinating dynamic,[see the Constitutional, Article I, "three fifths" formulation] against those falling under and subject to its rubric, yes that specific marginalized, is now weaponized against "All", even allies of its misuse, in other words all Americans are now subject to the brazen impunity deployed against the prisoner by the prison official. People who are not imprisoned have this irrational or better yet cognitive dissonance, that " prison" exist outside of law, which is a deliberate construct and concoction of the prison official and their infrastructure-allies, an endeavor that has nothing to do with the speculations of repairing the harm caused by a crime or that generic, "justice", but pursuing and permitting the industrialization of the professional prison official as a career employment. Here is an illustrative anecdote, historically, the prison official was called a " prison guard", then in the early 1990's, young incoming prisoners started using the acronym, CO (for correctional officer), but Virginia main stream or corporate media still referred to the prison official as prison guard, notwithstanding the fact Virginia's mainstream media rarely had any critically insightful exposé about the Virginia prison official for its readers and consumers, as a matter of fact the media has been the prison official's staunchest ally and enabler in disseminating the propaganda and narrative that the Virginia prison official is irreproachable and above law. Yet in 1996 or 1997,Ron Angelone, the then Director of The Virginia Department of Corrections found it existential and vital to the Virginia prison official's narrative that Virginia's mainstream media referred to them as Correctional Officers. The point is that colloquial prison guard was being industrialized, but the glibly glossed over is this, a title does not a job make, so the Virginia prison official got their Correctional Officer, title without a job to go along with it, save for that antebellumnesque continuum of savagery, barbarity and gratuitous violence, a holdover from their progenitor, which naturally has nothing to do with Virginia law concerning imprisonment. Well this six year mark of my exile clearly paints the work of reform of the prison official and the requisite accountability.
By William Thorpe
I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit and if you feel any kinda way about this work contact me by Securus email using the Texas prison number #2261982
Sunday, June 1, 2025
SPEECH AND PRISON REFORM IN VIRGINIA IV By William Thorpe
I'm not suggesting idealistically, that individually our Healthcare providers exist as Saints, hell even God doesn't exist as a Saint, but collectively as a organized entity, their existence, because of the distilled, germane,. quality of purpose, has an ethical responsibility and determination.What this means, yes the Virginia prison official can evade specific opprobrium and accountability in the impunity of their above the law activities and presumptions within the concertina razor wire confines and prefab concrete of Virginia's Koncentration Kamps and even make a mockery of accountability by employing that tired gambit of "immunity", but in " History ", where accountability is forever and eternal, the criticisms, objections, indictments and conclusions of the Healthcare collective and organizations will stand as witness and sentinels, clarions attesting to the fact that professionals didn't cower in the complicity of silence, when the Virginia prison official profaned and perverted the unconditionality of the Hippocratic Oath of their Profession. Yet snap back to reality, the Virginia Healthcare community is none of what their organizational ethics and responsibilities, as it relates specifically and particularly to Virginia's Justice Infrastructure and its imprisonment scheme ask of them, in other words all that I've said about the ethical responsibility of Virginia's Healthcare community, presenting a robust and uncompromising defense of the " unconditionality "of their Hippocratic Oath, is what they should according to their very own anticipations and that is a fundamental polemical aspect of PRISON REFORM IN VIRGINIA. Because just as in 1995, during the Administration of the disgraced, racist ex-governor of Virginia, George Allen of macaca infamy and the construction of Koncentration Kamp Red Onion State Prison, a group of conscientious Virginia scientist authored objections and protestations to the construction of the Koncentration Kamp on the grounds that it was on a Earthquake zone and the fact it was also on a former Coal mine therefore increasing the cataclysm of an earthquake, to which the racism addled brain of George Allen scoffed, but what did we just learn just recently happened in Tennessee on the approximate earthquake zone Koncentration Kamp Red Onion State Prison, sits on? you guessed it an earthquake.
