HARDTIME VIRGINIA Vol. 8, No. 3, Summer 2023

PRISON CAN BE A HOSTILE PLACE. THEN THE BIRDS CAME.

by Christopher Blackwell

     Last month, a tiny, colorful barn swallow and her partner began building a nest outside a window at the prison where I am incarcerated. The brightly colored birds worked diligently, assembling their nest one beakful of mud at a time. All the guys in my unit were immediately entranced by the glimpse of nature we so rarely get to experience.

     In prison, guys act tough and move carefully within a highly segregated environment. But once those birds planted themselves outside our window, those barriers melted away. The dayroom was packed, with guys from different gangs and races squeezing in together to observe the swallows at work. We watched their every move, pointing, laughing, and yelling like we were close friends. In those moments, we could let our guards down, forget about prison politics, and just be ourselves. I notice moments like these because they are so unusual.

     After completing her nest, the mama bird laid four fingernail-sized eggs. The eggs hatched, and the baby birds quickly became the talk of the unit. Suddenly, every guy in prison was an ornithologist, claiming to know whether barn swallows were an endangered species, what kind of food they ate, how long the chicks would take to mature, and a string of other details that seemed at least somewhat believable. I have no idea if any of them knew what they were talking about, but it felt good to see everyone excited about something other than typical prison crap, like lifting weights and card games. Even the toughest guys became consumed by these little creatures. It was impossible not to be—they were adorable.

     The baby birds became a treasured part of my daily routine—each morning at 5 a.m. I would make my first cup of freeze-dried coffee and check on the nest. I approached slowly, careful not to upset the mama bird. As you can imagine, she wasn’t exactly thrilled about us looming over her brood. But during these calm, quiet mornings, she sometimes allowed me to get close.

     I would count each of the four babies, making sure they had all survived another night. I savored the silence, the time to think. After living in prison for 20 years surrounded by layers of dense razor wire fencing designed to keep us in and everything else out, having this personal connection to nature felt special. For a few minutes, I could feel like a part of something much bigger than the closed world of this penitentiary.

     As the chicks grew, we fretted about whether they would all survive. One prisoner was convinced it was only a matter of time until the birds pushed one of the babies out of the nest to make more room. I wondered if that was true. I swore that if it happened, I would raise the baby myself, giving it a home in my cell. How would it learn to fly? That was a problem for later.

     We didn’t always agree on what was best for the birds. One time, one of the guys climbed up on the window ledge and tapped on the glass—as if he were a child peering into a fish tank—hoping the babies would lift their heads. This caused chaos. Several prisoners, myself included, got worked up and accused him of disturbing the birds for his own selfish entertainment. He tried to insist he wasn’t bothering them, but the mama bird’s nervous chirps said otherwise. Finally, he left them alone, but he was too prideful to admit he was wrong.

     On the morning of July 4, a prisoner on my unit named Dakota Collins quipped the birds were bound to find their independence that day. “It’s destined,” Collins said.

     What had started as a joke became a prophecy. By midday, all four babies had left the nest.

     “It’s cool that these birds are finding their independence on Independence Day,” Thomas Mullin-Coston, another prisoner in my unit, told me. “It just makes the day—we get a good meal today and our friends are off to start their little lives.”

     Although the guys were also sad to see the birds go, we would be the last to begrudge any living being its freedom.

I post this with the kind permission of The Appeal, a nonprofit news organization that envisions a world in which systems of support and care, not punishment, create public safety.

July Parole Numbers Are Up, But Only Slightly

     The Parole Board released a grand total of five individuals in July, and the total number of grants for the year so far is only 25. And in spite of the marked increase in “old law” prisoners eligible for geriatric parole, only six were released under that provision.

     Reform advocate Jonathan White at Augusta  Correctional Center recently quoted a “new law” prisoner he is mentoring as saying, ”Why should I care about doing right and staying on the straight path when they will not even give you parole after all the many decades of being a model prisoner and kissing up to their rules that they put everyone through? Now, they don't even want to give us the privileges to earn our way back to freedom with the little bit of good time that would have allowed many of us to go home before dying in this place!” 

ACLU Appeals Two Cases Involving Earned Sentence Credits

     After two of their lawsuits in Richmond courts failed. the ACLU appealed to the Virginia State Supreme Court, and in June that court ruled in favor of the Steven Prease case, agreeing that he had been denied by VADOC the earned sentence credits he had earned and were now overdue to him by a year. Currently the VADOC has not applied the ruling to all related cases, however. The hope is that the DOC will be directed by Attorney General Miyares to simply apply the earned credits to the related cases without the need for further lawsuits, thus saving taxpayers thousands of dollars. The second case appealed to the State Supreme Court is for those with “mixed charges.” These were denied enhanced earned credits by Amendment 19 to the budget in June 2022 because at least one of their charges was specifically excluded in the ESC Law. That case will be heard in September.            -Deb Turner, VJC

Overdose Deaths In Prisons—A Form Of Suicide Or Something Worse?        

     According to recent stats from the DOC there have been 417 overdose deaths in Virginia prisons since 2016, and the numbers are increasing. There were eight confirmed cases of such deaths in one 24 hour period at Lawrenceville Correctional Center in August of last year, and at the end of July, three such deaths were reported in a two day period at the Greensville Correctional Center, another facility where drug use is alleged to be rampant.

     Some have come to believe that many such deaths may be murders, cases of gang members forcibly injecting someone with a lethal dose of fentanyl or other drug, as well as cases of some guards who are bringing in drugs from the outside having a potential informant eliminated.

    We won’t assume any of that being true without hard evidence, but it illustrates the need for having an independent ombudsman make immediate and thorough investigations of all such cases. An ombudsman bill was making its way through the legislature in the last session, but it was held up by the Appropriation Committee and did not receive the support of the Governor.

I Love Your Letters, But May Not Always Be Able To Respond Promptly

     At 84, I am still working two days a week and am active in a lot of church and community causes, so I can’t always keep up with my correspondence as I should. Sorry!

    Something I want to feature in a future newsletter is the topic of prison food, especially as it relates to the health of those behind bars. I will also forward your responses to Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg, who is a senior reporter for The Appeal, a prisoner advocacy group in New Jersey. 

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Harvey Yoder, co-chair of the Valley Justice Coalition, P.O. Box 434, Harrisonburg, VA 22803