Showing posts with label Transparency. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Transparency. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 15, 2019
Thursday, January 10, 2019
Governor Ralph Northam's 2019 State of the Commonwealth Address Announces Virginia Maintains the Lowest Recidivism Rate in the Country, Now Virginians Do This!
Monday, October 29, 2018
VIRGINIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS INNOCUOUS INSTITUTIONAL ATTORNEY REQUEST FORM
This innocuous nature of this form reveals it's insidiousness. The prison is well aware of legal confidentiality. So why is it even presenting a waiver which naturally can only harm the prisoner? This is but one aspect of Virginia's Red Onion. That's why transparency and the subsequent accountability is needed.
By vapac
By vapac
Monday, August 6, 2018
DISCLAIMER
This disclaimer prevents any law enforcement agency, corrections authorities, or prosecutor, from holding any specific person accountable for punishment and/or retribution for the contents of the posts which are submitted here on this site.
These posts are written by actual prisoners who have been convicted of breaking State & Federal Laws.
Some of the post submissions on this site may be overstated and thus inadmissible to establish the validity of any matter herein professed in all court or correctional facility administrative proceedings.
It is your responsibility to safeguard your security and privacy when communicating with prisoners that are listed on this site. We strongly recommend that you take appropriate safeguards when corresponding with prisoners. You are using this site information provided at your own risk.
We are not attorneys or medical doctors.
We at vapac.blogspot.com hold no responsibility for the validity or accuracy of any statement made by prisoners or commenters on this site.
However, we go the extra mile to research facts from fiction.
By vapac
Thursday, July 26, 2018
Virginia's Justice System and Freedom Of The Press
Our Prisons are filled to over capacity with accounts of significant and crucial stories that must be told. We bespeak of the refusal of journalists and media access to level 3 and higher levels in Virginia's correctional institutions.
Prisons more often than not hide on the back roads of our communities in rural America as a means for economic development, thus they normally lay outside the visible spectrum and are repressed by the vigilant eye of the press...We at vapac want to join those behind prison walls who may have been wrongly convicted by our criminal justice system which have been highlighted by the Innocence Project inadequate defense, eyewitness misidentification, incentive informants, government misconduct, false confessions or admissions. We join them and investigative journalists who seek truth with the ethical responsibility in highlighting this issue as with the recent effort: to record (audio, video) prisoners "fails" in Virginia. Yet all too often state, local government and prison officials seek out favorable media to disseminate their propaganda. While denying objective media of the inclusive means of audio and video that will permit a though recording of the account.
We at vapac do not profess to know of an individuals innocence or guilt, however, there are currently 2,252 exonerations with more than 19,790 years lost reported by the National Registry Of Exonerations. We think many of those are compromised by the unavailability of recording (audio, video)...which could play a significant role allowing full compass of investigative reporting by allowing unbiased journalists the ability to uncover the truth when there may be a miscarriage of justice.
We note here that the Virginia Department of Corrections [VADOC] doesn't unequivocally deny media access however they still sanction ..Virginia's Justice system needs to end the block on the full range of media access and allow the Freedom Of The Press access Virginia prisoners to share their story.
By vapac
References
Innocence Project
Wednesday, July 25, 2018
Prisoner Seeking Attorney & legal Assistance Due To Transport Driver Negligence Colliding With Van
Prisoner Lester Hayes claims while being transported due to driver’s negligence an accident occurred causing injury. Mr. Lester is pursuing an injury claim. He has a right to file a claim against that negligent driver. Mr. Lester states On 4/17/17 transportation collided with a van while speeding back from Virginia's Bland County Correctional while prisoner was using the urinal causing injury to head, right shoulder, lower back, and left knee, he was then denied medical attention when requested. He was then instructed to see institutional Doctor upon arrival at Wallens Ridge State Prison where he was again denied. Mr. Hayes states that Bland County State trooper did an accident report 4/18/17 at around 3:30 p.m. he never came on the bus to see who was injured. He is requesting an attorney to assist him in seeking compensation for pain and suffering.
Contact
Shaheed Omar
By
Lester Hayes
Collaboration
Shaheed Omar
vapac
Tuesday, July 17, 2018
Brian Moran and The Indefensible Red Onion State Prison By William Thorpe
These accounts are comprehensively documented in the may 10, 2018 ACLU of Virginia's report: Silent Injustice: Solitary Confinement in Virginia which exposes the Virginia Department of Corrections behavior at Red Onion State Prison.
Instead of responding to, even denying the accounts in the ACLU'S report, the Virginia Department of Corrections through Brian J. Moran, Secretary of the public safety and Homeland Security in his Washington Post, June 15,2018; "Virginia Corrections System Is A Model For Other States" Op-Ed, chose to deflect and distort which typically is the classic recourse posture to the indefensible
Messers. Brian Moran and Co. lecture us that "correctional systems are often targets of criticism and skepticism"....."as if the numerous lawsuits filed by Red Onion State Prisoners seeking redress of violations of the U.S. Constitution and Virginia law by prison officials are mere exercises of "criticism and skepticism". Or the voluminous letters, petitions to Virginia politicians concerning prison official malfeasance including the ACLU's work are hallucinations to be dismissed and ignored and instead we should commend prison officials for selectively performing what the taxpayers of Virginia, the U.S. Constitution, and Virginia Law require they professionally do.
Contrary to Brian Moran's assertion: Red Onion State Prison was not built to specifically and exclusively be a "lockdown prison". When it opened in 1998 as a maximum security prison it had approximate general population of 688 prisoners and solitary confinement or "lockdown" population of 352. Programs were also available to the prisoner population and the "fear" that Brian Moran speaks of..." "that increased movement and access to programs would jeopardize safety" could not have existed in its then operational model because a relative 2/3ds of the prison's population had more movement than what is allowed general population in 2018. Also, Virginia's General Assembly had in the middle 1980's instructed the Virginia Department of Corrections to never again detain all of the states so-called "worst of the worst" prisoners at one prison as a result of lessons learned from it's Mecklenburg Correctional Center experience circa 1984. (note page 169) However, the Virginia Department of Corrections logic which are for purposes of this work speculatively irrelevant, in 1998 did just the opposite with its opening of Red Onion State Prison.
The Red Onion State Prison solitary confinement question is specifically about prison officials intractable inability to comply with the same law that even permits them to work as prison officials.
We are told by Brian Moran, that since under the leadership of Virginia's Department of Corrections Director Harold W. Clarke, there has been a culture change that has resulted in statistical decrease of prisoners detained at Red Onion State Prison solitary confinement, underscoring a program, Step Down. Yet the findings of the ACLU's report exposing Red Onion State Prisons officials behavior for the specific 2011 to 2018 period details reprehensible malfeasance that are diametrically at odds with Brian Morans laudatory conclusions.
This is what Brian Moran should have responded to because this historical narrative of prison officials conflating their malfeasance and extra-judicial behavior with speculations of the prison condition has to change if equal justice before the law isn't mere opportunity conditioned by whatever idealistic narrative spouted by a status quo. If the context, as Brian Moran writes that "offenders housed at Red Onion have murdered, raped and attacked others including inmates," is supposed to mitigate, excuse even absolve the lawlessness of Red Onion State Prison. Then within Virginia society writ large are murderers, rapists, and all sorts of violators because each legal jurisdiction within the Commonwealth has its significant statistics of unsolved murders, rapes, attacks and other violations. Is the Commonwealth of Virginia via its Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security instructing us that murder, rapes, attacks within the Commonwealth justify violating the Virginia Constitution and laws by its elected officials and legal offices? Because that is the argument made by Brian Moran in his deflective defense of the lawlessness of prison officials.
In summation, Brian Moran and Red Onion State Prison officials are not even conveying to the Virginia public a true correct account of the number of prisoners detained under solitary confinement conditions and managed according to Virginia Department of Corrections solitary confinement operating procedures. What we are instead expected to accept is, renaming a thing fundamentally changes it? So solitary confinement is in the media now called restrictive housing and not it's historical, Administration Segregation and prisoners detained in other units i.e. D-building apart from C-building for years on end are not counted as solitary confinement prisoners.
