September and October Parole Releases at an All-Time Low, November and December Numbers More Encouraging
For some inexplicable reason, the Virginia Parole Board released only five persons in September and none in October, according to their official monthly posts on their website. However, the numbers for November were more encouraging. Of the several hundred cases reviewed, 36 resulted in a release, and of these, seven were geriatric inmates. December was even more promising, with 79 releases, ten being geriatric, but for some reason only one female was on the entire list.
With an increasing number of Virginia inmates in their 70's and older who are in declining health, one wonders why greater efforts are not made to provide compassionate release for those persons.
Study Indicates Annual Cost of Incarceration Exceeds $1 Trillion
The following is from a December, 2017, article by Audry Spade in PRISON LEGAL NEWS:
A new research study has estimated the total cost of incarceration in the United States has surged to a staggering $1 trillion per year - eleven times the $80 billion spent annually on corrections alone, and 6% of the nation's gross domestic product (GDP).
For many families across the United States, the high cost of incarceration is nothing new. But while prior research has made an effort to determine the total cost of crime, it wasn't until recently, in a study conducted by the Institute for Advancing Justice Research and Innovation at Washington University in St. Louis, that the various societal costs of incarceration were factored in - things like lost wages and increased criminology among the children of incarcerated parents, as well as other collateral expenses.
Indeed, it turns out the true cost of removing millions of people from their communities and confining them in detention facilities across the nation is costing more than anyone had estimated previously.
Perhaps even more alarming, researchers also found that more than half of those costs are being shouldered directly by prisoners, their families and their communities - leaving already poor households even more impoverished. Many affected families live beneath the federal poverty line as it is, and are the same families that struggle the most beneath the massive financial burdens of incarceration - everything from paying bail bonds and raising the children of incarcerated parents, to the costs of prison and jail phone calls and fees to place money on prisoners' institutional accounts.
How All Prisons Are "For Profit"
While Virginia has only one official "for profit" prison, the Lawrenceville Correctional Center, every local jail and Department of Corrections prison seems bent on extracting more and more money from inmates and from their families.
Our local jail, for example, charges a $1 a day "rent" that families have to pay if their loved one is to be able to have funds in their account for over-priced commissary items, phone calls, and copays for health care and prescriptions. At the Middle River Regional Jail, where inmates from our jail are sent due to overcrowding here, the charge is an outrageous $3 per day, a major hardship on family members who, after all, aren't the ones who have committed the crime. And family members using the required kiosk to deposit money in an inmate account are charged $4 per transaction.
Meanwhile, some 40% of local inmates are awaiting their hearings, and should be presumed innocent until proven otherwise.
The following examples of how the commonwealth of Virginia's Department of Corrections reap "profits" comes from a long time inmate at Buckingham Correctional Center:
1) A percentage of prisoners incoming money is taken by jails and prisons for processing fees.
2) When an inmate is transported to and from a destination, they are billed for the use of the automobile or other vehicle and the officers' time.
3) Inmates are charged copays for dental and health care.
4) Inmates are charged outrageously high prices for commissary items and phone service.
5) Any interest received from inmate accounts is pocketed by the institution..
6) Institutions are profiting from prisoner labor because they only pay between $0.27 and $0.80 cents per hour to complete strenuous jobs (minimum wage in Virginia is $7.25) and prisons profit while creating crafty schemes to cause prisoners to give all their money back to the institution. Prisoners also build furniture, refill ink cartridges, operate machinery, etc., that DOC receives regular pay for from state agencies. DOC does not provide prisoners workers compensation if they are injured while on the job. They do not have a social security fund to help them when they are too old to work any longer. Inmates who work in are not provided prescription safety glasses or steel-toed work boots. DOC requires inmates to pay for them if they want them. They are not allowed thermal tops or bottoms unless they buy their own from a for-profit vendor. Inmates who work for VCE Enterprises are not provided prepaid prescription safety glasses.
7) The DOC profits from for-profit companies such as Global Tel Link (GTL), JPay, Inc., Keefe Commissary Network Sales, and the GEO Group.
8) Virginia also profits from offenders based on the Code of Virginia section 53.1-41(B) which now requires the Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) to withhold funds from inmate pay to be applied toward any court imposed fines, costs, forfeitures, restitution, or penalties they may owe. This includes from program participation including work, treatment, and education.
9) Institutional employees are fed free meals from the prisoners food budget, and staff are served better meals than inmates.
10) VDOC profits when the kitchen manager does not adequately replace broken or damaged cups, hot boxes, trays, utensils and etc. as required.
11) VDOC profits whenever the kitchen manager does not ensure that inmates are provided their proper calorie and vitamin count in each meal by cutting portion sizes and/or not providing condiments.
