HARD TIME VIRGINIA Vol. 7, No. 1 an occasional newsletter by and for Virginians in prison

To what extent is our criminal justice system recognizing and rewarding the hard work many are putting into correcting their behavior and demonstrating they have been rehabilitated? And to what extent is the Virginia Department of Correction, the largest department in the Commonwealth, fulfilling its own stated mission, vision and values? 

Mission 

We are in the business of helping people to be better by safely providing effective incarceration, supervision and evidence-based re-entry services to inmates and supervisees. 

Vision

A premier correctional organization where all individuals achieve their full potential.

Values 

Citizenship Commitment Communication Ethics Honesty Learning Support

Editor's Note: Some opinions by incarcerated persons below are edited for brevity or clarity.

For the past 33 years I have exceeded what was asked of me. I have been steadily employed in three Enterprise Shops, spent six years as a teacher's aide, worked the main laundry at Lawrenceville, and have been a law library clerk, a houseman and a sports official. I have completed four vocational treatment programs, volunteered as a mentor in the reentry program, participated in Education Straight and paid for classes to complete my Associates Degree. I have had an attorney represent me to the parole board since 2010. In 2015 and 2016 I had a commitment from Outreach for Christ in Virginia Beach to provide me with a job and transition assistance. Yet this year I was denied release for the 16th time.

I'm 66 years old and will never be able to work at a public job where I will be able to use the skills I have learned here. And until they start giving the new law inmates (not eligible for parole) something to work for they aren't going to work those programs because they have a release date, and nothing can keep them from leaving when that time comes. I've seen young guys leave here who couldn't even write their own names. When I look around and see the word "rehabilitation," to me it's a joke because they are so understaffed here and there are so many officers who do not or will not do their job to help bring these young guys under control. If you all saw and knew what I know you probably wouldn't believe it. But spiritually I'm doing fantastic because I know what side of the fence I'm on and I enjoy living a godly life with evil all around, but none of it comes near me, praise God! 

Seems like no matter what I do to better myself or how much other people try to help by writing letters, offering me a place to live and a job, and even if some in the administration try to help me make parole, it doesn't do any good. But I am doing well and good, so I will keep pressing and praying, but I don't think I'm going to write to the Parole Board anymore... Recently two men here passed away, one had colon cancer, the other prostate cancer. They should should have been allowed to go home to die.

I just finished chemo and radiation for throat cancer and had to give up my paint job here. I typed up a nice 14-page parole plan that I sent to the members, with a home plan of running our family farm and taking care of my 91-year-old parents. I wrote three pages about my time, crime and responsibility and seven pages of vocational courses completed, plus ten college courses, Bible studies, teaching vocational school, taking ten college courses and reading over 600 books on medical, horticultural and pharmacognosy, and would like to become a certified herbalist. I have nine more years to max out. My parents will be dead and gone, or 100 years old and in a nursing home.

I was sentenced to life in prison for a murder I committed as a teenager. Now as an aging man in my 60's it is only the faith in God that I found in prison that has kept me from despair. For a long time I held on because of my parents. For almost 33 years my mom always made sure she and my dad came to visit, and he was there for me until he died. So out of 43 years of incarceration I had only one or both of my parents for 39 years, but I have other close relatives who don't seem to even know I exist. But when I began to give up hope some people from Aging Persons in Prison once again gave me hope that someone cared for me, even though I may not get the freedom I so hopefully long for. It hurts to know some people who committed the same crime as adults that I did as a foolish teenager have been released on parole.

The VDOC is permitting for-profit companies such as Keefe Commissary Network, JPay, Inc., Global Tel*Link, Armor, and others to price gouge us. VADOC should not be getting commissions/kickbacks for inmate purchases. Staff should be required to eat the exact same meals as inmates with the same cooks. This would ensure healthier and more nutritious meals.

An official 1/24/22 report states that 1489 State Responsible (SR) inmates and 633 staff members were COVID-19 positive; 58 SR inmates and 5 staff members died of COVID. I have not heard of a memorial for these individuals. If more deserving persons would have been granted Discretionary, Geriatric, or Fishback parole release or have been pardoned, some of these SR inmates would still be alive, I'm sure of it, especially the medically vulnerable inmates such as myself. I am a COVID-19 long hauler and I have pulmonary fibrosis and neurological damage in my extremities. I also now have severe sleep apnea and I'm pre-diabetic. COVID Code Red or Yellow housing units were not single cells. At BKCC men are crowded in a prison that was designed around 1982 and built to house only one inmate per cell and 32 inmates per housing unit. BKCC has 20 housing units with 32 cells in each and a majority are double bunked. Many older steel and concrete prisons like ours don't have air-conditioning units in the housing or work areas.

