Summer Edition Of A Newsletter For Prisoners

The Parole Board's mission is to assess an individual's readiness for release based on whether they have been fully "corrected" and rehabilitated during their Department of Corrections stay, and not to base their judgment on the seriousness of the crime or on the wishes of the original prosecutor or the family members of the victim. Victims and their families deserve every possible form of restitution, but not mere  revenge.

 HARDTIME VIRGINIA Summer 2026 Vol. 11, No. 2

 An occasional newsletter by and for the incarcerated, Harvey Yoder, editor 

What’s Up With The New Parole Board?
     Most of us were hopeful that the newly appointed Parole Board sworn in in March would be more generous in offering release to deserving men and women in prison. In its first official (April) report, however, it reported on the cases of only two persons, neither of them interested in parole, apparently determining they would be better off waiting until they were to have a clean discharge. In May the Board noted eight persons being continued on parole and on four having their parole revoked, with only two releases granted, each because of a terminal illness.  
     While this may seem puzzling, my understanding after talking with others with the same concerns is that the board is getting themselves set up with a process for making the best possible decisions while receiving a lot of new information to train themselves, as none of them have ever done this before. I know they’ve been interviewing incarcerated folks, just not making final decisions until they have a better understanding. They had also requested that the full implementation of the HB1030 bill creating objective criteria on which to base a release be in place  a year later to give them more time to get that into their system and to fully comply with its provisions.
    The reality of having a whole new board after the last one only said 'no' is that it requires five new people to learn what to do without anyone having any prior experience, and it has taken even more time because they are actually making a point to receive input from advocates and returning citizens in a way that has never been done before. 
    Three representatives from our Valley Justice Coalition, for example, were able to meet with members of the board for an hour last month via Zoom to share our concerns. So there is reason to believe a little delay now is better than a bunch of rushed decisions. With their jobs and the administration's reputation on the line, they will more likely resort to 'no' when hurried.

Governor Spanberger’s Press Conference Offers New Hope
      In a June 23 news conference with DOC Director Joseph Walters and Secretary of Public Safety Stanley Meadors, Governor Spanberger noted significant improvements in DOC stats on incidences of violence, lockdowns, drug overdoses, and the use of solitary confinement. She also used this occasion to announce the formation of a Governor's Community Partnership Council on Corrections https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evnFkzYhed8.
     A major issue she did not address, however, was the need to reduce the number of persons incarcerated in the commonwealth, numbers which are causing a strain on a system lacking in necessary financial and personnel resources.

VDOC Posts “Second Chance Stories” on YouTube
     Three of us from the Valley Justice Coalition recently met with DOC Director Joseph Walters and nine of his staff for a conversation about prison reform. One of the ideas we suggested was that VDOC create a website highlighting the successes of individual “graduates” from the Commonwealth’s “School of Corrections.” None of us really expected this to be taken seriously, so we were pleasantly surprised to learn that Walters almost immediately directed a member of his staff to work on this. The result is 20 video-recordings by incarceration survivors, stories that inspire hope and will hopefully add to the public’s willingness to support second chances.

From The Editor’s Mailbag
• David Annarelli at Haynesville had a piece published in the recent Georgetown University’s American Criminal Law Review. He also has frequent commentaries on prisonradio.org and has his own website at https://davidannarelli.substack.com/
• Jeff Smith at Buckingham has drafted a bill to amend the code of Virginia by adding a section establishing a Second Look Resentencing Review for individuals serving life sentences for non-homocide offenses.
• David Carmichael at Lawrenceville has also drafted a bill, one that would provide for new work release and furlough provisions for deserving people, noting that  people who are able to enter society with a portfolio are far less likely to recidivate after their release.
• Charles Zellers, Sr. at Deerfield is seeking someone on the outside to build a small dwelling on a rural property his sisters have acquired in Lunenberg County.  He hopes to develop a community of homes on the property for incarceration survivors.
• Steve Colosi at Buckingham has created a “Roadmap to a Successful Parole Interview,”emphasizing factors like maintaining good posture and eye contact, accepting responsibility, expressing remorse, being precise and to the point in answering questions, and avoiding playing the victim or assuming the Board will be persuaded by stressing your family’s need for you or how much you deserve release.
• Shawn Weneta, a formerly incarcerated individual and a professional consultant, provided his Richmond Times column about the looming crisis in healthcare costs the DOC faces with a rapidly growing geriatric prison.

• William Thorpe, who has spent years in solitary confinement and has been transferred to a Texas prison, is advocating for a mandatory review of all sentences after a determined number of years.

Harvey Yoder, Valley Justice Coalition, P.O. Box 434, Harrisonburg, VA 22803

VJC's June DN-R "Justice Matters" Column

Jury Service Is Extraordinary Power for Ordinary People

By Matthew P. Cavedon

Most Americans dread getting a jury summons in the mail. As a lawyer, I know my friends and family members’ first question: “How do I get out of this?” Little do  most of them realize that this little piece of paper is an invitation to participate in one of the most important responsibilities of citizenship, especially in tight knit communities like those of western Virginia.

The Constitution protects a lot of rights and asks pretty little of us in return. We can certainly serve in the military, honor the flag, and vote for those who make the laws. Bu the only civic responsibility that is a true legal duty is jury service. It’s also the one thing that immediately makes government belong to the people.

Participating in elections is important, but when you go to the polls, yours is just one of thousands of votes. At the national level, it may be just one among tens of millions. When an American is called to sit on a jury, their vote determines the verdict.

Criminal cases require verdicts to be unanimous. That means every juror must come to an agreement as to whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty. Further, judges will assure each juror that they should never give up an honest conviction for the mere sake of getting along with the others.

This is a remarkable promise the Founders made for the people. When the laws actually threaten someone’s liberty or property, the ultimate judgment call is left in the hands of twelve ordinary members of the community. Lawmakers, judges and lawyers are important. But it’s truck drivers and teachers, homemakers and store managers who have the final say over who goes to prison.

We’re celebrating America’s 250th birthday this year, and that’s a great occasion for remembering the brave decisions of jurors throughout our history. They’ve used their power to protect liberty and change the country for the better. For example, before the Civil War, Congress made it a federal crime to help people escape from slavery. In 1851, the federal government charged Boston abolitionists with setting Shadrach Minkins—formerly enslaved in Virginia—free after his recapture up north. The abolitionists’ guilt could not have been clearer as a factual matter. But the jury stood up and refused to convict them. The brave stand of these ordinary jurors defended dignity against tyranny.

Serving on a jury remains meaningful today, even when criminal charges were properly brought against a wrongdoer. Federal judge Roy Altman recently told the story of presiding over an emotionally intense murder trial. Afterward, he met with the jurors.

One, a quiet elderly woman who had come to this country from Haiti, slowly stood up using her cane. She gave the judge a hug, then explained that while she had moved to America seeking a better life, she had learned something new through serving. Her  country gave her more than just opportunity, she said: it trusted her to be smart and wise enough to decide such an important matter. It was a memory she said she would carry with her for the rest of her days.

This woman understood something profound about democracy: it’s not just about deciding who gets to make the laws. It’s about deciding how they are applied. That work, too, belongs to all of us. The conscience of the community matters as much for freedom as does any other constitutional right.

But it can only have that role if we the people exercise it. Next time you get that piece of paper in the mail summoning you to jury service, don’t think of it as something to avoid. See it as the chance to seek justice for your neighbors and your country. It may cost you some days away from work, but it’ll enrich your sense of what it means to belong to the community.

Matthew Cavedon is a criminal justice lawyer who works at the Cato Institute, and wrote this for the Valley Justice Coalition's monthly column in the Daily News-Record/. You can learn more about the power of jury service at a website he curates, YourVerdictCounts.org.

Celebrating And Tending Our Small Food Forest

 

photo by my good friend and fellow gardener Daryl Byler

Caring for our 10'x 60' garden at VMRC's Park Village is one of the more therapeutic pleasures I enjoy in my semi-retirement.

The rabbit fence you see consists of discarded window screens salvaged from renovation projects around the Village. It works well to protect the peas, lettuce, and the various kinds of beans in that end of the garden, 

Down the middle of this area is a five-foot woven wire fence where the sugar snap peas grow that we are enjoying this time of year. These are planted in March to give them a head start over the pole lima and green beans I plant right next to them in early May. Since the peas are harvested early, the pole beans simply take their place for harvesting later in the season. 

The unfenced end of the garden is for tomatoes, squash, cantaloupe and Swiss chard. They can all be close together since the caged tomatoes are growing vertically while the squash and cantaloupe vines cover the horizontal space.

Every year some volunteer plants appear along with the planted ones, especially potatoes and sunflowers. We mostly leave such visitors undisturbed as long as they are not crowding out any of their neighboring plants. And we apply generous amounts of compost and shredded leaf mulch around all of the varied companion plants, a practice that largely eliminates weeds, provides needed fertilizer, improves soil quality and greatly reduces the need for irrigating the garden (But we were so grateful for the rain we've been blessed with in the past 24-hours!).

The overall result resembles a kind of food forest rather than a manicured set of cultivated rows of fresh produce. But the joy it brings to our table, and frequently to those of our neighbors, is beyond words. 

Glory be to God for dappled things...

...All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him. 

- from Gerard Manley Hopkins' Pied Beauty

The Surprising Ability Procrastinators May Lack

One of the more quoted lines in Covey's best selling book, The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, is, "The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing."

In workshops I've led on time management, I make the point that procrastinators (including myself) actually need to improve our "putting off" skills. In other words, we need to get better at putting off whatever hinders our focusing on a "main thing," the priority activity requiring our attention at a given time.

    

We are never simply doing nothing. Even when dozing, daydreaming, or mindlessly scrolling on Facebook we are doing something that occupies our time and attention. And of course even taking a nap, going for a walk or just vegetating can at times be necessary "main things" that are restorative and life giving, and can actually help us be more productive.

         

But whenever we have a deadline to meet, or any important task to complete, we may need to get better at "putting off" whatever distractions are getting in the way. 

     

Here's a suggested plan:

     

1) Create a daily time budget. In the Hebrew Bible, a day begins at sunset, which could be a good time to review the day just ending and to prepare for the day just beginning, one in which getting a good night's rest is one of the first "main things."

     

2) Upon rising, review the plan for the day, making sure there is ample time allotted for appropriate breaks and for unexpected events, but also for priority time for undivided attention to the "main things" that are on the list. 

3) Break up larger tasks into achievable smaller parts, and tackle the more demanding and challenging parts first, followed by some easier and more pleasurable ones. In other words, concentrate on measurable achievements for which you then reward yourself for what you have accomplished.

   

4) Choose an accountability partner or mentor if needed to help you stay focused on your goals and to encourage you when you fall short of reaching them.

All of this is simple and doable. But simple and easy are obviously not the same thing.