All of Virginia's major criminal justice initiatives over the past nearly quarter century have been driven by the lust for federal funding. The most significant policy change in Virginia, the 1995 Truth-In-Sentencing initiative, was the State's derivative of the Federal Violent Crime Control & Law Enforcement Act of 1994. The legislation produced two huge sources of funding: The Violent Offender Incarceration (VOI) Grant and the Truth-In-Sentencing (TIS) Grant. States and US territories received hundreds of millions of dollars to build and expand prisons, expand police forces, and adopt tougher laws that extended sentences of Adult and Juvenile offenders.
Then in 2006, President George W. Bush signed the "Second Chance Act" into law. The law furnished re-entry grants that doled out millions of dollars to the states that embraced re-entry policy. In an attempt to get a piece of the pie, Governor Bob McDonnell signed Executive Order #11 in 2010. The Order created the "Re-Entry Council", which was tasked with formulating a re-entry plan that could reconcile the antagonistic goals of "Truth-In-Sentencing & Second Chance."
The Council introduced the Virginia Adult Re-entry Initiative (VARI), the state's current re-entry model. Ironically, one of VARI's objectives is to help prisoners maintain family support. In the VARI proposed Executive Summary, family support is described as, "a special focus during all phases of correctional supervision. However, that was before Governor Terry McAuliffe acknowledged the opioid crisis' emergence here in Virginia in 2017, culminating into President Donald Trump's declaration of the opioid epidemic a national emergency in 2017.
During this period, David Robinson has worked hard to position the VADOC to receive whatever Drug War funding is available. The most notable act was to make several drastically different changes to Operating Procedure 841.5 (Alcohol & Other Drug Testing and Treatment Services). Now, if a prisoner admits to having an opioid addiction or to being in possession of them, the prisoner will not be charged. At the same time, VADOC, under the strict orders of Robinson, has severely restricted the visitation and mail policies. This reveals that "families" have been implicitly labelled and targeted as potential drug conspirators. Yet, Robinson knows that his staff has always been the primary drug smugglers in the prison system.
The Opioid Epidemic is Good for Business
As Robinson facilitates a War On Contact Visitation and General Correspondence, video visitation and electronic mail services continue to develop. In 2017, under the orders of Robinson, all incoming general correspondence was xeroxed, after which the original copies were discarded. This included letters, photographs, greeting cards, envelopes, newsletters etc. It's well understood by prisoners that photographs are cards received through the General Correspondence are so distorted that they are worthless. So, many prisoners tell their families to send photographs and cards through JPAY where they can, at least, recereceive the image in color. JPAY has become the primary means through which correspondence and photographs are sent. And, as JPAY's profits increase, so does VADOC. The video visitation service has also benefited from Robinson's policies. Many families are now choosing to pay the video visitation fee ($15) for a 30 minute visit and $30 for an hour, rather than drive hours to be accosted, harrassed, and subject to an unpredictable amount of unwanted physical invasion at the discretion of any overzealous corrections officer.
Patriarchy Cloaked in Security
The title of Operating Procedure 851.1 "Visiting Privileges" is more than a misnomer -- it's a fraudulent misrepresentation. In the opinion of Overton v. Brazzetta, the US Supreme Court made is clear that prison visitation is protected by the 1st Amendment's "Freedom of Association" clause. This means that prison visitation is a right. Women, in particular, need to know this because women make up the largest demographic of prison visitors in Virginia. It's mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, girlfriends, and our children's mothers that oftentimes are the one's visiting us. And, it's these same women who, more often than not, are subject to the physically invasive electronic scans, detection devices, pat down frisk searches, contraband detection K-9s, and the most invasive strip searches. In fact, you hardly ever hear of a male visitor being strip searched in VADOC. Nor do you hear of men having their visitation rights terminated or suspended. Women are the ones who are arbitrarily kicked out of visiting rooms and prohibited from reentering. Once in this position, they are forced to request reinstatement of visitation rights from a male (mostly white and conservative) warden, regional administrator, or regional operations chief. These men routinely take the women's visitation rights without providing constitutional standard due process, further abusing these women. Many of these men authorized to provide due process are cogs in the agency's systemic sexism.
Sexism within the VADOC isn't just limited to their law enforcement practices but also in their employment practices. How many women wardens and assistant wardens are there in VADOC? In fact, if you take a really close look at VADOC organizational structure, it becomes very clear that positions in the agency have become pretty gender specific. In an agency where femininity is viewed as a liability, whereby a misogynistic ethos is induce in all of its prisons, one can easily see how women's vaginas have been stigmatized as drug smuggling pouches. The tampon fiasco has brought light to what has long been unseen -- VADOC's Patriarchal Culture.
Unity & Struggle
Resistance to the ongoing physical invasions and abuses of authority in restricting the communication and association of visitors begins with all of us sharing our personal stories on how these policies and the official's enforcing them have become so abusive. There must be a social media platform created to do this. From here, we can harness our power of collective assembly to create a policy agenda for prison visitation that's not as dehumanizing and draconian. We have to make demands via phone calls, emails, letter writing, protest etc. until we are heard. Once we're given space to speak, we must be direct with our position that these policies are symptoms of VADOC's sexist culture. The "Virginia Administrative Process Act" has a mechanism for citizens to request policy changes in any government agency in Virginia -- including VADOC. Someone reading this will have to take a leadership role and develop a central committee of 2 or more people to organize everyone. This is able to be done online. What is absolutely necessary is commitment, steadfastness, confidence in our victory, and vision. We must struggle for unity and use our unity as a weapon when we struggle!
Going back to the early 1800s when Virginia first introduced prisons to this Commonwealth, visitation and communication has been resented by prison officials, as the passage at the opening of this piece reflects. Robinson has continued that legacy. This becomes evident when you read section (iv), (i), (2), (b) of Operating Procedure 851.1, which instructs visitors that if they are asked to submit to a strip search, even if no contraband is found, the visitor is still limited to a non-contact visit. This is an absurd and abusive provision that reveals the true intention and motive behind Chief of Corrections Operations David Robinson's visitation policy. It's time to tell A. David Robinson that "enough is enough"!
Rescind draconian visitation policies!
End sexism in VADOC!
Reinstate visitation rights taken away arbitrarily!
Put the Constitution in VADOC!
End cronyism and white male privilege in VADOC!
By Askari Danso
dansoaskari@gmail.com
facebook: End Mass Incarceration in Virginia