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‘Heavy Hand Of Law’ Isn’t Needed In VA Schools, Advocates Say

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Virginia schools still rely heavily on law enforcement to discipline students and years of efforts to lessen the practice could be halted with recent legislation, according to juvenile justice advocates and some state lawmakers. 

“Sometimes the heavy hand of the law is not what’s needed,” said James Fedderman, president of the Virginia Education Association. “What’s needed sometimes is a strong hand of encouragement and direction.”

Schools need to invest in “wraparound services” that prioritize help over punishments, Fedderman said. For example, the National Association of Education created the Community Schools Model to assist students who live in under-resourced homes and to offer help in the communities where these students live, he said. Under the model, schools offer or refer people to before- and after-school care, food and medical services.

Virginia was ranked highest in the nation for referring students to law enforcement, based on 2017-18 data analyzed by the Center for Public Integrity, an independent nonprofit news organization. Over 18,000 total Virginia students were referred to law enforcement from 2017-18 according to the DOE data. The analysis is sourced from the most recently available data provided by the U.S. Department of Education. Black students and students with disabilities disproportionately represented the students referred to law enforcement, according to the center’s analysis.

A Virginia Tech analysis of DOE data published in 2015 from the center found only about 2 out of 1,000 students were required to appear before a court intake officer. The referral rate can be difficult to interpret based on how schools report the data, according to the Tech study. 

Sen. Jennifer McClellan. Photo by Susan Shibut.

Lawmakers have examined discipline issues for seven years

Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe announced the Classrooms not Courtrooms initiative in 2015, in an effort to reform school discipline. 

The initiative was a push to reduce student referrals to law enforcement and decrease suspensions and expulsions. Multiple agencies were encouraged to address the practices statistics showed disproportionately impact Black students and students with disabilities, and to address the emphasis on subjective offenses like disorderly conduct.

Two years ago, students could be charged with disorderly conduct, a Class 1 misdemeanor, for causing inconveniences, annoyances or alarm. Disorderly conduct has drawn Black students into the criminal justice system more than students of other races in Virginia schools, according to a study from the Legal Aid Justice Center.

“A middle school student was charged with disorderly conduct for singing a rap song on a bus and a middle school student was charged for kicking a trash can on his way to the principal’s office,” said Sen. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond. “So, it almost seemed like behavior that someone found annoying, they charged them with disorderly conduct.”

Juvenile justice advocates also stated in the study that disorderly conduct laws find their strongest roots in the public order laws that fueled policing in the Jim Crow South — the racial caste system that kept African Americans as second class citizens, promoted anti-Black sentiments and maintained laws that enforced segregation. 

McClellan sponsored Senate Bill 3 with some bipartisan support in 2020. The bill eliminated charging K-12 students with disorderly conduct charges while on school property, buses or at school sponsored activities. 

Ashley Moore, attorney for the Youth Justice Program at The Virginia Legal Aid Justice Center, said lawmakers made some “great progress” to chip away at the issue.

“That disorderly conduct bill is actually a major step forward for children of color, and children with disabilities historically who were disproportionately harmed by the school discipline and policing,” Moore said.

Disorderly conduct can still go on the student’s school record. Over 1,000 students were reported for disorderly conduct in the 2020-21 school year, or 8% of all student incidents reported. There were over 16,000 students reported the year before, or 10% of all student incidents. The 2020-21 school years is the most recent data available, and the pandemic affected enrollment during both years. 

McClellan also introduced the 2020 bill loosening the requirement that student misdemeanors be reported to law enforcement, though felonies would still be reported. 

“What my bill in 2020 says was that felonies will be reported to law enforcement,” McClellan said. “All misdemeanors will still be reported to parents, but the principal will have discretion as to whether it’s something that should be referred to law enforcement or not.”

Advocates think recent legislative measures will undo years of effort. The governor signed two recent measures passed by lawmakers. 

Recent measures

Del. Scott Wyatt, R-Hanover, introduced House Bill 4. Sen. Thomas Norment, R- Williamsburg, introduced the identical bill, which will allow school principals to report some misdemeanor offenses of students. Norment said during a committee meeting that his bill was designed just to add better structure to McClellan’s 2020 bill on reporting school incidents. 

Not all lawmakers agreed. Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton, objected to Norment’s bill during its committee hearing.

“I care about the school-to-prison pipeline and what this does is open that back up again,” Locke said. “Those who are going to be reported are Black and Brown children, primarily.”

Norment celebrated the legislative victory in his constituent newsletter, writing that the bill “will require school principals to report misdemeanor offenses.” 

The bills still make reporting misdemeanors to law enforcement optional, but there are objections that how the language is now laid out will prompt more reporting. 

“I think when in doubt, and especially given the political climate, some principals, when in doubt, are going to report even if it’s a minor thing,” McClellan said. 

The General Assembly this year passed HB 873, introduced by Del. Karen Greenhalgh, R-Virginia Beach. The bill originally required school districts to place a school resource officer — law enforcement officers stationed in public schools — in every elementary and secondary school. If a district failed to comply with the legislation they would not receive state grant funding, according to the fiscal statement.

Lawmakers amended the bill and dropped the requirement to have a resource officer in every school. Instead, a designated law enforcement officer will be trained and serve as a liaison for the school administrator in schools without a resource officer.

Disparities with young students, Black students and students with disabilities

Black students accounted for 40% of referrals to law enforcement but make up less than a quarter of the Virginia student population, according to state and federal education department data for the 2017-18 school year.

Students with disabilities account for almost 30% of referrals to law enforcement, and make up 13% of the Virginia student population, according to state and federal education data. 

