Harvspot: HARD TIME VIRGINIA Vol. 6, No. 2

Harvspot: HARD TIME VIRGINIA Vol. 6, No. 2: 2021 Parole Release Numbers Remain Disappointing       Since Governor Northam directed the Parole Board to prioritize their review of Fishb...

With A 1+ billion Dollar Surplus In Virginia Budget and With 4.3 Billion Coming from the Federal Government Now Is The Time VADOC

 Hello,

With a 1+ billion dollar surplus in the Virginia budget and with 4.3 billion coming from the Federal Government, NOW is the time for the Virginia Department of Corrections to make major improvements in DOC facilities and operations.

With about 25% of VA inmates living without AC and still wearing masks, AC must be a high priority.  Safety and the security of the inmates is dependent in part on the quality of the personnel hired by DOC.  Please give these people a living wage so they won't be so tempted to bring contraband into the facilities.  Also, after a year of living on hard boiled eggs and peanut butter, it is time to upgrade the diet of those behind bars.  Please give them portions more appropriate to a male/female adult and please more fruits, vegetables, and higher quality meats.  Finally, according to the interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, they are due the same quality of health care whether they are behind bars or not.

Please, allocate the monies necessary to operate the DOC safely and humanely.  After a year dealing with  a COVID positivity rate 4x the Virginia rate overall, this demographic has suffered enough.

Thank you.

vapac committee member

Virginia Prisons Accountability Committee Supports the End To Long Term Solitary Confinement

 

There Has To Be Mechanisms Behind Prison Walls By Phillip Daniel

There are many issues that we wrestle with in here. Self hatred, lack of conflict resolution skills, divisions, negative reinforcements from the administration, and ignorance are all part of the problems we have to overcome.

In order to become better men, productive men, full of unique contributions there has to be a mechanism behind these walls which builds us up instead of tearing us down.

Most of us are soon to be citizens. We will be charged with a responsibility and accountability that prison is not preparing us for. With a rising national violent crime rate and an overall moral decay permeating every facet of society, I am not encouraged. Prison reform has to be effective in not only keeping us safe but also in preparing us for reentry into society.

They have a re entry program in most VA prisons but its only for prisoners who are soon to be released. If you have ten years, fifteen years, etc you just do your time wherever you end up at.

You can voluntarily sign up for therapeutic programming but nothing mandatory. The way the system is set up you don't have to work or do anything constructive with your life for twenty years if you so choose.

Idle hands are the devils workshop. Because I'm in here and I see what's going on I know that the only way to change mindsets and work ethic is by mandating it.

The choice is either reprogramming criminal mindedness or releasing a more hardened, criminally educated, breed of gangsters into our neighborhoods and communities.

By Phillip Daniel

Phillip Daniel #1008019,

River North Correctional Center

329 Dell Brook Lane

Independence, Virginia 24348

Did Defenders of Virginia's General Assembly Actions On SB 1301 Question and Challenge Virginia Department of Corrections Assertion That It Would Cost $23 Million to Implement SB 1301 and Reform It's Use of Solitary Confinement By William Thorpe

Image William Thorpe

                                                           
 In a recent work: What's Wrong With the Virginia Department of Corrections and The Sordid Affair of SB 1301, A Prospective Reform of Solitary Confinement. I focused on the simple point that Virginia Department of Corrections was given veto over SB 1301 by Virginia politicians under a time-worn maneuver, which Senator Scott Surovell, D- Fairfax characterized as "information lawmakers get from the Department of Planning and Budget tends to go against bills that would reform the criminal justice system" [Quote from post: Senator Shocked by DOC Estimate of $23 Million To End Solitary Confinement In Prisons By Patrick Wilson 2/3/2021]

So in display of what has been passing for reform activism under its historical supposition that politicians and prison officials shouldn't be challenged or called out as we wage the struggle to reform prison and the injustices of criminal justice. Defenders of the pathetic machinations whereby SB 1301 died ignobly, instead of questioning and challenging VADOC's assertion that it would cost $23 million to reform not abolish but a mere reform of its use of Solitary Confinement took umbrage that I critiqued the gambit which was the sordid affair of SB 1301.

I state: The fact I have spent an aggregate of 35 years in VADOC's solitary confinement out of a 39-year imprisonment [now 41] and of the 35 a continuous and consecutive 25 since August 9th, 1996 of which 2 years, since May 29th, 2019 are now in a Texas Department of Criminal Justice Solitary Confinement cage. Because when it became untenable for VADOC to tout its solitary confinement reduction while continuing to detain me and a number of others in its solitary savagery it exiled me to Texas for the continuance of my solitary confinement   doesn't give me any unique right to facts than those defenders of the pathetic machinations of the sordid affair of SB 1301. But what it unimpeachably allows me is the uncompromising opportunity to question the motive of those defenders, because their umbrage has a whiff of that tired, one set of rules and process for those who govern and another for the governed. Because how else are we to understand and accept their ire at the simple point my original work proffered to the Virginia taxpayer?

The incontrovertible facts are, the Virginia General Assembly during the emergence and existence of SB 1301 was controlled by Virginia Democrats. VADOC an exclusive function under the executive of Virginia was also held by Democrats. Those same Democrats who refused to and rejected reforming solitary confinement in the Commonwealth, abolished the death penalty and legalized recreational weed. So the issue isn't as defenders of the SB 1301 gimmick offer as apology, that SB 1301 proponents came close.

The issue is the simple, how do we the people hold government accountable. VADOC in its role of holding people in prison doesn't get to rewrite what is moral and legal and only by exposing the circumstance of SB 1301 can we call to account that tired habit of one set of rules and process for those would be petty tyrants in their governance and another for the governed.

Despite the indefensible stance by SB 1301 apologist, I still extend my hand to you in solidarity. The objective of justice and prison reform is a simple and straightforward one, Accountability, if VADOC wants to defend and justify the use of a barbaric and savage extra-judicial confinement let it do it in sunlight and not behind a $23 million gimmick that the very lawmakers who are naturally sympathetic to the prison officials logic and its accommodation see through it viz "everybody refuses to try to estimate the positive fiscal impacts of criminal justice reform," we get information that tends to bias, or create reasons to vote against a bill instead of a reason to vote for a bill."     Sen. Surovell

Educate the Virginia citizenry and taxpayer.

I'm held in solitary confinement at the Eastham Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice

By William Thorpe