12) VDOC profits when the kitchen manager does not ensure that the prisoners are fed at an appropriate time. Sometimes prisoners are fed at 3:30 pm and are not fed again until after 6:30 am. It is generally later which means over fifteen hours between meals, so kitchen staff can leave the institution at an earlier time.
13) VDOC profits when the kitchen manager requires that workers who miss a day from work have to visit the facility physician before returning to work in the kitchen. This seems like a scam because medical charges a $5.00 sick call copay for this.
14) VDOC profits from prisoner telephone use.
15) VDOC profits by no longer issuing soap to prisoners who have received at least $5.00 during a given month. VDOC once provided everyone a bar of soap weekly to promote proper hygiene. Some now refuse to spend their money on soap.
16) VDOC profits from JPAY media sales and email use.
17) VDOC profits from inmates' incoming monies. Currently, VDOC does not allow money orders to be sent to inmates even though each facility should be operated by a trusted business office. Whoever is wanting to send their loved ones money must mail money orders via snail mail free or electronically via email it to the for-profit company JPay, Inc., for an expensive fee to be sent to the prisoner via snail mail or by email electronically to the prisoner.
DOC used to not be allowed to profit from inmates. Now it seems like everything they do is for profit.
*************************************
"Birth of a Criminal"
by 71-year-old blind poet and inmate Minor Junior Smith
Deerfield Correctional Center
From an overcrowded prison behind blind eyes, my autobiography must unfold.
May actualities about my past have been doubted, many others untold.
Incarcerated in Virginia I am haunted by events from age three,
But first, I'll reveal bits of information about my parents ans who delivered me.
Since my parents enjoyed farming, in 1940 they bought and move on to a fond one,
For the sake of characterization, father's name will appear as Richard Johnson.
In 1943 his and mother's baby daughter perished in a traffic house fire up there.
Rena was born in a barn in 1944 while a new house was being built for the pair.
May 3rd, 1946, father's stepmother delivered me; I was mother's only real son,
Our small home in Montgomery County was beside the rocky top of Dark Run.
Those pictures of me when I was a baby proved that I was in excellent health,
And I was suffieciently provided for by my father, who possessed a normal wealth.
I never did know why my mother had chosen to separate from my father, to this day,
Yet future comments about it would make me thing I was the one who had to pay.
With $200 mother took my two sisters and me to West Virginia when I was three
Then in some way twelve-year-old Loretta parted from five-year-old Rena and me.
While we stayed there with mother's relatives I did not see a cow or a churn,
I stood too closely to a stove and each leg became inflicted by a serious burn.
The net thing I remember knowing was that ride in Uncle Henry Johnson's car,
Although he took mother, Rena and me back up Dark Hollow Road, we did not ride far.
A black man's house squatted between two roads which led to Poor Mountain,
His and Uncle Kelvin's family shared the same spring, their only water fountain.
We stopped ath the bladk man's abode after Uncle Henry had spoken to mother,
"You kids go to your granny's," she said, "Henry doesn't want to go further."
Rena and I passed three farms on the hollow's left road to start a new life,
Mother had said that daddy would take us to live with ole Elsa Pratt, his new wife.
For our little feet and legs, a trip to Granny Johnson's cabin was a long way,
Our sister had drawn spring water that morning, was one thing granny had to say.
Having eaten gravy and bread we rode in daddy's truck which was big and black,
He took us all home after he had picked up Loretta at his daddy's nearby shack.
Mother had taken half of the money daddy had saved in a post of their bedstead,
Maybe that's why I had to share a contemptuous and disturbed step-mama instead.
In the kitchen I quoted mama by calling her"Ole Elsa Pratt!" when we met,
Mama would label her former pediatrician a "horse doctor", a slang title for a vet.
I would be hearing complaints about an agonizing hysterectomy she'd gone through.
However, when began by setting forth good principles for us to follow that she knew.
In my belief the results of her surgery caused me and other people much harm,
Occasionally when we three Johnson children played it caused her great alarm.
Her usual irrational behavior was almost entirely influenced by spite,
This would cause my mind to be compelled by envy, fear, lust, strife!
Daddy earned $250 a week in the early 50's, but he was still meek and mild,
Two of his seven daughters had perished in infancy, and I was his youngest child.
He handed Rena and me each a pet after he returned home in his big truck,
Immediately step-mama drowned Rena's baby chick having first drowned my baby duck.
Loretta cared for me, leaned our house or chopped wood and probably a whistle,
I couldn't understand why she put hot water in Loretta's yellow bird whistle.
Mama didn't like Loretta's looks, so daddy returned her to grandaddy's shack,
Our sister visited Rena and me a few times, but afterwards she never came back.
She would be shifted from one welfare home to another throughout several years,
Even if she was at least she no longer had to cope with Elsa's abusive jeers.
Eventually in Fishersville Loretta became a practical nurse,
As for Rena and me, our tormented lives around mama varied from better to worse.