So, what the behavior of those Scientists, Seismologist and Geologist during the Administration of macaca infamy Allen tells us and teaches is what ethics looks like. The opportunist among us who exploit law and order for their own short sighted gains are incapable of recognizing that accountability is inevitable and inexorable. When those retrograde and holdover Virginians amongst us, labored to erect totems and monuments to the quick sand of supremacy, they never anticipated that the neck of George Floyd, would be that inexorability and inevitability of accountability that would again give them the speech that supremacism regardless of volume of sand drained from glass cannot exist with the naturalism of Progress. So we see the same thing with the exploitation of criminality, the convicted and imprisoned. Accepting the short sightedness that the prisoner is outside of history along with its concurrent ethics, isn't sanction on the prisoner but a betrayal of that organizational ethics which purports to assert, forthrightness and progress. So when the Virginia healthcare community is silent, unlike those Geologist who called out ex-governor Allen on the placement of Koncentration Kamp Red Onion State Prison, they are the ones who lose face, standing and respect in the Community, because even the most unsophisticated and inattentive amongst us recognizes that for whatever reason the Healthcare Community is feckless and incapable of joining their voice to the SPEECH OF PRISON REFORM IN VIRGINIA. That legend, EQUAL UNDER LAW isn't an operative of the individual but our catholic faith and trust in The Social Contract, which Virginians no less than James Madison proclaimed and I paraphrase that our Nation is one of laws and not of men, conveying the understanding that law and if the Society it underpins is to stand, must be applicable to all regardless of circumstance. Consequently we find reform, specifically that of the Virginia prison system, presenting and posing the same and exact question. Healthcare accessibility for the Virginia prisoner shouldn't be based on that imprisoned Virginian's relationship with law and the unconditionality of the Hippocratic Oath says as much. Nevertheless that colloquial misconstruction of "justice", and its hypocritical vindictiveness that is unwilling of entertaining the fallibility of adjudication, our Virginia professionals under the guidance of their organizational ethics must be ones to remind our citizenry especially the harmed by crime, that as " justice of imprisonment " , is pursed, what is being done in the name of The People of Virginia to the convicted and imprisoned isn't again criminality, but this time done by the victim of crime as member of The People of Virginia.
By William Thorpe
I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit and if you feel any kinda way about this work contact me by Securus email using the Texas prison number #2261982
Friday, May 30, 2025
SPEECH AND PRISON REFORM IN VIRGINIA III By William Thorpe
I want to excerpt certain salient comments by U.S.DISTRICT JUDGE FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF VIRGINIA, NORFOLK DIVISION, REBECCA BEACH SMITH IN THE CASE OF ADAMS v. NAPHCARE INC. 2019 U.S DIST.LEXIS 45534, dealing with the incident of JAMYCHEAL MITCHELL, who was arrested for allegedly shoplifting $5.05 worth of pop and snacks from a 7-Eleven on April 22, 2015 and his subsequent death in a Virginia State Hospital on August 19, 2015 in his own feces and bodily fluids after wasting away from his original arrest weight of 180lbs to 144lbs, because a State Judge Morton V. Whitlow upon the realization that Mr. Jamycheal Mitchell required mental health care for competency to go through the due process of law due to the alleged $5.05 shoplifting, ordered him to a Virginia State hospital, which became Mr. Mitchell's death sentence, thereby becoming another unimpeachable, irrefutable and undeniable fact of prison reform in Virginia. I now excerpt what Judge Rebecca Beach Smith had to say and its role in the SPEECH OF PRISON REFORM IN VIRGINIA. She wrote in her opinion in the above cited case....."WHILE INSTITUTIONAL AND INDIVIDUAL ACCOUNTABILITY IN THIS MATTER REMAINS WOEFULLY LACKING, THE CASE AND RESULTING SETTLEMENT AT LEAST BRING ABOUT SHARPENED FOCUS ON, AND HEIGHTENED PUBLIC AWARENESS OF, THE PROBLEMS OF INCARCERATING MENTALLY ILL INDIVIDUALS. ONE RESULT OF THIS HEIGHTENED AWARENESS WAS THE ENACTMENT OF THE JAMYCHEAL MITCHELL LAW IN THE VIRGINIA LEGISLATURE. see act of March 24, 2017 (*JAMYCHEAL MITCHELL LAW*), CH 759,2017 Va acts 1383 (codified as amended at Va.Cod Ann.sec.53.1-2,53.2-5,53.1-127 (2013 and Supp.2018),and codified at Va. Code Ann. 53.1-69.1 (Supp.2018) ( New Virginia Code sec.53.1-69.1 OUTLINES PROCEDURES FOR THE "[R]EVIEW OF DEATH OF INMATES IN LOCAL CORRECTIONAL FACILITIES).THE REVIEW AND OVERSIGHT OF THE PROBLEMS OF ADDRESSING MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES THROUGH CORRECTIONAL FACILITIES APPEARS NOW TO BE AN ONGOING ISSUE OF PUBLIC CONCERN. CONSEQUENTLY, THIS CASE AND THE RESULTING SETTLEMENT, TOGETHER WITH CONTINUED EFFORTS TO IMPROVE THE SYSTEMIC BUREAUCRATIC AND INDIVIDUAL FAILURES THAT LED TO MR. MITCHELL'S SHAMEFUL DEATH, DO GIVE IMPORTANCE AND MEANING TO HIS LEGACY."....." ALL THIS BEING SAID, THE LACK OF HUMAN DECENCY SHOWN MR. MITCHELL CAN NEVER BE RECTIFIED. THIS CASE EPITOMIZES THE MAXIM "MANS INHUMANITY TO MAN" ROBERT BURNS, MAN WAS MADE TO MOURN A DIRGE (1784)(MAN INHUMANITY TO MAN MAKES THOUSANDS MOURN").[All that I've excerpted are from Rebecca Beach Smith, Federal Judge].Now I continue with the work of SPEECH AND PRISON REFORM IN VIRGINIA, what I've excerpted from Rebecca Beach Smith makes all our points from all basis and perspectives, because a careful read and study of her opinion and the entire incident of Mr. Mitchell, through Virginia's legislature coining a law in his name makes the point of all that we state, as it presents us with the question, what exactly is our Judge Smith telling us.
.I do like what Judge Smith had to say in her opinion and ruling, not because she is giving us original insight, but she ties up so neatly, what I'm saying with this SPEECH AND PRISON REFORM IN VIRGINIA work. I remember the Jamycheal Mitchell incident, but when one is a member of a target group and demographic as I am, Jamycheal Mitchell's experiences are the fabric of the Black American experience, Nationally and of course in Virginia, which I can objectively say, state and declare is its historical and antecedent architect, so yes I paid attention to Mr. Mitchell's situation not as an academic indulgence but as another revelatory yard stick of the industrialization of the administration of impunity and lack of accountability. I begin: the details of the Jamycheal Mitchell incident allege, shoplifting of $5.05 worth of pop and snacks from a 7-Eleven, so a State Judge did what law and common practices suggested, he placed Mr. Mitchell on the multimillion Dollar assembly line of Virginia's State Hospital operations, which is what Judge Rebecca Beach Smith, characterized in her opinion with....."[T]his case and the resulting settlement, together with continued efforts to improve the systemic bureaucratic and individual failures that led to Mr. Mitchell's shameful death". I do have to say this, I recognize and realize the effort in Judge Smith's writings, imbued with the integrity of her sense of self and the affront the Jamycheal Mitchell incident presents to her but then I'm also reminded of a letter President Dwight Eisenhower is alleged to have written about the horrors he witnessed upon liberating Nazi death camps, to which he supposedly observed that and I paraphrase, that he never thought such levels of mans depravity and inhumanity to man existed. Of course Eisenhower was rocked by what he encountered in those Nazi death camps, just as Judge Smith was rocked as she said in her 30 years of being a Federal Judge by the Jamycheal Mitchell incident, still though the honesty of our sense of self and morality isn't based on how shocked or rocked by terms of a human condition which for whatever reason we never actually and really paid attention to its effrontery and incredulity till we are subjected to its accounting. Because what America did President Dwight Eisenhower grow up in that the horrors of a Nazi death camp in the 20th century became his measure of mans depravity to fellow man? Wasn't the disembowelment of the enslaved pregnant Black woman as punishment by the enslaver horrific? or wasn't all those laws and State Constitutions declaring chattel enslavement of Black People horrific enough, I mean what is worse the fact that the Eisenhowers of the world didn't have the presence of mind to recognize the pure unadulterated depravity and horrors of Jim Crow segregation, that banality is an insidious corruption hypocritizing that sense of self, till one is shocked with the graphic.
