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Prison Reform Advocates Call for Change to Solitary Confinement in Virginia 

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David Smith doesn’t cut the figure of a man who’s been to prison, let alone one who spent more than a year in solitary confinement.

Dressed in a button-up white shirt, with tan khakis and a blue blazer, the impression Smith gives is more of a white collar worker. This impression isn’t out of place in the homely lower level of the Bethlehem Lutheran Church, which served as the setting for a forum on Virginia solitary confinement on October 27. For Smith, this misconception is one of many aspects of a long-standing issue that prison-reform advocates want the state to address. 

“When I meet with a Senator or Delegate, and I say ‘Yeah, hey, my name’s David, I spent sixteen-and-a-half months in solitary,’ the jaws drop,” Smith said. “And all of a sudden, it’s no longer that guy from the bad side — it’s ‘This could be my son, this could be my brother right here.’ So that begins to change the conversation.” 

For Virginia, one of the most recent shifts in that conversation came in May with a 67-page report from the ACLU of Virginia. The report detailed the extent of “the negative impacts of solitary confinement as practiced in Virginia, the systemic difficulties prisoners have in escaping it and returning to the general population, and the State’s failure to exclude individuals with serious mental health problems from solitary confinement.” 

The report was preceded by a letter to Governor Ralph Northam calling on him to sign an executive order that would limit the practice in Virginia. This request was joined by more, urging for state action from multiple advocacy and religious groups in the weeks following the report’s publication. These came largely through the Interfaith Action for Human Rights (IAHR), a coalition whose member organizations reside in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, and for which Smith serves as a representative. 

As detailed by Kimberly Jenkins-Snodgrass, Vice-chairperson of the IAHR, the lack of forward movement on this matter from state officials leaves many prisoners subject to a system of incarceration that includes “putting inmates in a cell that’s basically the size of a parking space.” 

“When an individual is put into solitary confinement, they are participating in an illegal court,” Snodgrass said. “You have security guards with a high-school education looking at inmates, giving them time — in some instances, more time than a judge gives them in a courtroom. And this is the issue.” 

On October 27, Smith moderated a panel of speakers that included former inmate, author, and community advocate Tommy Cox; Jenkins-Snodgrass; and Bill Farrar and Mateo Gasparotto of ACLU-VA. Jenkins-Snodgrass was open about effects that “the United States’ best-kept secret” had for her son, Kevin D. Snodgrass Jr., his health, and a loving family. 

“When we say ‘stop solitary confinement,’ we’re not saying open the floodgates and let everybody out of jail,” Snodgrass said. “We’re just saying to treat them like human beings while they’re in there.” 

The details of the years Snodgrass says her son spent in solitary confinement are a far cry from the statements that the Virginia Department of Corrections (VADOC) has given in the past. They also contrast heavily with VADOC’s recent attempts to better the treatment of its prisoners. These include a 21-month initiative started in early 2017 with the Vera Institute of Justice, focused on reducing the use of what officials call “restrictive housing,” among other efforts. 

“When it comes to state prisons, Virginia stands out for operating a corrections system without the use of solitary confinement,” VADOC wrote in a press release posted the same day the ACLU report documenting widespread use of the practice was released. VADOC’s press release noted the praise it’s received from Governor Ralph Northam and the U.S. Department of Justice. “The Virginia Department of Corrections serves as a national model for the limited use of restrictive housing.” 

These statements and measures constitute some of the few pieces of public information available about the experiences of Virginia’s prisoners, something the panel repeatedly emphasized during the discussion. 

“This is a completely unregulated practice,” said Farrar, who serves as ACLU-VA’s communications director. “There’s nothing in the Virginia Code that even says what solitary confinement is, and that allows the Department of Corrections to lie about it.” 

“They say they don’t do it. They do.” 

In the absence of more accessible research or data on the state of Virginia’s prisons and their treatment of offenders, groups like ACLU-VA & IAHR and individuals like Tommy Cox are more than willing to fill in the gaps. 

“The people that came to the cell were nasty. They talk to you any kind of way, you took one shower once a week, and it was living hell,” said Cox, who described the physical degradation he suffered as the result of the conditions in solitary across two incarcerations, totaling almost 40 years. Cox’s time included one confinement which lasted three consecutive years during a stint in a New Mexico prison as a Virginia offender, which made him the very first inmate in the Commonwealth to be shipped out of state. 