Pay for work by inmates has remained the same for decades while commissary prices continue to increase with inflation. Skilled workers get ¢0.45 an hour, semi-skilled workers ¢0.35, and unskilled workers ¢0.27. And we are not typically allowed only 30 hours of work per week. 

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Final Editor's Note: I applaud the aspirations and the efforts of all of the people in the agency who are trying to help VADOC's mission, vision and values become a reality. But given the lack of adequate funding and the resulting difficulty in hiring and retaining the staff needed, along with public sentiment that is strongly pro-punishment, there is clearly a lot that remains to be done.

Harvey Yoder, editor

Let Nations Without War Crimes Cast The First Stones

"War crimes" are an all too common feature of all wars, including the saturation bombing of largely civilian sites by British and American planes  in Dresden, Germany in 1945.

Millions the world over are expressing shock and outrage over Russia's brutal and indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Ukraine, justifiably charging Putin with "war crimes."

I totally agree, but have also always believed that war itself is a crime, and that to assign the "crime" label to only certain acts of killing people, armed or otherwise, is morally flawed and hypocritical, to say the least.

The United Nations considers the following as war crimes, according to Wikipedia:

1. Intentional murder of innocent people;

2. Torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments;

3. Willfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health;

4. Compelling a prisoner of war or other protected person to serve in the forces of hostile power;

5. Use by children under the age of sixteen years into armed forces or groups or using them to participate actively in hostilities;

6. Intentionally directing attack against the civilian population as not taking direct part in hostilities;

7. Extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly;

8. Destroying or seizing the property of an adversary unless demanded by necessities of the conflict;

9. Using poison or poisoned weapons;

10. Intentionally directing attack against building dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals as long as it's not used as military infrastructure;

11. Willfully depriving a prisoner of war or other protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial;

12. Attacking or bombarding towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which are undefended and which are not military infrastructure;

13. Unlawful deportation, transfer, or unlawful confinement;

14. Taking of hostages.

15. Intentional assault with the knowledge that such an assault would result in loss of life or casualty to civilians or damage to civilian objects or extensive, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment that would be clearly excessive.

This last point (15), in my opinion, pretty much describes any modern war launched anywhere. All wars now result in more civilian casualties than armed ones. Having said that, conscripted soldiers, as the sons and daughters of beloved families and communities, represent an equally tragic and, in my mind indefensible, loss of life. All lives do really matter.

In what could be considered an example of "Victor's Justice," we should note that no charges were placed in the case of Allied and U.S. air raids that caused some 25,000 casualties in Dresden, Germany alone. Similar casualties were inflicted in other German cities, and the US has the distinction of having bombed the largest number of civilians ever in a single air raid in Tokyo, Japan near the end of WWII.

Then there was the even more lethal use of nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.

May God save us from ever having to reap what we have sown.

Some 80,000 people were instantly killed or fatally wounded in the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, and over 100,000 died afterwards from the effects of the first atomic bomb ever detonated.  

Children Learn Respect By Being Treated With Respect

When our children feel disrespected by their primary caregivers, they lose heart.

I was impressed by some of the parenting advice given years ago by family psychologist John Rosemond’s, and recommended the DNR run his weekly column “Living With Children.” 

As a family counselor and teacher of parenting classes I especially liked what Rosemond said about having clear family rules and expectations, with consistent and well understood consequences, and about letting those consequences, rather than our heavy handed lectures, teach children good behavior. The example he used was that of a referee in a game who, when a player commits a foul, simply blows the whistle, applies the penalty, and then has the game continue, with the offender learning that one is always better off following the rules that define how the game is to be played. In other words, parents don’t need to shame, blame or preach long sermons, just be professional and fair umpires or referees that go by a clear and fair family playbook.

In recent years, though, I’ve become concerned about Dr. Rosemond’s repeated insistence that children need parents who are more like drill sergeants than their “friends” (DNR 3/12/22 “Your Child Needs a Boss”). I totally agree that parents need to avoid just being their children’s friend, and certainly not if that means granting their every wish and failing to draw clear boundaries around acceptable behaviors. But parents should, in my opinion, be one of their children’s best and most respected adult “friends.”