Judge Smith despite her herculean professional efforts is unable to conceal that inherent lawlessness and impunity of a system that birthed Jamycheal Mitchell and then subsequently administered his demise and death. We see this with her initial declaration, "While institutional and individual accountability in this matter remain woefully lacking,...." and what I find instructive and revealing with Judge Smith's comments, is this inherent systemic lawlessness and impunity displayed by Mr. Mitchell's experience isn't an aberration or anomaly, but is the natural character of a Social Contract and its status quo that accepts it as that profane "cost benefit analysis ". In so many words, yes Magna Carta wrestled recognition from King John, but despite the passage of millennia, that dismissive, dictatorial and supremacist tendency, is in principle an operative term of the Social Contract and human condition and is still with us. Just as it was herculean for Judge Smith, it is herculean for the emergence of the necessary type of politics, to make accountability not an exception and herculean but a natural and common state, which she recognized with her..." All this being said, the lack of human decency shown Mr. Mitchell can never be rectified...... ".What Judge Smith allows us to face up to, which is what this work on SPEECH AND PRISON REFORM IN VIRGINIA enables is, the debate isn't about the political-economic interest of Virginia's imprisonment scheme post The Commonwealth's defeat in The Civil War, in other words the focus isn't on that back door reintroduction of unremunerated labor post Civil War, but now that The Commonwealth's imprisonment scheme is formulated under the "politics of public safety and its partisan exploitation", we disagree with Judge Smith with her posit in her opinion.." The review and oversight of the problems of addressing mental health issues through correctional facilities appears now to be an ongoing issue of public concern".Our disagreement has a historical character because,".....the problems of addressing mental health issues through correctional facilities appears now to be an ongoing issue of public concern "., isn't new, a serious amount and percentage of Virginians have as long as I've been imprisoned by the Commonwealth exerted enormous amount of energy decrying its antagonistic circumstance. What is a correct assessment is Virginia's status quo are incapable of staking no other position than that expressed by Judge Smith and we see this because despite the conditions and circumstances at Virginia prisons proper and not mere local facilities inducing and causing an unacceptable amount of suicides, the JAMYCHEAL MITCHELL LAW, which Judge Smith extols and touts as a positive and responsive outcome of Mr. Mitchell dying in his feces and bodily fluids ONLY extends to Virginia local facilities and Jails. In other words even as Virginia's legislature makes the cursory noises of recognizing Mr. Mitchell's humanness, it cannot bring itself to hold The Virginia Department of Corrections and its State facilities accountable under the rubric of MITCHELL'S LAW, thus making a mockery of its own actions, and its this type of politics and its partisan narrative we must change for Reform of Virginia's imprisonment scheme. What we do welcome from Judge Rebecca Beach Smith is her subtle indication, recognizing that bureaucracy and systemic and I add intransigence are mere symptoms of the political and that as I've noted ties in neatly with our recognition and assertion that the work of holding the Virginia prison official accountable and reforming the Virginia prison system is with THE SPEECH OF POLITICS.
By William Thorpe
I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit and if you feel any kinda way about this work contact me by Securus email using the Texas prison number #2261982
Saturday, May 24, 2025
SPEECH AND PRISON REFORM IN VIRGINIA l l By William Thorpe
Pictures are taken from the internet and are used for illustrative purposes only"
In the first part of this work I stated the obvious, which is reform and correction of Virginia's Prison System and it's Virginia Department Of Corrections is specifically and primarily, Political, because the Political is fundamentally SPEECH and all and everything that is offensive about the egregious and malfeasant behavior of the Virginia Prison Official is because of Politics as such to correct the violations of The Virginia Department of Corrections, it takes the speech of politics. But the Virginia voter has been groomed to accept that the only type of politics and speech surrounding the Virginia prisoner is that of demonization and scapegoating. So what happens is that adage of not checking out a gift horse in the mouth, when Virginia politicians, particularly Republicans, start raving about crime, prisoners and ad hoc, if only the Virginia Prison Official is allowed to brutalize the prisoner more, responses as if brutality, savagery, barbarity and all sorts of deviousness, which to quote THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT, which Virginia is under its Jurisdiction, in the case WILLIAMS v. BENJAMIN 77 F.3d 756 "MANKIND HAS DEVISED SOME TORTURES THAT LEAVE NO LASTING PHYSICAL EVIDENCE OF INJURY", dealing with prison officials gassing prisoners with harmful mace and not allowing it to be washed off, are not already hallmarks of prison official, behavior. The politics of prison reform in Virginia requires and demands a honest narrative of crime, justice and the imprisonment scheme, meaning its scapegoating air must be denied to those politicians whose only contribution to the SOCIAL CONTRACT, is crass exploitation.
There hasn't been an accounting of Virginia's applied Justice practices and what I mean with this is, in the absence of a clear, defined intention and expectation, that "x" amount of dehumanization and savaging of the Virginia prisoner will result in "y" realization, then the application of justice and its practice in Virginia is just another asocial and presumptive summary act under and accorded another name because it is done by THE STATE OR COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA. Of course none of this is news. The Social Contract, when confronted honestly without that axiom of the road to hell is paved with good intentions blah,blah,blah, without that oafish corruption of exactitude, certitude, zealotry, dogma and the inevitable Steve Urkelian, "did I do that" destruction, is integrally practical enough to realize the constructiveness of enlightenment and its progress. Meaning Cave Man had the necessary eureka moment of revelatory enlightenment of the existential threat that "braining" posed, which is what The Commonwealth of Virginia through its Virginia Department of Corrections is yet to learn. The current narrative or politics and its speech defining the Virginia prisoner, meaning the accepted treatment of the prisoner, harms the People of Virginia as a general proposition and consequence, because it compels and induces a corruption of the Commonwealth's aspirations with its self negating influence, again not on the prisoner who ironically is the only honest, fact, value and element because the Virginia prisoner exist as an exposing fact of the Commonwealth's contradictions, but on The People, by their making a mockery of that same law that created the Virginia prisoner in their permissiveness of its violation by the Virginia prison official. So for example on the one hand Virginia stands for the defense, nurture and support of the human condition and its requisite human life, right ? Of course right, nonetheless and however, we see Virginia doing what to the life of the prisoner?The Virginia Department of Corrections is tasked with providing medical and mental health care to the prisoner, but it starves and gives the prisoner rotten and unfit for consumption meals. Which then takes a toll on the prisoners health and ability to fight off diseases, which then increases and compounds the various cost to the Virginia tax payer of treatment and the point is this compounded cost could have been avoided had the Virginia prison official simply followed and complied with their own operating procedures, policies, the various Virginia laws concerning nutrition and that one irreducible fact, a human being regardless of circumstance is HUMAN, and a State as The Commonwealth of Virginia acting in our collective name, including the Virginia prisoner must unconditionally affirm it. But the reality is due to the partisan politicization of The Virginia Department of Corrections as means to assuming political power any and all farcical, fraudulent and patently intellectually dishonest assertions by specifically Virginia Republican politicians gains that sirenic traction within the average Virginia voter, who understandably is at their wits end over, take your pick, any number of the contradictions and antagonisms of Virginia's Social Contract, then add on the highlighting of an unspeakable heinous criminal deed, to which is scapegoated and "othered" by your typical politician, just as our current Governor Glenn Youngkin, with his hypocritical exploitation of the former Virginia Parole Board paroling of a cop killer, who became a cop killer under and due to the same law that also afforded him process of parole, which Glenn Youngkin as Governor took his oath of office by swearing to defend and execute the same law that accords a cop killer process of parole, just as it convicted him of cop killing, instantly perjured his oath by undermining all faith and trust in law by attacking the paroling of the cop killer, because it fit a political narrative, yet that same narrative didn't fit and apply when as Governor of Virginia Glenn Youngkin stuck his tongue out in mockery of all Virginians harmed by crime, when he burlesque pranced on stage with a 34 count felony convicted then candidate, but now president of The United States. The point being what we encounter as truism and an inescapable fact, is the obstructionism of Virginia's political partisanship towards holding the Virginia prison official accountable.