Hispanic students account for 11% of referrals to law enforcement, and make up 16% of the Virginia student population, according to state and federal education data. 

White students account for 39% of referrals to law enforcement, and they make up 49% of the Virginia student population, according to state and federal education data. 

Virginia middle school students, typically aged 11 to 14 years old, had some of the highest rates of referral in the nation, according to 2015 data analyzed by the Center for Public Integrity. In one case, 228 middle school students per 1,000 students were referred, according to the center. 

Black females represented approximately 11% of Virginia’s school population from 2016-19, but averaged 31% of the school-based disorderly conduct complaints, according to the Legal Aid Justice Center.

“I think part of it is implicit bias that – some people see Black children as more adult than they are, especially with Black girls,” McClellan said.

Black preschool children made up 43.3% of out-of-school suspensions and 18.2% of the school population in the 2017-18 school year, according to DOE data.

Addressing root causes

Advocates question how schools will address the root causes that led to disproportionately charging Black students and students with disabilities, even if lawmakers reduced the number of available charges. Lawmakers and reform advocates say new models are needed.

“Everything is not something that should be reported to the law as an infraction,” Fedderman said. 

Legislation passed in 2020 required local school boards to employ one full-time equivalent school counselor position per 325 students in K-12, effective with the 2021–22 school year. A 2021 law — sponsored by McClellan — called for a $49 million investment to increase student support staff, including nurses, social workers and mental health professionals. The law requires at least three staff for every 1,000 students. 

Schools need to include “counselors and psychologists, not resource officers” to help the youth and meet their needs, said Crystal Shin, a law professor and Director of Holistic Juvenile Defense Clinic at University of Virginia. 

Over 60% of schools surveyed by the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services reported they employed resource officers in 2019-20. Over 90% of middle schools and high schools have officers, DCJS reported. A small percentage are deployed in elementary schools. 

Law enforcement should be used to handle school security not discipline, according to McClellan. 

“I think the problem is that over time, resource officers have been used as counselors when they’re not trained to be counselors,” McClellan said. “They have been used as disciplinarians when they are not trained to understand brain development.” 

Freedom Constellation, “Dreaming of a World Without Youth Prisons,” an interactive mural created to address youth impacted by the prisons and the justice system. Photo courtesy of Tarazha Jenkins.

New models emerge

Some school districts in Virginia replaced resource officers with new safety models and programs. Charlottesville City Schools removed officers from schools in 2020, along with Albemarle County Public Schools. 

Black students made up 34.5% of the Charlottesville City Public Schools student population, but were referred to law enforcement nearly five times more frequently than their white counterparts, according to 2017 data from the Department of Education. Black students accounted for over 63% of referrals. 

CPS school resource officers were replaced with care and safety assistants, who have a similar role, but can not charge students with criminal offenses. The new officials are similar to Albemarle County Public Schools’ student safety coaches, which were hired in 2021.

The Albemarle school coaches are hired to provide a safe school environment and address student discipline. The coaches complete training in trauma-informed interactions, culturally responsive student interaction, mental health first aid, and crisis intervention and de-escalation. They also complete the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services school security officer certification.

“There has to be a school-wide commitment to dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline by not over-relying on suspension and expulsion, and rather, finally get to the root causes of the misbehavior,” Shin said.

Richmond City Public Schools began using the Community in Schools model in 2018 to address dropout rates. This includes monitoring attendance, behavior and course completion. The method was compiled through research of several years and consistently identified the highly predictive factors of dropping out and working to resolve the problem. RPS uses this program to focus on student success with the use of health and social services as well as youth and community development.

Black students made up 69% of the RPS student population, but were 89% of the referrals made to law enforcement, according to 2017 data. 

“I just think it’s important that we invest in kids and keep them in their schools and homes and in their communities,” Shin said.

Written by Safia Abdulahi and Tarazha Jenkins, Capital News Service. Top Photo: Freedom Constellation, “Dreaming of a World Without Youth Prisons,” an interactive mural created to address youth impacted by the prisons and the justice system. Photo courtesy of Tarazha Jenkins.

Panel Calls For ‘Paradigm Shift’ In Virginia School-to-Prison Pipeline

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University of Richmond’s School of Law held a six-hour symposium recently about the school-to-prison pipeline and ways students of color are kept at a disadvantage by zero tolerance policies and overpolicing of school grounds.

Schools have become places of trauma for students of color and help reinforce centuries of systemic racism by driving students into the criminal justice system, according to speakers at a recent University of Richmond symposium. 

The UR School of Law hosted a six-hour event via Zoom with four presentations, nine panelists, and over 200 attendees. The event featured UR law students, educators, social justice advocates, and activists. 

Suspension and expulsion are used disproportionately against Black students, other students of color, and those with disabilities, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Those punishments, along with arrests at school, often lead to students having a criminal record, according to the NAACP. The trend is known as the school-to-prison pipeline.

Julie McConnell, a UR law professor, said the origins of the school-to-prison pipeline is decades old. McConnell is the director of the university’s Children’s Defense Clinic, a program where law students represent indigent children in court.

School to Prison Pipeline Symposium panelists: Valerie L’Herrou (pictured top left), Allison Gilbreath (pictured top right), Doron Samuel-Siegel (pictured middle left), Kevin Woodson (pictured middle right), Cassie Powell (pictured bottom)

The school-to-prison pipeline has been an issue for many years, but it began to take hold during the “superpredator era” in the 1990s, following incidents such as the Columbine High School shooting, McConnell said. The superpredator theory centered around fear there was going to be a wave of violent kids threatening communities and schools. The theory popularized strict zero tolerance policies in schools.

“We would automatically suspend and expel kids who got in trouble in school for very minor offenses in many cases,” McConnell said. 

She referenced a 2015 incident in South Carolina when a school resource officer tossed a student across a classroom after she refused to surrender her cellphone.

Zero tolerance policies mandate predetermined punishments for certain offenses in schools, including the possession of a weapon, alcohol, or drugs, according to Shared Justice. Minor offenses often punishable by suspension or expulsion include disorderly conduct and insubordination.

McConnell and other speakers discussed how punitive policies often drive students into incarceration, as some offenses previously handled within schools are now dealt with by juvenile courts. McConnell said suspending minors results in higher rates of dropout, mental health problems, delinquency and substance abuse issues. 

Virginia lawmakers have worked to return punishment back to the schools. Sen. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond, sponsored two measures that passed the Virginia General Assembly last year. Students cannot be charged with disorderly conduct during school, on buses, or at school-sponsored events. School principals no longer have to report student acts that constitute a misdemeanor to law enforcement, such as an assault on school property, including on a bus or at a school-sponsored event.

Valerie Slater, executive director for the RISE for Youth Coalition, said there are disproportionate rates of suspension in Virginia. RISE for Youth is a campaign focused on dismantling the youth prison model.

Black youths from ages 15 to 17 made up 21 percent of the state’s overall population during the 2016-2017 school year, but they accounted for 57 percent of youths suspended statewide, according to a 2019 Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis and RISE for Youth report. Black teens also made up 49 percent of Virginia minors reported to juvenile courts by school authorities and 54 percent of minors detained in local jails, according to the same report.

The country’s history of racial bias and discriminatory practices have enabled the school-to-prison pipeline, speakers said.

One panel focused on Richmond’s history of segregated housing trends, such as the illegal practice of redlining. That is when creditworthy applicants are denied housing loans based on the applicants’ race or neighborhood where they lived. White students as a result were concentrated in wealthier suburban areas and Black students in underprivileged urban centers, said panelist Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, an associate professor of educational leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University.

“We can easily see the vestiges of this history just in the way that we assign students to schools,” said panelist Kathy Mendes, a research assistant at the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis. 

Mendes said children of color from under-resourced areas often attend schools with insufficient resources. 

Panelist Rachael Deane, legal director of Legal Aid Justice Center’s JustChildren program, said communities of color are “incredibly over-policed.” Community policing of these areas spills into schools, exposing children of color to constant surveillance by school resource officers, Deane said. 

Heavy policing in schools does not effectively prevent juvenile delinquency, speakers said. Zero tolerance policies fail to consider the mental well-being of disadvantaged children. Children with behavioral problems may experience external stressors such as high rates of neighborhood crime, domestic violence, and extreme poverty.

“If you never got into the issue of why a student was fighting, then you are doing nothing but delaying another fight after suspending them,” said Rodney Robinson, winner of the 2019 National Teacher of the Year award. Robinson is a 19-year teaching veteran of Richmond Public Schools.

Rodney Robinson, 2019 National Teacher of the Year. Photo via Council of Chief State School Officers

Schools need to replace school resource officers with mental health counselors, and teach students how to cope with trauma rather than driving them out of schools, Robinson said. 

Robinson said he witnessed the severity of the school-to-prison pipeline issue while teaching convicted juveniles at Virgie Binford Education Center. He said there is a need for reformative school programs. 

“To me it wasn’t about the school-to-prison pipeline, it’s a school-to-cemetery pipeline,” Robinson said. “Because if you’re failing these kids, and they’re not graduating, and they’re ending up in such horrible conditions, then eventually they will end up a victim of street violence.”

Educator bias against students of color needs to be eliminated, Robinson said. He said teachers should understand how their privilege may affect how they view students.

Valerie L’Herrou, a Virginia Poverty Law Center staff attorney, said she feels “hopeful” about recent racial justice protests. L’Herrou said the protests showed more people are open to reexamining their privilege and role in maintaining racist structures. 

Siegel-Hawley and other speakers proposed altering schools’ rezoning criteria in order to fully desegregate Richmond communities. 

Slater encouraged leaders to focus on the “roots” over the “symptoms” of the school-to-prison pipeline, and to create programs to permanently rehabilitate children and communities. 

Educational funding needs to be equally distributed throughout the commonwealth, Slater said. She also proposed expanding the definition of school resource officers to include other forms of support such as credible messengers. Credible messengers are individuals who have passed through the justice system, transformed their lives and provide preventative support to at-risk youth, according to the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services. 

“It is time for a paradigm shift in Virginia,” Slater said. “It is time to realize that a healthy, thriving community is the greatest deterrent to justice system involvement.”

Written by Christina Amano Dolan, Capital News Service. Top Photo: “Prison Bars Jail Cell” by JobsForFelonsHub, CC BY 2.0, via CNS. 

Prisoners Criticize VADOC Vaccine Rollout, Coronavirus Response

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Inmates in Virginia correctional centers have been approved to receive COVID vaccines, but a disorganized rollout has led to confusion and a lack of information about when vaccines will actually be coming.

Jillian Floyd hasn’t seen her son in a year. She is one of many Virginia prisoners experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic in Virginia’s correctional institutions, where thousands of incarcerated people have tested positive for the coronavirus since March, and more than 50 who died also tested positive for the disease.

Floyd, a prisoner at Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women in Fluvanna County, said she talks on the phone every day with her 10-year-old child. She said it is difficult for her son not to see her like he did before COVID-19.

“I used to have video visits with my son, and regular in-person visits too,” Floyd said in an email. “I could see how big he was getting.”

Now, without access to video calls and living in the red zone, an area designated for prisoners who test positive for COVID-19, Floyd said she can’t go outside and that she is expected to stay in her cell. She said she tested positive about two weeks ago. Prisoners in red zones may leave their cells to access phones, kiosks, showers, restrooms, nursing stations, food trays and laundry, according to Gregory Carter, a spokesperson for the Virginia Department of Corrections.

More than 11,800 prisoners and 4,700 employees have received a first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to Virginia Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security Brian Moran. That accounts for approximately half of the prison population. More than 470 prisoners and 210 employees have received a second dose, Moran said. 

VADOC Vaccinated Population. Data from Virginia Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security Brian Moran and Virginia Department of Corrections. Visualization by Andrew Ringle, CNS.

There are 629 active coronavirus cases as of Thursday among on-site incarcerated individuals, three active cases in hospitals, and 132 active cases among employees, according to VADOC. There have been more than 8,800 total positive COVID-19 cases, and more than 50 prisoners have died who tested positive for COVID-19.

Floyd, among others living in Virginia’s prisons, said she doesn’t think she could get the vaccine right now even if she wanted to.

“Some women have already gotten it, but they haven’t told us when we are going to get it,” Floyd said.

Staff are administering two-dose Moderna vaccines, VADOC said in a January news release. The department is offering email stamps, telephone credits, and commissary items that will become available in early March to prisoners who take the vaccine. 

“We want all staff and inmates who want the COVID-19 vaccine to get their inoculations as soon as possible,” Director Harold Clarke said in the release. “This effort is important to all in the VADOC community – our staff, inmates, and the community outside the walls, where our staff and inmates’ families live.”

Floyd said she was moved to the yellow zone, a quarantined area for those who may have been exposed to the virus, “in the middle of a freezing cold rain storm” after her previous roommate tested positive for COVID-19. Floyd said she initially tested negative but felt sick after moving to the yellow zone. She was worried she had the virus but wasn’t tested again for days. 

“When I finally got tested, I tested positive and was moved to the red zone,” Floyd said. “The nice thing about the red zone is they kind of let us pick who we wanted to live with, so I’m with someone I knew already.” 

Floyd said staff removed personal belongings from those moving into the red zone to quarantine the items, but two of her bags were lost in the move. She now sleeps without a pillow under a borrowed blanket and sheet, she said. The state issues linens to prisoners, and they may request replacements, Carter said.

Shannon Ellis, an attorney with the Legal Aid Justice Center, a statewide legal aid and advocacy organization, said Floyd’s experience is consistent with what she’s heard from prisoners across the commonwealth.

“I think it’s fair to say that there has been a lot of chaos within [VADOC] in handling the coronavirus,” Ellis said.

Ellis is a co-leading attorney in long-running litigation against Fluvanna Women’s Correctional Center, she said. Ellis’ duties include counseling incarcerated women living in the facility and evaluating healthcare standards following a settlement agreement under which VADOC would improve Fluvanna’s medical care.

Ellis said her legal partners conduct between 100 and 200 interviews with incarcerated women per year, and she receives around 60 emails and letters every week.

Overview of Fluvanna Correctional Center. Satellite photo from Google Maps.

Fluvanna Women’s Correctional Center has reported more than 630 COVID-19 cases among prisoners, ranking fifth in total positive inmate cases among the commonwealth’s correctional institutions, according to VADOC data. 

“What we’re hearing from our clients at Fluvanna, and what I’m hearing from other advocates that work with other facilities around the state, is that there’s a lot of vaccine hesitancy that’s being caused simply by poor education and counseling ahead of time with the vaccines,” Ellis said.

Women living in Fluvanna have “had to say yes or no” to the COVID-19 vaccine without the opportunity to consult a doctor or a nurse, despite having multiple serious health conditions and medication regimens, Ellis said.

“That’s a big problem,” Ellis said.

Prisoners are able to directly consult with a nurse or a doctor before receiving the vaccine, Carter said.

VADOC follows guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and communicates with local health districts regarding COVID-19 protocol and vaccine rollout, Moran said.

“We feel it’s going smoothly,” Moran said. “So if there are complaints, then you know, we’ll try to address those. But as of now, I’m being told it’s going fairly well in terms of the delivery of the vaccines.”

The Virginia Department of Health began offering COVID-19 vaccines to people living in state prisons and local jails in January, expanding eligibility for who can get the shot under phase 1b of the commonwealth’s distribution plan. For the public, the phase now includes frontline workers, people aged 65 or older and people living in correctional facilities, homeless shelters, and migrant camps. People aged 16 to 64 years old with an underlying condition were added to phase 1b, though the vaccines aren’t readily available to them yet.

Moran said those in law enforcement, including correctional officers, were a priority in the early days of phase 1b.

“As we went to the prisons to do the correctional officers, it was a matter of operational efficiency … to do all individuals at the facility,” Moran said. “And in recognizing the particularly vulnerable population of those who are in confined spaces, it was determined that we would include inmates for the vaccinations.”

Moran said his office is focused on having an aggressive vaccination and testing program to drive down positive cases in correctional institutions. However, the process is not running smoothly, Ellis said. 

“I think that Brian Moran has heard many complaints from advocates and from family members of incarcerated people across the state,” Ellis said. 

Some cells in the COVID-19 red zone at Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women don’t have call buttons, Ellis said. This prevents women inside the cell from being able to quickly communicate if they are in a crisis.

“For example, if they’re having difficulty breathing,” Ellis said. “The only way to get attention is by shouting and basically banging on your closed locked cell door to try to get the attention of a guard, which, if you’re in a medical crisis, you may not even be able to do.”

Carter said cell intercom systems are not required by the American Correctional Association, the accrediting body for VADOC. Some facilities have cell intercom systems and some do not.

“Security and medical staff make regular rounds to check the inmates’ status and address specific needs,” Carter said in an email.

Carter said department staff provide mental health resources and services to prisoners. He said services vary by location but generally include periodic newsletters from mental health staff; a toll-free number to ask questions, and the opportunity to share concerns and receive information from mental health staff.

“We also provide psychiatric services as needed, and other programs and services as needed,” Carter said. 

VADOC COVID-19 Vaccine First Doses. Data from Virginia Department of Corrections. Visualization by Andrew Ringle, CNS.

The department uses several methods to educate prisoners on the vaccine. This includes recorded interviews with medical and public safety authorities that are shared with staff and prisoners, Carter said.

“Our health services staff has done tremendous work these last few weeks getting shots into arms,” VADOC Director of Communications Lisa Kinney said in an email.

Regarding VADOC’s incentive packs for those who receive the vaccine, Floyd said it doesn’t change her mind about the shot.

“I think I’m going to get it, but I’m not going to base my decision about whether to take it on free stuff,” Floyd said. “If it gets people to take it, that’s great.”

Nicholes Callahan, a prisoner at River North Correctional Center in Grayson County, said he recalls when VADOC offered similar incentives to encourage getting the flu shot in the fall. He said it did not play a part in his decision to get the shot.

“I feel like the incentive pack is a bribe,” Callahan said in an email.

Callahan said he’s unsure if he wants to get vaccinated. He is concerned about the vaccine’s possible side effects.

“Some other inmates have gotten it this week, so now I am going to see if they have any immediate side effects,” Callahan said. 

Callahan said he was moved into quarantine after his cellmate tested positive for the virus. Prior to COVID-19, he said he would spend the entire day out of his cell, with in-person visits and two weekly trips to the gym. Now, he is out of his cell for about three hours a day “if we are lucky,” he said.

“I feel they have done the best they can in River North,” Callahan said. “It would have been nice to not have lost so much rec time in them doing it.”

David Bomber, a prisoner of Nottoway Correctional Center, said he lives in a cell that is about 8 feet tall and 6 feet wide with a sink and a toilet. The cell is designed for one person but he has a cellmate, Bomber said.

“We basically live in a toilet,” Bomber said.

VADOC’s average daily population has decreased from 29,136 in March 2020 to 23,811 in January, Carter said. He did not respond directly to whether one-man cells are used to house more than one prisoner.

Bomber tested positive for COVID-19 in December with about 200 other prisoners, he said. Bomber and roughly 40 other men moved into quarantine in an area that previously served as a restrictive housing unit, Bomber said. These areas are intended to separate prisoners from the general population.

“The conditions were punitive at best,” Bomber said. 

Bomber said he received temperature checks twice daily and only suffered from a headache. He’s now out of quarantine and on modified lockdown, but doesn’t know if he’s eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

“They’re not putting out no kind of memos; there’s no exchange of information,” Bomber said.

Bomber said he hasn’t heard of incentives for getting the vaccine, but he remembers when he received bags of peanuts and Doritos for getting the flu shot several months ago. 

As Bomber spoke on the phone, someone in the background announced with a megaphone that prisoners could sign up for the COVID-19 vaccine.

“I think if they’re going to offer it, I’m going to go ahead and take it,” Bomber said.

Written by Andrew Ringle, Capital News Service. Top Photo: Fluvanna Correctional Center For Women, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Psychological Cost of RCJC Quarantine

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In the Richmond City Jail, COVID safety protocols look a lot like torture.

If anyone doubts how little the City of Richmond values the emotional well-being of incarcerated people, they should look no further than the Richmond City Jail’s harsh (and unacknowledged) quarantine measures. Over the course of five months, from June through October, Theresa Young spent a total of two and a half months locked for 23 hours per day inside a small cell. She was not put in isolation because she had done something wrong. (In fact, she says, staff recognized her as cooperative and dependable, asking her to clean as a volunteer.) Nor was her confinement an anomaly or a violation of jail policy. Young’s torturous months of medical isolation were simply incarceration-as-usual in RCJC during the era of COVID-19.

Even more than some other jails in the area, RCJC has been aggressive in using solitary isolation to combat the coronavirus. Though numerous lawyers, activists, and incarcerated people confirm that RCJC’s stated “two-week quarantine” policy means two weeks of emotionally trying and legally inconvenient isolation, the Richmond City Sheriff’s Office (RCSO), which runs the Richmond jail, has failed to publicly acknowledge the details of its quarantine procedures. This failure — perhaps a success in the minds of some — has effectively obscured from judges, prosecutors, medical officials and the public the profound callousness that underlies the jail’s response to COVID-19. 

“It’s hard for us as advocates,” Young’s lawyer, Lauren Whitley said. “Our clients are telling us things, and we have no reason not to believe our clients, and then nobody will verify it. It’s this weird form of gaslighting.”

The psychological risk of isolation

Over the course of her life, Theresa Young has been diagnosed with both paranoid schizophrenia and bipolar depression. She suffers from claustrophobia and has a history of childhood trauma. Not surprisingly, she described her time in medical isolation as a painful, retraumatizing experience. “I’m one of those that can’t be confined in one spot. I even kind of flip out when I’m in an elevator,” Young said. “This has been the roughest time being locked up.” 

Young first entered solitary confinement in June after a court appearance in Henrico. Unlike some other local and regional jails, RCJC requires that all incarcerated people returning from court spend roughly two weeks in a quarantine pod. According to Young, she has been in solitary medical isolation for 15 days on three occasions, twice after returning from court; and for a full month on another. All of these confinement periods meet the UN criteria for torture. 

“Just being in isolation is a horrible experience,” said Yohance Whitaker, an organizer with the Legal Aid Justice Center, who works with incarcerated individuals. “It’s taxing psychologically and emotionally and physically.”

During her periods of solitary confinement, Young struggled to keep in contact with her four-year-old daughter. “It’s not like being in isolation you can be on the phone whenever you want,” Young said. “When you’re on the fifteen days, you only come out for an hour, or half an hour. You have to choose if you want to be on the phone, shower, [or] do whatever on the time out.” 

Court appearances mean a lose-lose decision

RCJC requires all defendants who choose to appear in person to undergo a two-week lockdown after returning to the jail, despite the fact that they appear dressed from head-to-toe in Tyvek coveralls. As a result, Young and many like her must weigh the trying, potentially traumatizing experience of solitary against the probable legal cost of appearing before the judge on a video monitor, dressed in jail clothes. As one might expect, studies show that judges tend to be less sympathetic to defendants who attend trial remotely.  

“There’s something to be said for looking someone in the face when you’re going to lock them up or sentence them to imprisonment,” said Richmond’s Head Public Defender, Tracy Paner. “When they are not present in the courtroom, when they’re just a fuzzy image on a screen, the sentencing is harsher; the bond decisions are less favorable.” 

In October Paner told RVA Mag that, fearing isolation, none of her clients have chosen to appear in court since the policy began. “Folks who have mental health issues, pre-existing, suffer particular harm when they’re placed in isolation,” she said. “So I have folks who are like, ‘Ms. Paner, I can’t, I just can’t do it.’ I encourage them but I respect their wishes. I don’t want to hurt my clients.”

Photo via CGL Companies

Defense lawyers handicapped by lack of transparency 

Although RCJC’s use of isolation in quarantine is common knowledge among defense lawyers, activists, and people incarcerated in RCJC, the Sheriff’s Department has yet to acknowledge the jail’s widespread use of medical solitary confinement. An RCJC spokesperson ignored RVA Mag’s question and follow-up email regarding the use of solitary in medical quarantine, and both Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney (CA) Colette McEachin and Danny Avula, Director of the Richmond City Health District — the top officials at two public entities that work closely with the jail to coordinate a pandemic response — told RVA Mag they were unaware that RCJC’s medical quarantine involved long periods of solitary confinement. 

“I think one of the challenges of this work is that nobody has a sightline into what’s happening there,” Avula told RVA Mag. 

For her part, CA McEachin was skeptical of claims that individuals in quarantine were kept in solitary. “I don’t believe people are actually locked in a cell for 23 hours,” she said. “Obviously, I don’t want anybody punished or treated in an unhealthy, non-judicial way so, yes, it would be concerning if I thought that people were literally being locked in a cell with no opportunity to stretch or walk around for 23 hours a day. If there is no other way to do two things at the same time — which is to keep people in the jail until the court releases them, and keep those people who are in the jail in a socially distant, hygienic manner — and this is the best the sheriff can come up with, that may be the best that she can come up with. But I literally don’t know.”

Young’s lawyer, Lauren Whitley, said what most frustrates her is the misinformation or lack of information about what is happening inside the jail. Although RCJC is currently reporting zero COVID cases, after a large outbreak in September, Sheriff Irving has not been transparent about whether widespread testing has continued inside the jail. The result, according to Whitley, is that prosecutors and judges assume the jail is a safe environment, when that may not actually be true.

“You go in front of a judge, you want to advocate for your client credibly, and effectively, but we can’t do that,” Whitley said, “because there’s no information, or just blanket statements that seem inconsistent with our client’s experiences.”

Top Photo via CGL Companies

New Virginia Laws Seek to Close ‘School-to-Prison Pipeline’

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When Virginia’s schoolchildren return to in-person schooling after the pandemic, they’ll return to a school system in which criminal punishments for unruly in-school behavior have largely been taken off the table.

The near future of in-person schooling is uncertain due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but Virginia students will return to a system where several penalties for misbehavior have been taken off the table. 

Two new laws seek to stop criminal punishments in elementary, middle, and secondary schools. Sen. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond, sponsored two measures that passed the Virginia General Assembly earlier this year. The bills went into effect in July but have not yet been widely implemented due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Senate Bill 3 prevents students from being charged with disorderly conduct during school, on buses, or at school-sponsored events. SB 729 removes a requirement that school principals report student acts that constitute a misdemeanor to law enforcement. These are acts that may be considered misdemeanors, such as assault on school property, including on a bus or at a school-sponsored event. 

McClellan’s bills are a victory, said Valerie Slater, executive director of RISE For Youth, a group that seeks to end youth incarceration in Virginia. 

“It gives the control back to principals in their own schools about what actions have to be taken further,” versus which actions can be handled within the school, Slater said.

Virginia state Senator Jennifer McClellan. Photo by Susan Shibut.

Suspension and expulsion are used disproportionately against Black students, other students of color, and those with disabilities, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Those punishments, along with arrests at school, often lead to students having a criminal record, according to the NAACP. The trend is known as the school-to-prison pipeline.

McClellan said she was compelled to introduce these bills after looking at data released by the Center for Public Integrity in 2015 and seeing that Virginia led the nation in nearly three times the rate of referral of students to law enforcement. She then worked with the Legal Aid Justice Center to find trends in what kind of behaviors were being punished and whether there were discrepancies involving which students were being charged. 

“When we started sort of digging into some of the cases that they had had, one of the biggest things kids were referred for was disorderly conduct,” McClellan said. “It was things like a kid on a bus in Henrico County was charged for singing a rap song and a kid in Lynchburg was sent to the principal’s office and kicked this trash can on the way out of class.”

McClellan was the co-patron of bills in 2016 which addressed these issues, including a failed bill which would prevent students from being found guilty of disorderly conduct if the action occurred on school property, school bus, or at a school-sponsored activity.

Lawmakers also passed McClellan’s measure that relieved school resource officers from the obligation to enforce school board rules and codes of student conduct as a condition of their employment. Now that the Virginia General Assembly has a Democratic majority, House Democrats felt that they could pass other legislation to curb the school-to-prison pipeline, according to McClellan.

“The thing that happened in between is we had started making progress on the discipline side, with things like suspensions and expulsions,” McClellan said. “And once you saw we could make progress on that, that gave us the confidence to try again with a new Democratic majority.”

Photo by Bima Rahmanda on Unsplash

A statewide analysis by Virginia Commonwealth University Capital News Service found that Norfolk City Public Schools in the Tidewater district had the most out-of-school suspensions in the state over the past five school years. This includes short-term and long-term suspensions. The data is from the Virginia Department of Education. A student is not allowed to attend school for up to 10 days during a short-term suspension, according to Virginia law. Long-term suspensions last 11 to 45 school days. Virginia students suspended from school are more likely to fail academically, drop out of school, and become involved in the justice system, said a 2018 Legal Aid Justice Center report. 

Norfolk’s school district issued 21,223 out-of-school suspensions in the past five years. Norfolk school officials did not respond to a request for a statement by the time of publication. Richmond City Public Schools was the second-highest district with the most out-of-school suspensions (19,768). Virginia Beach, Newport News, and Fairfax County public schools were also in the top five. The majority of students in Norfolk, Richmond, and Newport News public schools are Black, according to VDOE 2020 fall enrollment data. Almost half of students in Virginia Beach are white and about a quarter are Black. Nearly 40 percent of students in Fairfax County Public Schools are white and almost 30 percent are Hispanic.

Black students face out-of-school suspension at higher rates at a higher rate than white students in schools throughout the Central Virginia region. Even in districts such as Henrico and New Kent, counties that have a majority white student population, often Black students were issued suspensions at a higher rate. Black students in Henrico faced out-of-school suspension almost five times the rate of white students in the 2015-2016 school year. Such racial disparity was presented to the Henrico County School Board as far back as 2012, in a published report analyzing the disproportionate suspension rate. 

Aside from incidents involving weapons, Slater said that instances of misbehavior in school should not be handled by law enforcement.

 “We should not be so quick to involve children in the justice system,” Slater said. “We know that after that first contact, the likelihood that there will be continued engagement exponentially goes up. Once a child has been engaged with the juvenile justice system, they’re more likely to be involved with the adult justice system.”

Slater praised McClellan’s legislation for taking away schools’ ability to charge students with disorderly conduct, saying that the criteria for being charged with that crime is too vague. 

“It basically says that ‘you have caused a disruption.’” Slater said. “Is wiggling in my seat causing a disruption? Is asking to go to the restroom, repeatedly, causing a disruption? Is clicking my pen a disruption? It’s so vague that it’s become a catchall for whatever a particular officer wants to say a student has done.”

David Coogan, a Virginia Commonwealth University English professor and author of the book Writing Our Way Out, teaches a writing workshop at the Richmond City Justice Center He said he has worked closely with incarcerated people whose criminal records stemmed from childhood. 

“Most broadly, it starts in the structure of society, before you even get to school,” Coogan said. 

Coogan said that he sees a pattern in the people he works with at the jail. Children who grow up with few resources and who experience trauma and violence in the school setting later develop addictions or become incarcerated — often both. 

“We all do stupid things as kids, as teenagers,” Coogan said. “When you’re Black and traumatized and living in poverty, the stupid thing you do, to fight back at a school resource officer, is going to land you in a juvenile detention center, and it’s not fair.”

“Handcuffs with black background” by JobsForFelonsHub is licensed with CC BY 2.0.

Though Coogan says McClellan’s bills are steps in the right direction, he believes that more still needs to be done. 

“If you think about all the money and time spent on school resource officers — who are like cops — we need to stop thinking about having cops in school,” Coogan said. “What if we had five times as many guidance counselors — people with training to intervene? What if we had five times as many programs to keep kids engaged after school?”

McClellan agreed with Coogan, and said it starts with how adults in school treat kids. She pointed to cases in which kids with autism or other disabilities are treated unfairly or disciplined by adults who have no idea how to interact with them. 

“Everyone in the school building that interacts with kids, but especially school resource officers and school board members who ultimately make decisions about the code of conduct and discipline, need to have basic training on child brain development,” McClellan said. 

Written by Brandon Shillingford and Anya Sczerzenie, Capital News Service. Top Image: “Prison Bars Jail Cell” by JobsForFelonsHub is licensed with CC BY 2.0.

In Local and Regional Jails, a Patchwork Response to COVID-19

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State and local efforts to keep COVID out of jails have been hobbled by poor oversight and unambitious policy, advocates say.

At the time the Governor announced his early release plan, Letiesha Gordon’s son, Dayon Jones, was serving the final months of a non-violent felony sentence in Riverside Regional Jail, near Petersburg. As soon as the plan took effect, Gordon began a crusade to secure her son’s release. But when she requested an “Offender Appeal for COVID-19 Early Release” form for her son, she says the counselor she spoke with at Riverside did not even know such a form existed. 

In the months that followed, Gordon called the jail repeatedly; she emailed Mayor Levar Stoney, Governor Ralph Northam, and a senator; she sent several letters. “I know that they thought I was crazy but I was just a mother,” said Gordon, who is the founder of the non-profit A Better Day Than Yesterday, which works with incarcerated people after their release. “I didn’t even contact them on behalf of my organization because it was not about business at that point. It was about my son’s safety.”

After Initial Drop, Decarceration Stalls

This past spring the populations of local and regional jails decreased significantly. From March to April, the total population of Virginia’s jails decreased by 17 percent, and the number of people committed for misdemeanors dropped by 67 percent. However this decline was not enough to keep incarcerated people safe from COVID-19, advocates say, and in recent months the rate of releases has stalled. In October, RCJC’s incarcerated population exceeded 700 for the first time since March, rising from a low of 633 in July. Over half of those incarcerated in RCJC are pre-trial detainees, as of October, meaning they are being held prior to conviction.

“It is irresponsible to say that we’re trying to do the best for the people, but we’re placing them in positions where they could potentially die versus getting their day in court,” said Sheba Williams, who directs the non-profit Nolef Turns and serves on Mayor Stoney’s Task Force on Reimagining Public Safety.

On March 19th, as COVID spread through Virginia communities, Governor Northam declined to use his pardon power to release prisoners. Instead, his office issued guidance to local criminal justice officials suggesting they use sentence modifications, issue summonses when possible, and consider incarceration alternatives. Then a month later, in an April special session, the Virginia legislature gave the Department of Corrections (DOC) the power to release inmates with a record of good behavior and less than a year on their sentence: a category that included around 2,000 of the state’s roughly 30,000 prisoners. These statewide release policies impact local and regional jails because people with felony sentences of under three years, including Leteisha Gordon’s son, are usually held under contract in jails. 

Roughly half of those deemed eligible for release by DOC have been released to date.

Lack of Oversight 

Part of the problem, political consultant Jessica Pishko says, is that state and local officials have very little authority over sheriffs, who run local jails and serve on regional jail boards. Beyond the 8th Amendment’s prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishment” and an antiquated state law designed to prevent extra-judicial hangings, Sheriffs have almost full discretion over how, or if, they address the risk of COVID in their jails, according to Pishko. (Danville’s sheriff, for example, only made masks mandatory for jail employees after reports of a 72-person outbreak at his jail last month.)

Sheriffs also appear to have the final say on what COVID-related information is revealed to the public. According to Dr. Danny Avula, Director of the Richmond City Health District (RCHD), RCHD is not allowed to release information about COVID rates in Henrico jails or RCJC without permission from those jails’ sheriffs. This has concerning implications. If the Department of Health must have a sheriffs’ goodwill to understand and address health risks inside of local jails, health officials can hardly serve as effective watchdogs in cases of disease outbreak. “There’s little accountability, little oversight, there is zero transparency when we’re talking about the public,” said Sheba Williams, describing the COVID situation in Virginia prisons and jails.

According to Yohance Whitaker of Legal Aid Justice Center, even with significantly reduced jail populations, it is difficult to maintain social distancing in facilities like RCJC. Many local and regional jails have enforced weeks-long periods of isolation as a result. “Prisons and jails and detention facilities are known amplifiers of infectious disease,” Whitaker said. “Measures to keep the illness from spreading like social distancing [and] washing your hands on a regular basis are nearly impossible in such confining spaces.”

A number of inmates interviewed by RVA Mag also questioned the efficacy of RCJC’s lockdown measuring, claiming poor sanitation in common spaces allowed for transmission of the virus even without extended person-to-person contact. According to RCJC inmate Emanuel Crawford, his pod is cleaned once a day by incarcerated people who are not given COVID-informed sanitation guidelines. 

“You might have a lazy inmate who just say look, I’m’a clean this and it’ll be alright – and then you just jeopardized everybody,” said Crawford. “In a situation like this, you should be making it mandatory that certain things be sanitized properly. Not only at night, but in the afternoon. Give us the equipment to do this two or three times a day.”

Jail deputies frequently interact with people experiencing medical or mental health crises but, beyond a high-school education, there are no training requirements for Sheriff’s deputies in the State of Virginia. How, or whether, employees are trained is left up to each sheriff’s discretion. This leads to a dynamic, Pishko says, where deputies with minimal training and no social-work experience are given power over vulnerable, often mentally unwell individuals. “I sometimes compare jails to a hospital,” said Pishko. “Picture a hospital where none of the staff want to be there. You have a bunch of sick people, but you have nurses who are like, ‘Whatever.’ ‘I don’t feel good.’ ‘Whatever.’ It gets scary, people die.”

Riverside Regional Jail. Photo via Facebook.

Administrative Harm 

Our legal system has long been stacked against the accused, especially Black and brown people and poor people. But, along with new dangers, the pandemic has also brought new legal and administrative barriers in Richmond-area jails and courts, limiting individuals’ access to counsel and gumming up an already slow legal process, according to Richmond’s head public defender, Tracy Paner. 

In response to the pandemic, the State Supreme Court has suspended defendant’s statutory right to a “speedy trial,” eliminating the five-month maximum waiting period between trials for people facing state charges. (“Everybody awaiting trial is in a holding pattern,” Paner said in October. “There’s no way for the defense to require it to go forward.”) