A Letter To Virginia Lawmakers From Inside Augusta Correctional Center

Augusta Correctional Center is in nearby Augusta County.

This letter was sent to me recently by an individual in the Virginia Department of Corrections, with the request that it be shared with members of the Virginia legislature:

My name is Richard Webb, and I am almost 47 years old. I have been incarcerated for nearly 28 years for murder and aggravated malicious wounding.

At 18, I was a mental, emotional, psychological, and spiritual mess when I committed my crimes. I was a broken kid who was dealing with psychological, emotional, and sexual abuse traumas from five to approximately 17 years of age.

There was a staggering amount of undocumented and subsequently untreated trauma which was to be a major contributing factor in my life leading up to my crimes. These mitigating factors were never used as part of my defense during my trial due to the fear of public embarrassment.

In these last 28 years, I’ve learned there are thousands of others in prison, like me, who have grown up and grown old and matured out of our trauma and became rehabilitated through life's experiences, studies, and applied knowledge of emotional, physical, psychological, and spiritually learned methods acquired through years of study, along with maturing and wanting to become better people. We have become personal success stories. Even though the DOC won't currently give any of us credit for doing these studies on our own, we did them nonetheless, not expecting any recognition.

This learned and applied knowledge that we have acquired over our incarceration is not unnoticed by the institutional staff as many of us have sometimes been given sensitive area jobs that are only allowed to certain prisoners who meet certain criteria where a vetting process was used for these sensitive area jobs. Many of us have gone decades - plus , without getting an institutional infraction written against us.

Many of us also completed all of the programs offered by the DOC that are considered both therapeutic as well as educational. Many of us have even became mentors in programs. Even creating and facilitating classes in re-entry and pre- reentry programs and conflict resolution classes. I was a mentor at one time, helping to prepare many through a communication class, knowing that I am still facing Life Without Parole.

We prisoners don't understand the criteria of which these powers that be are using in determining a persons future as to whether they are a danger to society , or not. We all collectively do know that during our yearly appointment with our institutional case manager, we have to answer a series of standardized questions , which is called a compass report and most of us pass this test with results indicating “low recidivism”. Despite all of the above, anyone with a violent charge against them, is most often turned down for parole, and even excluded from being made eligible for any of the good time or any early release bill.

Since 2009, there have been over 2500 prisoners paroled out from VA prisons. Many of them were serving sentences from charges ranging from murder, rape, robbery, and assault charges. Yet, the recidivism rate remains low for these parolees. Included in these 2500 parolees are the 140 or so people who Mr. Mark Obenshain so eloquently pointed out as being those people of which were released in some sort of technical violation under former parole board chairman Adrianne Bennett's watch during the period of April 2020 to May 2020.

Of those 140 people are still out there in society going on three years now, living proof that people can and do change. These individuals are working , paying taxes, paying fines, helping to give words of support for those of us still in here and words of encouragement to help keep people from making the same harms we caused.

There is no denying that though the crimes that were committed are very serious, and hard to digest, most of us in here have aged out of criminal behavior and thinking and have worked for decades on being accountable and being rehabilitated. After serving decades here, most of us are not the same person who committed those crimes when we were younger. Many of us have matured and are truly remorseful for our actions.

My hope in writing this is to bring some very necessary attention to an ongoing humanitarian crisis in Virginia's prison system. We need your help. Please know that the man I see in my mirror each day is not the same 18-year-old I was 28 years ago. I know of thousands more in here who are genuinely changed, and remorseful people. We are ready to show how we have changed and can be upstanding citizens in society.

Please think on this. Please be compassionate. I don't expect anyone to forget what we who are convicted of violent felonies have done. We are changed people and we are ready to come home and work, pay our fines, and be law abiding citizens. And pay it forward all the love and support that many of us have received during our many different roads to being rehabilitated.

I can't thank you enough for your time and consideration.

Respectfully submitted,

Richard Webb