Other testimonies and criticisms ranged from the withholding of food by guards to the mental effects solitary confinement has on inmates and the lack of accountability present in the VADOC and other agencies. Even the measures taken by the VADOC to create easier pathways out of “restrictive housing,” namely the Administrative Step-Down Program instituted in 2012, were sharply criticized for resulting in harsher treatments for Hispanic and African-American inmates. 

“Their treatment is completely arbitrary, there’s no sense of cohesion, and there’s no sense of fairness or justice,” said Gasparotto, who has spoken with several inmates at the Wallens Ridge and Red Onion State Prisons. The latter was the focus of a hunger strike by prisoners in 2012 as well as an HBO documentary released in February. It is part of an investigation into prison abuse by Attorney General Claude Walker of the Virgin Islands. 

“Ultimately, their goal is institutional control,” said Gasparotto, who works in ACLU-VA’s Legal and Public Policy departments, of the VADOC. “It’s not about rehabilitation, it’s not about building you back as a human being, it’s about you serving your time, keeping quiet, and getting out the door. And when you step out of line… solitary confinement is used.” 

The solutions the panel recommended to help in solving this problem proved to be the same method that defined much of the discussion — speaking up against solitary confinement, and championing the humanity of those incarcerated. 

Audience members were asked to call their representatives. Lobbying by the ACLU-VA has already led to the introduction of a “reporting bill” into the Virginia House of Delegates ahead of the 2019 General Assembly by Patrick Hope, D-Arlington, that would, according to Farrar, “help us understand who is being held in solitary confinement, why, for what reason, for how long,” and lead to further legislative action. Efforts are underway to introduce similar a similar bill in the Senate, in addition to continued advocacy work focused on the Northam Administration. 

Delegate Hope was one of several people the speakers mentioned as “interested” in tackling the issue of solitary confinement — including legislators in both the Democrat and Republican parties — who “are waiting to see who will move first,” said Snodgrass. 

“Not everybody in the state government is turning a blind eye to this. There are advocates within the system,” Smith said. 

One of those advocates, Peter Wells, who ran as a Libertarian against A. Donald McEachin and Ryan McAdams in Virginia’s 4th District, was present to share his thoughts. Touting the prominence of criminal justice reform as part of his platform, Wells impressed on the audience the potential attention this issue would receive if his campaign made a strong impact in the midterms. 

While McEachin eventually claimed a sizable victory in last Tuesday’s midterms elections, with Wells pulling in around 1% of the overall vote, the then-Senatorial candidate was optimistic he would have the chance to bring the topic into a wider spotlight. 

“I’ve already had one offer to sit down after the election and talk about some issues,” Wells said. “So I’m going to get some logging time with whoever wins just by coming out of this.”

As for Smith, he and other advocates are already looking ahead to next year’s local elections to establish connections with politicians sympathetic to their goals, regardless of party affiliation. 

“Because you need to have that across the board,” Smith said. “It’s not a left issue, it’s not a right issue. This is a human rights issue.” 

Photos by George Copeland

The Power Of The Simplest Of Actions

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This weekend, I attended Art 180, Performing Statistics, and RISE for Youth’s joint event, the Juvenile Justice Parade. It was organized by black and brown youth, all of whom have faced personal discrimination and many of whom have been personally sent through the school-to-prison-pipeline.

Chants spanned from “Fund education, not incarceration, invest in us, invest in us,” to as simple as, “Prisons don’t work!” As we marched, we each were holding at least one piece of artwork from formerly incarcerated youth, organized by Art 180, and we took their art to the streets with a moving march, literally and figuratively.

We started at a community center and ended at a park, marching through backstreets and backstreets only. I felt weird about being guided by the police car and chanting these things in the first person, but I had to set my awkwardness aside to focus on the bigger picture– the mobilization and the movement.

At the beginning and end we heard speeches (one by my friend Stephanie), songs, raps, poetry, and freestyle dances, all of which went to support a bigger cause. In the park there was an open mic after all of the scheduled speakers had gone, and I shared my poem, “Do Nothing,” with a feeling of hope.

It was absolutely essential that people would show up at this event, to participate, to engage, to learn. Despite my obvious suburban-whiteness, I was one of those people, and it mattered. Everyone who came made a difference at the event in one way or another.

Based on the title of this post, you may think my point will be that showing up is all you have to do, or that it is the simplest of actions, but neither are correct. To truly make a difference, you not only have to show up, you have to show up again, and again, and again, for whatever cause matters to you.

This seems like a lot, but it really isn’t. The simplest of actions, I will argue, is even simpler than attending an event. What can you do that will help you show up, get involved, and most importantly, spread your voice? Talking, listening, discussing. Its as simple as that. No matter who you are or what you do, you cannot change the world alone. But with a group, you can.