This exercise in renaming exposes the reality which is messers. Brian Moran and Co. recognize that the odorous nature of those conditions which in the aggregate characterize solitary confinement are indefensible.
Note
Willliam Thorpe is detained in solitary confinement at Virginia's Red Onion State Prison
Monday, July 16, 2018
Red Onion State Prisoner in Solitary Confinement Accuses Guards Denying Of Meals, Threats of Sexual and Physical Assault
Virginia's Red Onion State Prisoner Jason Jordan Files A Grievance and Lawsuit Then Report of Abuse and Assault Ensues
The complaint method of the Virginia Department of Corrections [VADOC] is the process in which prisoners are able to air their complaints about prison guard abuse, violations, and lawlessness. The primary recurring theme prisoners report at Virginia's Red Onion State Prison [ROSP] are threats of retaliation or in the case of ROSP prisoner Jason Jordan's report, full-blown assault. Magaret Breslau prison activist and force behind Virginia Coalition for Justice Virginia Prisons Justice Network [VPJN] among other platforms cited in a recent correspondence with VADOC whom asserted all claims of abuse are taken seriously and properly investigated. However, prisoner Jason Jordan reveals his attempt to file a criminal complaint were denied him by ROSP investigator denoting the rule of thumb "wall of silence" to protect their own. We must interject "how can prisons police/investigate themselves. His claims for filing a grievance and lawsuit when he was met with physically aggressive behavior taken to a spot off camera and kicked in his testicles (drawing blood) by guards as to "teach him a lesson" Mr. Jordan went through the various steps to file a charge, "what prisoners go through when they follow their First Amendment Rights to redress a grievance" wherein Civil Court he won a "Summary Judgement" and is waiting to go to trial. Mr. Jordan also asserts he is a "mental health" prisoner and is being denied mental health treatment. We must state here, Retaliation is illegal, guards have abused their power when they violate the 1st Amendment Rights of prisoners, in this case, the right to petition government officials for a redress of grievances.
By Prisoner Jason Jordan held at Red Onion State Prison
In collaboration with Virginia Prisons Justice Network [VPJN]
and VAPAC
Thursday, June 21, 2018
Outside Exercise Is Denied Customarily By Red Onion State Prison Guards, Sexual Harassment Sometimes Involved By D. Barnes
Per DOP 861.3 reads as follows: Exercise~a. Special housing offenders should be allowed a minimum of two hours of out of cell exercise five separate days per week in a supervised area, unless security or safety considerations dictate otherwise. b. During periods of total facility lockdown, out of cell exercise may also be suspended for special housing offenders. c. A record will be made any time exercise is given or refused. Unfortunately, outside exercise is customarily denied those in Solitary Confinement (aka special housing units) Staff shortages are endemic as excuse, other times it is Guards unwillingness to do their job thwarting Prisoners rights to outside excise by humiliation. The following letter was submitted by Prisoner D. Barnes. Imprisoned at Red Onion State Prison.
By D. Barnes
Collaboration Shaheed Omar
vapac
Friday, June 15, 2018
Virginia Department of Corrections Responds to Recent FOIA Request By Virginia Prison Accountability Committee Members Concerning The Use Of Body Scanning Technology On All Prisoner Visitors
Vapac recently submitted an FOIA to the Virginia Department of Corrections [VADOC] requesting some answers to questions concerning the use of Body Scanning Technology on families, friends, including Children and Pregnant Women. We are sharing their response with our Committee members and followers, family friends of prisoners and the public as this should be of grave concern for many reasons that which was included in a previous post by Virginia Prisons Accountability Committee... Click link to read in its entirety [vapac], "Are Prisons Putting Prisoners Loved Ones, Children, Mothers In Potential Health Risk `a la Tuskegee Experiment, Even Experts Won't Agree http://bit.ly/2rqpawr".
The questions we posed were as follows and the VADOC's INCLUDED RESPONSE:
- What are the side effects of the body scanners on the health of adults and privacy of images?
- See attached
- What are the side effects of the body scanners on the health of children and the privacy of images?
- See attached
- What are the controls to protect and safeguard a visitors privacy?