Parenting expert and author Dr. Philip Osborne outlines four important areas of successful parenting, each of which requires a different skill set. The first of these is what he calls the “No Problem Area,” in which parents are like friendly team captains providing good experiences of work, play and conversations together. These have little to do with problems, but everything to do with building relationships that increase a parent’s positive influence on their children. This area needs to be expanded to where it makes up the majority of time spent together, where parents are making lots of deposits in the family friendship account so that when withdrawals need to made they don’t find themselves in overdraft territory. This is the area in which children learn most about being respectful and responsible adults, by the example set by their parents and other role models they look up to.

A second often overlooked area is the “Child’s Problem Area,” involving things children are bothered about that don’t necessarily bother the parents—except for the empathy they feel for their offspring. Examples would be problems children have with their friends, their appearance, or with just everyday disappointments. Here parents wear their coach/encourager hat, practicing being good listeners rather than just good lecturers, and where they are neither rescuing nor blaming, but supporting their young in becoming good problem solvers and resilient future adults.

Osborne’s third and also overlooked area is the “Mutual Problem Area,” where both parents and children are bothered about something and need to work together at solutions. This may involve family meetings in which everyone gets to contribute their ideas, and where parents are willing to give each person’s views due consideration, while maintaining veto power over any proposed changes in the family’s ”legal system” that are not consistent with its basic values. So while it remains clear that not everything is negotiable, some things are, and should be seen as opportunities to teach good negotiating and conflict resolving skills. This is not about children getting their way, but about respectfully offering them opportunities to have their say, with the understanding that anything that can improve things in the family will be heard and considered, and perhaps given a try to see how or whether it might work. We are, after all, preparing children to become active, participating citizens in their communities rather than simply subjects of autocratic systems in which they are simply told what to do and what to think.

His fourth area is the “Parents’ Problem Area,” where parents are bothered by their children’s behavior but where their children are not sufficiently bothered. Examples would be their not doing their chores, being disrespectful of parents and others, and not observing their family’s health, safety and housekeeping rules. This is where clearly defined policies, with clearly understood and consistently applied consequences, come in, and where parents are the responsible law enforcement officials. But like other good work supervisors, teachers or highway patrol officers, they are respectful, professional and assertive adults who know that you can’t teach respect disrespectfully, patience impatiently, or responsibility irresponsibly. In other words, effective parents lead by example in living by good rules and by working at changing any that need to be changed,

In summary, a family should be a classroom for learning how the real world works, or at least how it should work, not by yelling, threatening or assaulting members who are out of line, but by correcting and teaching them to behave like mature adults and active citizens. 

Children are, after all, just short people who deserve the same respect as us taller and older ones.

Another Home-icide In The Name Of Progress

photo courtesy of Daily News-Record and photographer
Ian Munro

I don't see myself as a tree hugger, but I am a bit of a house hugger when it comes to preserving historic structures like the Haas House that was demolished on South Main Street yesterday.

According to the article in today's paper, this part of JMU's vast real estate empire was formerly home to a number of leading Harrisonburg families and then for years served as the Episcopal Student Center. At a time when there is an acute shortage of affordable homes in our community I always feel we should consider salvaging existing structures wherever possible to help provide for more student or other needed housing, such as for refugee families, for example.

I understand the Haas house did have some significant structural issues that would have required considerable repair, as did the historic Harrison House just further up Main Street. Yet I can't help seeing each house on earth as the creative and hard work of an unimaginable number of hands involved in the design, site preparation, manufacture and transportation of all of the building materials that went into it. And then there are the many other hands involved in the construction, finishing and furnishing what becomes a home, a memory-filled place of shelter, warmth and refuge to the people who inhabit them. On a much larger scale, multiple homes and businesses in the northeast neighborhood of Harrisonburg were demolished in the 50's and 60's for the sake of a federally subsidized "urban renewal" project carried out in the.name of progress. The predominantly African-American community in that part of our city has never fully recovered from that wholesale demolition. On an even more devastating scale I mourn the razing of more and more Palestinian homes to make room for more upscale Israeli settlements. Meanwhile we are all grieving the devastation of homes, hospitals and other structures in the terrible bombardment of Ukrainian cities. So with the hymn writer William Vories, we pray, "Let woe and waste of warfare cease, that useful labor yet may build its homes with love and laughter filled!"

Let's preserve the earth and its trees and other building materials in whatever ways possible, and not needlessly sacrifice its precious resources on the altar of privilege and in our pursuit of progress.

I'm sure the Jewish Carpenter I follow would agree.

For a mere $150,000, an efficient demolition crew destroyed all of this construction and craftsmanship  forever yesterday. (DNR photo)

Is Accountability Based On Age Or Agency?

We have been divided on just when children and teens need
to make their personal lifetime decisions to enlist in the
worldwide movement of Jesus followers.

When are children personally responsible for pledging their lives and allegiance to God rather than their parents being primarily accountable for their faith and faith practices?

Anabaptists have always taught that children are a part of God's beloved and "saved" family from birth. Jesus's words "of such is the kingdom of heaven," are frequently cited, understood as children not only experiencing special favor with God but as deserving special care and protection. In fact adults are to become spiritually reborn, become like children, in order to be a part of God's family.  

Thus children are seen as innocent and blessed by Anabaptist groups, not in need of baptism or any other rite to make them acceptable to God. 

But just when do they arrive at an "age of accountability" and embrace a faith that is truly their own? Is it at around 12, a traditional Jewish marker for becoming a part of the adult faith community? Or as in American society, is it at around 18, when they gain full legal status as adults?

A Mennonite publication of some years ago, "Upon These Doorposts," described three stages of faith development I have found helpful. The first of these is "heart faith," based on children unquestioningly embracing the faith of their parents and other mentors in their lives. A second stage, "head faith," is one in which children begin to face difficult issues and entertain some honest doubts as they seek answers to hard questions about God, the Bible, the church, and about standards of right and wrong. A third stage is the development of "whole faith," an experience of combining head faith and heart faith in a lifelong commitment to God and to God's people. 

This three-stage model recognizes that it is normal for children, teens and young adults (along with their elders!) to make not just one "decision for Christ," or have just one kind of  repentance and transformation. Rather that they will experience a lifetime of repeatedly saying "Yes" as they gain new and deeper understandings of their faith. 

But just when should the celebration and sign of baptism and a personally chosen membership in a community of faith take place?

I find it significant that in each of the first three gospels, the story of Jesus blessing children is immediately followed by his calling a wealthy young ruler to accountability for the management of the assets for which he is responsible. 

In the case of children brought to him for a rabbinic blessing, Jesus warmly welcomes, embraces and blesses them each, then simply returns them to the parents who are responsible for their care, including their spiritual care. But he then directly confronts the wealthy young adult who seeks a similar blessing, asking him to give up ownership of his possessions and to use his wealth for the benefit of the poor, as Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere. 

He makes no such demands of children, doesn't urge them to "make a decision for Christ," or to "give their hearts and lives to Jesus." They have no significant property or other personal possessions over which they have direct control. Their major life decisions, as in what education they receive, what time they spend in what company of friends, what work or extracurriculars they take part in, what major purchases they make, etc., are still ones in which their parents have the final say and over which their young do not yet have the primary responsibility. This is as it should be, a gradual shift of responsibility which culminates in children fully "coming of age." 

So yes, at some point a child either demands the right to make all of these major choices on their own, as one of their developmental tasks, or is freely granted that right by their parents and/or their society. At this point a child clearly does need to answer directly to God for their choices. But until young people have or claim that right to say "No," one could question whether they can fully say "Yes" in a way that is truly their own.

So what if we were to see accountability as not about some arbitrary age or stage in children's social or psychological development, but about when their family and/or community no longer exert primary control over their life choices? 

To Anabaptist and other groups in the free church tradition this is an important question. Otherwise we may have far too many young adults who come to reject their baptism as more like an expected rite of passage rather than a personally chosen  enlistment in the worldwide, heaven-governed God movement.

25 Years Of Local Marriage/Divorce Numbers

I've been recording the number of local divorces and the number
of marriage licenses issued each year since 1996.

The number of marriage licenses issued in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County in 2021 was up slightly from the prior year, but still short of the record number issued a decade ago. Overall, both divorce and marriage numbers have remained about the same over the past 25 years, in spite of a significant increase in our population.

Meanwhile we have no stats on  how many partners are living together without registering their relationships. This means we have no record of how many of these are experiencing undocumented "divorces" with equally distressing effects on children and/or other close family members and friends.

There are of course cases of ongoing abuse, infidelity and addictions where remaining together becomes untenable. Or when couples are either unable or unwilling to get the help they need to repair what has become dysfunctional in their relationship. But whatever we as a community can do to help support stable and healthy marriages can only be for the good of us all.

Here are the official numbers provided by the local circuit court:

Year       Marriages     Divorces

1996           873                 387

1997           950                 405

1998           964                 396

1999           932                 405

2000           947                 365

2001          1003                438     (most annual marriages)

2002           976                 421

2003           961                 399

2004           959                 437

2005           889                 381

2006           929                 389

2007           925                 434

2008           950                 405

2009           903                 347     (fewest annual divorces)

2010           879                 358     (fewest annual marriages since 1996)

2011           933                 433

2012           995                 445

2013           924                 484    

2014           972                 427

2015           955                 474

2016           985                 612     (most annual divorces)

2017           983                 426

2018           935                 476

2019           947                 487

2020          882                 445

2021          994                 466

Clarification 1: Marriage numbers are based on the number of marriage licenses issued, and include those who come here from other localities to marry, whereas divorce numbers include only the legal breakups of people who live in the City or County. However, it is logical to assume that a roughly equal number of residents from here marry in other jurisdictions as marry here from other communities, so the numbers above should be reasonably valid for comparison purposes.

Clarification 2: One cannot assume a rate of divorce based on any one year's numbers, as in "45% of first time marriages in our community will end in divorce." (And many of the above couples are marrying or divorcing for a second, third or fourth time). But with numbers like these over a period of many years, one might safely conclude that the odds of a given marriage surviving are just over 50%, not nearly as good as we would like.

My Brother Sanford 6/15/1930 to 2/27/2022: Truly Well Done, Good And Faithful Servant

 

Eli, Sanford and I at a family reunion a decade ago, three brothers united
by a common faith, a common calling and a common love for each other.

It was around noon Sunday when we got the news that my oldest brother, at 91, had breathed his last, surrounded by his beloved Martha and their grown children singing and praying him home. 

Sanford, nine years older than I, was one of the most formative and positive influences in my young life, and continued to be an admired mentor and model to me and to multitudes of others whose lives he touched.

I remember well the transformation I witnessed when Sanford, as a rebellious and angry teenager, experienced an amazing grace that turned his life completely around. He became one of my heroes, and when I had my own similar experience of grace as a 14-year-old, he was the first person with whom I shared my less dramatic conversion.

Sanford became a pioneer church planter who with his growing young family moved to Costa Rica over 50 years ago as a self supporting missionary. There he and a core group of fellow immigrants from the US mastered the Spanish language and were instrumental in helping establish numerous Anabaptist congregations in Costa Rica and Nicaragua. Three of his grown sons are ministers in these congregations along with many other native Central American pastors. 

Another major legacy of these grass roots and God-blessed efforts is a publishing venture in Petal that produces Christian literature for Spanish readers all over Central and South America, including La Torche, a monthly publication that reaches thousands.

Of course I owe so much to so many others as well, including a great debt to my parents, Ben and Mary, plus all of my older siblings who have blessed and enriched my life beyond measure. Now only I and my next older sister remain. And while the three of us brothers became ordained ministers, all of my siblings have ministered to me in countless ways, and each who has passed has left a hole in my soul.

Here is Sanford's son Philip's account of my brother's last moments:

We began to sing again and he seemed to be enjoying it... (but) his breathing was getting more shallow and rapid. So I checked his oxygen levels again and they were all over the map. I tried to check his pulse but couldn't find any. By then we all saw that his time had come and we gathered around him. The oximeter suddenly went totally blank. He began to breath harder, then gave 3 or 4 hard gasps and his body relaxed. It was 12 o'clock sharp. Even in death Dad was on time.

It was such a sacred moment for all of us. Mom was sitting beside him, holding his hand. He suddenly looked so peaceful, and we all had such a sensation of peace and joy. God seemed so very near. Victory at last! At the moment, there was almost no feeling of sadness; just sacred joy. Don't get me wrong, the separation and emptiness are also there. But the overriding attitude is of joy. Mom was very much at peace. 

Sanford and Martha first settled in Arenal, CR, where Sanford led the first Anabaptist congregation established there. They and others later later moved and expanded their work to the eastern part of Costa Rica. While some of the above churches remain small, most are still active.