It recently came to my attention that we all, introverts and extroverts alike, need groups to thrive in activism, even if they’re just three other people. So, a whole year ago, I made an after-school club called TCLU (or the ACLU of Tuckahoe Middle School) and went through the bi-weekly craziness for a year (kudos to Ms McNew and Hayes). In the summer, it continued as the Teen Advocacy Group of Richmond, TAGRVA. It was a rocky rollercoaster, and not much of one at that, but eventually, through simply showing up again and again, it stabilized.

We have five people in total, and it doesn’t seem like much, but it is. My point is anyone can go anywhere if they continue to show up for and with other people. “Anyone” in that sentence is the word I had forgotten about for so long, but then we had an idea.

We decided we could expand TAG, so anyone could make their own. All they’d need is people, a time-frame, and a venue. Ours are: friends who live nearby, Wednesday evenings, and my house. It’s that simple, yet that important, to talk to other people with other backgrounds and ideas. If you are a teenager or know one who may be interested in forming a group, you can learn more at www.tagrva.com.

My point here is that even something as simple as frequently brainstorming actions with friends, or attending an event, really matters — your first step is to show up.

‘Legalize Virginia’ to Elevate the Discussion Around Marijuana Reform

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Update: Legalize Virginia has been rescheduled to next week, starting Sept. 18.

Last week the Board of Pharmacy Ad Hoc Committee met to determine which companies will be the first to be able to open medical cannabis dispensaries in Virginia.

Yes, they met behind closed doors. And no, the current law is not enough. But that doesn’t change the fact that what is happening right now is a huge, huge step for marijuana in Virginia.

Within the next year, you will be able to bring a form signed by your doctor to a regulated business in the Commonwealth, and there, they will give you an oil derived from a marijuana plant grown on site. It’s just the beginning for those very lucky five business license holders, who you can expect to fiercely try to attract as many patient customers through their doors as possible.

When you picture the folks waiting in line at those dispensaries, I urge you to think of the hundreds of thousands of people in Virginia with genuine illnesses and conditions, who genuinely will find solace and healing from medical marijuana.

Think of my friend Creed Leffler, who has Cerebral Palsy. He calls marijuana the “miracle plant” for the way it helps his muscles relax. “There is no such thing as recreational marijuana,” Leffler said. “It’s all medicinal.”

Creed Leffler

The list of the ailments that can be treated with marijuana is longer than your arm. Check out this chart. Chronic pain, epilepsy, PTSD, ALS, cancer, diabetes — the list goes on and on. The stories are heartbreaking.

Melanie Seifert Davis’s daughter Maddie has been fighting metastatic brain cancer since she was five. “Because of the use of multiple cannabis products, Madison lives a life free of pain, seizures or any limiting deficits, and full of the joys of childhood all children deserve,” said Davis, an ER nurse. “My degree in Biology and my years in the trenches of modern medicine have enabled me to make treatment decisions for my family that rely on evidence-based best practices and emerging research findings, including the multitude of medical benefits that can be derived from marijuana.”

Melanie Seifert Davis’ with her daughter Maddie

I expect marijuana law reform in Virginia to move relatively quickly from here. Expect the businesses granted licenses to be a part of the army of voices banging the drum for even more cannabis law reform in the Commonwealth. The organization I am a part of, Virginia NORML, will be pushing for a decriminalization bill this upcoming General Assembly.

There is hope. There is a plan. And there’s also going to be a party.

Virginia NORML is working with Norfolk’s O’Connor Brewing Company to push the conversation forward with Legalize Virginia Festival, a week-long series of workshops, panels, events, and activities all diving into a different aspect of reform.

Last Monday, the group held “Marijuana Saved My Life: Cannabis as Medicine in Virginia,” a forum on the new medical cannabis law, who it will help, and how to talk to your doctor about it, with Virginia NORML Executive Director Jenn Michelle Pedini leading the panel. Lisa Bohn, a Purple Heart veteran who uses cannabis to help her cope with PTSD, along with Davis and Leffler, will also speak on the panel. On Tuesday, Sept. 18, the festival will hold the “Equity and Expungement: Talking Marijuana and Race in Virginia” panel, which will look at the disparity in arrest rates among white Virginians and Virginians of color, the expungement of records of those with marijuana offenses, and more. Norfolk NAACP President Joe Dillard, Bill Farrar, director of public policy and communications for ACLU of Virginia, and expungement and restoration of rights attorney Wanda Cooper will serve on the panel. Thursday’s discussion will dive into what cities in Virginia can do about cannabis law reform.