- See attached
- All reports and studies VADOC has done on the use of full intrusive body scans of visitors?
- VADOC has no records responsive to your request because the records do not exist.
We thank the VADOC for their response to "vapac". It shares with us "some" answers however it still leaves us with much concern *NOTE* the highlighted query and response.
- All reports and studies VADOC has done on the use of full intrusive body scans of visitors?
- VADOC has no records responsive to your request because the records do not exist.
*NOTE*
We would lov to have some feedback from those who read this so we can further inquire about this issue with those who can address it. Leave your comments and we will be posting all of them. For or against this policy.
For further accessibility and to read in its entirety click on the popout link ↓↓↓↓↓
By vapacReferences
Are Prisons Putting Prisoners Loved Ones, Children, Mothers In Potential Health Risk `a la Tuskegee Experiment, Even Experts Won't Agree http://bit.ly/2rqpawr".
An Insider’s Look at How the Virginia DOC Handles Contraband - Correctional News http://bit.ly/2sYlB1c
Saturday, June 9, 2018
Virginia's Denis Rivera Prisoner At Red Onion State Prison Expresses Fear Professing Threats From Officers
One of the biggest threats at some Virginia Prisons especially ROSP prisoners convey is the antagonistic threat of "I'll set you up" from guards. Prisoner Denis Rivera confined in Virginia's Red Onion State Prison [ROSP] speaks of lawlessness by prison guards, Threats and Abuse seem to be the common thread in their midst. Mr. Rivera states threats of retaliation for complaints. One must realize here that if the job duties were being performed there would be few complaints from prisoners.
Click On Pop-Outs for Assessable Reading ↓↓↓
By Denis Rivera
Collaboration Shaheed Omar
vapac
Saturday, June 2, 2018
FREE-LANCE STAR IRKED BY ACLU of VIRGINIA REPORT ON SOLITARY CONFINEMENT
The question isn't; "really what is a prison to do" as fifth columnesque asked by the Free-Lance Star Editorial. Because the answer to what is a prison to do is simple: Follow the law, comply with the rule of law and obey policies and procedures. But we have to assume that if this answer, is such a conundrum and paradox for the Free Lance-Star editorial to access we have to then presume that the editorial accepts the mythology, prison officials are beyond reproach and above the law.
The prison officials are beyond reproach and above the law narrative, quite frankly is tired, worn and stale and has wreaked more havoc on society than the cumulative and aggregate acts of the prisoners whom prison officials have the professional privilege and responsibility of imprisoning.
Virginia spends relatively $1.5 Billion on its prisons and if taxpayers who are saddled with poor schools, a health care system that's a travesty and the injustice of an anachronistic political-economy are satisfied with their money funding an opaque prison system that is supported by default tough on crime platitude excusing the unaccountability of its prison officials who behave with lawless impunity, then the tensions and antagonisms of such a social contract will only grow. But if questions are asked and accountability demanded
The 5/16/18; Free Lance-Star editorial on Solitary Confinement in Virginia was it's irked response to the 5/10/18; ACLU of Virginia Titled, Silent Injustice: Solitary Confinement In Virginia. By which the ACLU called upon Governor Ralph Northam to ban its use in Virginia.
For whatever reason, this call by the ACLU irritated and irked the Free Lance-Star hence the editorial and that tired, worn and stale reactionary narrative with antebellumnesque retorts like"
- "Those who are in solitary had to earn their way there. It is incarceration of last resort". Or [Those] who chooses to do bad things or make bad decisions simply because they are inherently bad people" or "The ACLU is free to make its case.......despite the publics lack of sympathy for how those they see as the worst of the worst inmates are treated".
Are intended to be well-reasoned points, a contribution to the question of solitary confinement, which in 1890 the U.S. Supreme Court in the case In Re: Medley 134 U.S. 160 declared "an infamous punishment" and in 2018 Porter v. Clarke et al 1:2014cv1588 [Virginia case] ruled that solitary confinement violated the 8th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
Had the Free Lance-Star been intellectually honest and not indulged in colloquial distortions, it would have quickly realized that the ACLU's report spoke of and detailed criminality by prison officials.
Prisoners are not sentenced to prison to be assaulted and battered, their testicles crushed by prison guards or denied outside exercise, showers, and meals or framed with contrived and fabricated offenses and lied on to extend the imprisonment by prison officials or entombed in solitary confinement or restrictive or administrative segregation or whatever euphemism used by prison officials in effort to conceal the true nature of the detention which in turn exposes the fact that prison officials are well aware that something is inherently unjustifiable and abjectedly beyond the pale with the detention and the "incarceration of the last resort" apologetic dismissal of it by the Free Lance-Star editorial is all the more insidious.
What the FreeLance-Starr editorial doesn't tell us is prison officials are not a law unto theirself, despite the fact certain Virginia politicians have attained speculative power by enabling that myth. But Virginia prison officials [as all other prison officials across the nation] are firstly subject and subordinate to the U.S. Constitution then as it relates to Virginia, The Virginia Constitution and Virginia Law-code 53.1 and lastly Virginia Department of Corrections [VADOC] Standards, Procedures, policies and Practice Nothing in the U.S. Constitution, Virginia Constitution, Virginia Code 53.1, VADOC Standards, Procedures, Policies, and Practices permits prison officials to operate and behave in a manner the ACLU Silent Injustice Report describes prison officials at Red Onion State Prison [ROSP] has.
When the Free Lance-Star editorial speaks of [prisoners] earning "their way" into solitary confinement or "because they are inherently bad people". It is a divisionary red herring intended to distract from the fact the ACLU's report detailed ROSP officials criminality and instead reframe the issue as the ACLU wants to coddle prisoners whom society has no and shouldn't have no sympathy for. It also reveals the extent and level to which that reframing narrative is divorced from the fact, prison is a legal construct and regardless of the fact prison officials behave hypocritically and lawlessly underpins prison and imprisonment.
First of all, no one is in prison because they are "inherently bad". People are imprisoned because of a violation of a criminal code, then the subsequent conviction under law and imposition of sentence. There are all sorts of "inherently bad" people in Virginia society and some very well could be on the Free Lance-Star editorial staff. So framing the issue as a simple bad and good contrast is insidiously naive and biased towards a specific and particular worldview that has nothing to do with the questions raised by the ACLU's report.
Prison Reform has never been about society's lack of sympathy for prisoners. Prison reforms instead, is about the work to hold prison officials accountable for their lawless behavior and the ACLU's report made that sternly clear with a damning indictment against ROSP and VADOC officials. But instead of the Free Lance-Star pointing this out, it chose to pull out all the stops in defense of prison officials ignoring the likely probability that statistics generated by VADOC and ROSP, used by the editorial were plausibly spurious.
ROSP which is signaled out by the ACLU report because it is Virginia's primary prison for solitary confinement is subject to and subordinate to the legal authorities listed earlier, U.S. Constitution et.al and more immediately VADOC Operational Procedures.
The Practice of indefinite solitary confinement of prisoners by ROSP officials is subject to a couple of U.S. Const. Amendments, specifically, the 8th Amendment, Prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, due process under the law and equal protection provisions. It is also subject to Article 1 Section 9 prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment and Article 1 Section 11 Due process under the law and equal protection provisions of the Virginia Constitution, also protections against ex-post facto punishment. Also VADOC Operating Procedures [OP] 861.1 Offender discipline or punitive segregation or solitary confinement Local OP 830 A-Step Down Program or Administrative Segregation or Solitary Confinement and OP 830.1, OP 830.2 Facility classification management and security level classification both deal with mechanisms for due process under the law.
What all of this, the above show is there are specific procedures or legalities governing the practice of Solitary Confinement which ROSP systemically violates. The consequences of the violations are what the Free Lance-Star and its partisan brethren have typically dismissively characterized as "harshness" of prison that is to be expected and there is no public sympathy for its amelioration. While opportunistically ignoring that they are endorsing lawlessness while claiming to be against it. at the most pivotal intersectionality of all the contradictions of the social contract laid bare Prison. Which is another revelation that the historical antagonism of those who want to under cover of law behave extra judicially while exploiting that same law to subjugate others is the quintessential issue.
If the Free Lance-Star's editorial staff are interested in the practice of Solitary Confinement, the due diligence responsibility is to maximize a qualitative understanding of it and to also recognize that VADOC and its ROSP officials have a vested interest in its either pro or con narrative that is diametrically at odds and not apparent in its pronouncements of reform. Yes, there has been a decrease in the number of prisoners held at ROSP C/Building which is the primary Solitary Confinement Unit. But there are a number of reasons for that, which one obviously being it isn't serving the current 1998 ROSP narrative. Since its opening in 1998 ROSP has lurched and morphed a new reason for its existence every 5-7 years. But that is not the point, the issue is the systemic violations ongoing at ROSP Solitary Confinement. which the ACLU-VA exposed in its report and the Fredricksburg Virginia Free Lance-Star saw fit to ridicule.
*Note*
By William Thorpe is confined in Solitary Confinement at Red Onion State Prison.
Monday, May 28, 2018
Here Is The Letter to Professor Heather Ann Thompson
Minds and hearts as Heather Thompson shouldn't wilt from critique and mischaracterize it as hostility.
We are only realized with critique.
In Strength, 5/9/18
William Thorpe
Even The Sun Had to Justify Its Existence
Before The Court of Dialectics....1789 1799
By William Thorpe
I Am Held In Solitary Confinement At Virginia's Red Onion State Prison
Monday, May 21, 2018
Prisoner Israel Copper VA's Red Onion State Prison Previous Victim of Assaults Settled Out Of Court But Still Remains At Same Facility To Continue to Be Victimized & Retaliated Against
When someone’s behavior is not compliant with the law, or they are acting in a way that threatens safe and secure incarceration or is contradictory to decency, honesty and so on, disciplining is necessary for everyone’s safety and well-being to quote Peter Garrett who has written articles for Around Corrections, the Official Newsletter of the Virginia Department of Corrections. Note We are NOT talking about Prisoners here but prison officials and guards. The following letter from Prisoner Israel Cooper shared by Mr. Shaheed Omar exposes Virginia's highly dysfunctional Correctional system where the Virginia Department of Corrections claim disciplining is relatively rarely needed in the Department. Could it be they allow said prison guards to unlawfully mistreat prisoners?
By Israel Cooper
Collaboration Omar Shaheed
vapac
William Thorpe States in reference to the ROSP MEMO: A sly and sneaky way to impose limitations and restrictions on prisoner access to courts
Anytime Government, which prison is a function imposes limitations on access or a service. The reasons given rarely have anything to do with the intent of the government reaction.
Think about this. You are an attorney with a prisoner-client at (Virginia's) Red Onion State Prison [ROSP] and you are restricted to only Mondays and Thursdays or after 4 p.m. on any other day-----which could also mean a time limitations of sorts. This is clearly onerous and restrictive, on the Attorney-Client Privilege, not to mention the violation on various U.S. Constitutional Amendments. i.e The 1st Amendment.
Prison Attorney visits are unlike any other visits and should not be cavalierly and arbitrarily treated as such unless the intent by the government i.e ROSP, is an insidious effort to limit prisoner access to the courts which attorney access enables.
Instead of restricting prisoners access to the courts by imposing onerous and arbitrary conditions.ROSP should stop its systemic violations of the rule of law and operating procedures, it's officials, rank, and file are sworn to uphold, which consequently necessitates prisoners seeking access to courts.
Prima facie evidence of ROSP attitude to the rule of law is this memo attempting to limit prisoner access to the courts, which ROSP is fully aware is unlawful.
By William Thorpe
I am held in Solitary Confinement at Red Onion State Prison
Monday, May 7, 2018
Red Onion State Prison MEMO: A sly and sneaky way to impose limitations and restrictions on prisoner access to courts
Anytime Government, which prison is a function imposes limitations on access or a service. The reasons given rarely have anything to do with the intent of the government reaction.
Think about this. You are an attorney with a prisoner-client at (Virginia's) Red Onion State Prison [ROSP] and you are restricted to only Mondays and Thursdays or after 4 p.m. on any other day-----which could also mean a time limitations of sorts. This is clearly onerous and restrictive, on the Attorney-Client Privilege, not to mention the violation on various U.S. Constitutional Amendments. i.e The 1st Amendment.
Prison Attorney visits are unlike any other visits and should not be cavalierly and arbitrarily treated as such unless the intent by the government i.e ROSP, is an insidious effort to limit prisoner access to the courts which attorney access enables.
Instead of restricting prisoners access to the courts by imposing onerous and arbitrary conditions. ROSP should stop its systemic violations of the rule of law and operating procedures, it's officials, rank, and file are sworn to uphold, which consequently necessitates prisoners seeking access to courts.
Prima facie evidence of ROSP attitude to the rule of law is this memo attempting to limit prisoner access to the courts, which ROSP is fully aware is unlawful.
\
By William Thorpe
By William Thorpe
I am held in Solitary Confinement at Red Onion State Prison
Sunday, May 6, 2018
Yes Prisoners Do Stupid Stuff
Yes, prisoners do stupid stuff. People in the free world do stupid stuff. The issue isn't pointing out the obvious that people do stupid stuff. The question, however, is how do we hold prison officials accountable. Whether or not a prisoner doing self-defeatist stuff has nothing to do with the fact that a prison official has an obligation to comply with and follow those same laws that got the prisoner in prison.
The question is: How do we hold accountable prison officials? One thing for sure is without the focus and attention of prisoner loved ones, families and friends, the only thing we would know about prison is the stupid stuff prisoners do and nothing the about lawlessness of prison officials.
Let's take the recent incident at South Carolina's Lee Correctional Institute where 7 prisoners were killed and 17 injured. For example, all we hear from South Carolina's government and it officials is gang members killed each other over stuff gangs do. Now all of that could very well be true. But instead, it should be on how South Carolina's Government and its prison officials exacerbated, aggravated, incited and ensured the inevitability that gangs would do gangs. How many of you have read the voluminous amount of lawsuits filed by South Carolina prisoners relative to violations prison officials who have taken an oath to follow the law and behave professionally, are anything but?
The earth of South Carolina is historically as any other square inch of U.S. soil, drenched, soaked in blood and injustice and that again is stating the obvious. The question is: How do we hold accountable government officials.
As we work collectively as families and friends of prisoners seeking accountability of prison officials, let's not forget that victims of crime are also members of the collective and we embrace them. We all know that victims of crime would gladly trade in the prison sentence given the perpetrator for a reversal of the criminal act ever happening and there is no such thing as closure. But there has been this us against them narrative that diabolically pits the work of holding prison officials accountable as families and friends of prisoners are not concerned with the realities of crime. When the reality of the criminal act and its genesis has as much to do with the same lack of accountability and transparency by prison officials which we all know too well as above the law impunity.
By William Thorpe, I'm Held in Solitary Confinement
P.S. As I concluded this work it was announced, 4/25/18; that the U.S. Government is indicating 14 South Carolina prison officials for a number of federal crimes, including racketeering, dating as far back as 3 years. Of course, the recent incident at the Lee Prison sped this up.
Yes, this is a type of accountability but it still fits that one-dimensional definition of malfeasance. South Carolina Prison officials as their brethren in Virginia have broken rules on a daily basis and if there is nothing more democratic than equality under the law, then prison officials must be held to account.
By William Thorpe
Sunday, April 29, 2018
Jeffery Gardner Warehoused at Pocahontas State Correctional Center Expressing Prisoners Plight
A former Senator once noted avidly before his colleagues (quote) " The Public cannot tour the prisons and interview the inmates". (unquote) However, the "inmates", as well as their families and friends can" share their experiences with "vapac" [Viginia Prisons Accountability Committee]. Here we amplify the prisoner's voice in society so both sides are presented. The following submission: The reality of prison life by Prisoner Jeffery Gardner confined in Virginia's Pocahontas State Correctional Center expressing the prisoner's plight. Note he has some interesting elements open for discussion. We at "vapac" give thanks to Mr. Gardner for sharing his experience. *Note* Click on pop-out icon for larger view,
By Jeffery Gardner Confined at Pocahontas State Prison
Subscribe to:
Posts
(
Atom
)