By William Thorpe
I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit and if you feel any kinda way about this work contact me by Securus email using the Texas prison number #2261982
Wednesday, May 21, 2025
VIRGINIA REPUBLICANS ARE HOLDING THEIR BREATH, THAT THIS NOVEMBER, VIRGINIANS, ESPECIALLY OUR WOMEN WILL FORGET THAT THESE APPX. FOUR YEARS OF THEIR PRISON POLICIES TURNED VIRGINIA PRISON CAGES INTO BURNING PYRES By William Thorpe
Pictures are taken from the internet and are used for illustrative purposes only"
Criminal Justice and the subsequent Imprisonment practices should never become partisan political issues and its right or wrong way opportunistic exploitation. Yet that is the typical state both are consistently distorted with. There is nothing I say on these topics that isn't universal but as a Virginia prisoner, one who has been exiled to another state's prison system, due to those exact, partisan political formulations, my focus is on Virginia. I begin: as soon as a perspective or point of view or partisanship emerges in any social fact, what we are confronted with is, interest, its defense and the inevitable struggle against process of accountability. As this relates to criminal justice and imprisonment in Virginia, we naturally find that its practice or the work of The Virginia Department of Corrections, embodying the anticipations and intentions of the criminal justice infrastructure is ridiculously at odds with it. In other words the distilled expression of The State of Virginia's grasp of law or the very process of its own existence is violently and irreconcilably violated by its own imprisonment practices because its politics succumbed to the sirenic distortions of partisanship as response to crime and its criminal justice process. What exactly are the distortions of partisanship in Virginia's criminal justice infrastructure and its imprisonment practices, the answer is unambiguously and unequivocally "everything". So, for example we encounter the idea that there is something as being " soft on crime", implying that its opposition is "tough on crime". These past appx. four years have once again shown us the absurdities of partisan politics camouflaging as prison policies. The Commonwealth of Virginia in itself is no innocent and isn't lacking in capacity and ability to be savage and barbarous, then came the critical mass of 2024, where prisoners held and detained in solitary confinement at the state's Koncentration Kamp Red Onion State Prison, denied, deprived,inhibited, blocked, impeded, obstructed and prevented on all levels and fronts, from the farce of the prison's grievance process through the travesties of Virginia courts process, then legislative acts by Virginia's General Assembly only to have their efforts vetoed by the partisan politics of the Republican Governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, from protesting the unlawful and violative treatment at the hands of the Virginia prison official had no other recourse and option than to speak with the desperate speech of self-immolation. To which true to the incorrigible and pathetic Virginia Republican partisan politics of scapegoating and dehumanizing the Virginia prisoner, was from Governor Youngkin through Chadwick Dotson, Director of The Virginia Department of Corrections, on down to rank and file prison officials at Koncentration Kamp Red Onion State Prison, at first denied that prisoners were self-immolating, then dismissed as criticisms from, and I paraphrase, activists and abolitionist, then corruptly downplayed as prisoners who set themselves on fire simply wanted a visit. Now the fact that prisoners would set themselves on fire a la Buddhist monks circa 1960's protesting the Vietnam War, because no other option was available to them in pursuit of petitioning Government for redress, was totally ignored as a possibility, not because Virginia's Republican Government and its prison policies was incapable of grasping that truth, but it didn't comport nor conform with their partisan politics of "othering", scapegoating, waging war and dehumanizing the Virginia prisoner. As such their only idealistic and unimaginative response was to double down on the partisanship of dehumanization. To bookend this, Virginia Republicans are the same ones who worship and excuse the 34 felony count convicted U.S. president, Governor Glenn Youngkin is the same one who circus barker like, Ring Master, hype man like cavorted on a Virginia stage with the then 34 count felony convicted candidate for the U.S. Presidency at the expense of all Virginians, his constituents who have been harmed by crime. The issue is simple, the question is clearly presented, criminal justice and its infrastructure cannot remain under the gimmicks and gambits of partisan politics and its perpetual scapegoating of prisoners, which is to also state a type of demography of Virginian. There has to be an accounting of the dehumanizing prison policies of Virginia Republican partisan politics, which this November 2025 accords and presents.
By William Thorpe
I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit and if you feel any kinda way about this work contact me by Securus email using the Texas prison number #2261982
Monday, May 19, 2025
SPEECH AND PRISON REFORM IN VIRGINIA By William Thorpe
By William Thorpe
I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit and if you feel any kinda way about this work contact me by Securus email using the Texas prison number #2261982
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