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All forums run from 7 to 8 pm at O’Connor Brewing Company and followed by more informal workshops. Tonight, there will be a workshop on growing hops and hemp, on Tuesday will be a workshop on entering the cannabis industry, and on Thursday there will be a workshop on how to be a kick-ass marijuana activist.

Friday, Sept. 21 is the festival atmosphere. O’Connor is releasing a special beer they’re brewing with hemp seeds, called “YES, NORFOLK CAN(yon),” a pale ale modeled after their Norfolk Canyon brew. There will be a ton of pop-ups as part of NOMARAMA’s Munchie Market, a killer list of independent vendors, DJs, a pop-up yoga class, and a retro arcade. The festival runs from 3 pm to midnight.

The fact that O’Connor Brewing Co., a major name in Virginia craft beer, is hosting this series of events is, in-and-of-itself, a testament to the new day for marijuana in Virginia.

This issue is out of the shadows. Soon, we’ll be walking into legal dispensaries in the light of day. And what a beautiful day that will be.

You can check out the entire schedule for Legalize Virginia here.

A Magnificent Monument to Satan Unveiled Outside the Capitol Building in Arkansas

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An image made in the likeness of the dark lord himself, aka, Lucifer: The Fallen, The Morning Star, The Great Deceiver,  Old Nick, Mayor of Hell, Apollyon, briefly appeared outside the Capitol building in Little Rock, Arkansas, yesterday, and it was magnificent.

The “Satan Went Down to Arkansas” rally, held by the Temple of Satan (bless them), showcased a giant statue of Baphomet – a deity linked to the Knights Templar in the early 14th Century – which they hope to install permanently to live side by side with a controversial statue of the Ten Commandments that currently adorns the grounds of the state Capitol.

The Great Unveiling. Photo by Nick Fish

The statue of Baphomet proposed by the Satanists has been in response to Arkansas State Senator Jason Rapert’s successful campaign to place a sculpture of the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the Arkansas State Capitol. In justifying his decision to support the placement of religious iconography on public property, he said in a Facebook post, “Due process was followed to the letter of the law when the Secretary of State and the Capitol Arts and Grounds Commission held a series of open and public meetings to gather input on the placing of the Ten Commandments monument.”

In the same post made yesterday, he also refers to the groups of Satanists and their magnificent statue of Baphomet as “extremists” and called them “profane.” For their part, the Satanists have framed it as a matter of free speech, not one that places any specific value on “satanic” theologies. The co-founder of Satanic Arkansas, who was at the rally yesterday, told US News and World Report that, “if you’re going to have one religious monument up then it should be open to others, and if you don’t agree with that then let’s just not have any at all.” In his opening remarks, Temple of Satan spokesman and co-founder Lucien Greaves thanked Rapert, claiming that without his push for the Christian monument there would be no legal precedent for them to place their own statue. Addressing the crowd, Greaves said, “Baphomet is not an attack on the Ten Commandments. It is an insistence on equality under the law.”

Anti-Satan Protestors. Photo by Lucien Greaves

The issue will now be decided in the courts in what is likely to be a First Amendment case that will have serious ramifications on how the separation of church and state is decided. Earlier this year the Satanist tried to join a case the ACLU already brought against the state of Arkansas, but for reasons unclear the ACLU asked the courts to “bar the intervention.”

Regardless of legal outcomes, the Satanists seem to be winning in the court of public decision. As one commentator on Rapert’s Facebook page put it, “The profane is pretty awesome though. Hail Satan.”

Hail Satan.

Despite High Costs & Unequal Enforcement, Decriminalization Remains Out Of Reach In VA

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While most of Virginia may be enjoying some good, old-fashioned reefer madness today, at least 22,000 people will be left out this year, paying fines and sitting in jail as decriminalization efforts have failed to take effect. Most of them are Black.

Sorry to bring down your high.

“[Decriminalization] is an urgent criminal justice and racial justice issue in Virginia that lawmakers should be taking more seriously,” said Bill Farrar, director of strategic communications at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

According to a study conducted by ACLU, 8.2 million arrests are made each year for marijuana possession, while people of color are 3.72 more likely to be arrested for possession. Farrar stated that in certain areas of Virginia, they are eight times as likely to be arrested. Those arrested are most often carrying less than an ounce of marijuana, yet have exorbitant fees and often spend time in jail. Currently, being caught with less than half an ounce is a misdemeanor, but anything over a half ounce is considered a felony.

“The commonwealth spends nearly three quarters of a billion dollars each year enforcing a law that dramatically and disparately entangles people of color in the criminal justice system, while neglecting to fund programs to help people with mental illness or directly address the growing opioid problem,” Farrar said.

This past General Assembly session, two senators presented bills with decriminalization efforts and both failed at the Courts of Justice committee level, meaning they never reached the floor for a general vote.

“It’s important to note that African-Americans only make up 20 percent of Virginia’s population yet are arrested three times more than whites for marijuana possession when use is equal between races,” said Jenn Michelle Pedini, executive director at Virginia NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) who assisted Senator Adam Ebbin in writing Senate Bill 111, which would decriminalize marijuana and reduce charges to a simple $50 fine on the first offense with subsequent fine increase to $100 and $250 for second and third offenses.

“You have to work with intent to suss out 20 percent of your population and target them three times more,” Pedini said. “That’s not unique, we see it play out throughout the country, and it’s not to say that law enforcement is inherently biased against African-Americans, or explicitly biased, more likely it is them exercising their implicit bias. This is how systemic oppression plays out in America.”

In addition to this systemic oppression, both Farrar and Pedini cited gross spending habits by the Virginia state government to continue arrests for marijuana possession. According to a study by the Drug Policy Alliance, Virginia spends $70 million annually on marijuana possession arrests and prosecutions alone.

“That is more than the Commonwealth has budgeted for the current fiscal year for statewide capital improvements to transportation and natural resources combined, and 14 percent more than the amount of general funds budgeted to support the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services – which deals with mental health and substance abuse treatment, among other things – for the entire 2016-18 biennium,” Senator Ebbin said in a statement to the General Assembly in February.

In 2016, many activists and politicians worked to find money for processing thousands of backlogged rape test kits and struggled to find it. “We didn’t have a few thousand dollars to see who had raped someone, then had to waste time and money arguing about how to find a couple million dollars to process those backlogged kits,” Pedini said. “Meanwhile, pot possession, which has little or no public safety impact, we have $70 million for.”

A portion of this spending is for programs like the Virginia Alcohol Safety Action Program (VASAP), a court-ordered addiction clinic. Twenty-one percent of those ordered to VASAP are there for marijuana possession, equal to the percent sent in for opioid and heroin.

“If we stopped this waste of taxpayer dollars and instead decriminalized, removed that six months to one year rehab requirement, you would immediately double access to treatment for opioid and heroin addiction,” Pedini said.

Senator Tommy Norment promised during his campaign to put forward a decriminalization bill as well, but later reduced it to an expungement bill. Both Farrar and Pedini were disappointed in this change, and Senator Ebbin openly objected to it on the Assembly floor.

“The members of these subcommittees are primarily prosecutors, and they’re not interested in passing legislation that limits or reduces their prosecutorial discretion,” Pedini said.

In a 2018 poll released by Virginia Commonwealth University, eight out of ten Virginians said they would prefer reducing the marijuana possession misdemeanor conviction to a fine and are in favor of reform.

“Virginians want us to decriminalize marijuana possession, not to create a new fish trap that doesn’t do anything to address the racial disparities in our current criminal justice system nor address the high costs of continuing to criminalize simple possession,” Senator Ebbin said.

Pedini and Farrar are hopeful that Senator Ebbin’s bill will pass in 2020 after the 2019 elections.

“We’re ruining people’s lives with this… We don’t need some tiny half step to pretend like that’s reform,” Pedini said. “We need real reform, and that’s decriminalization. This criminal charge is going to follow people for the rest of their lives, can lead to them losing their children, being evicted, losing their job, losing their scholarships.”

Image by Vivienne Lee

ACLU Reporting that Phone Calls are Falsely Telling People Their Polling Places have Changed

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The Virginia Pilot is reporting that the ACLU is claiming that some person(s) or organization(s) have been calling voters and telling them their polling location has changed. Director of strategic communications Bill Farrar has said that there has been a multitude of reports supporting this, but that it was hard to determine whether or not they were all original reports or just re-shares on social media.

Farrar has also said that these reports have emerged from Prince William County and that the phone numbers making the calls have originated in Gloucester County, Virginia and Adairsville, Georgia.

In a Tweet from a few hours ago, the ACLU shared a message that claimed these calls were specifically targeting Democratic voters and that “we have notified voter protection and they were already aware of the situation.”

Voters can find out where their official polling place is here.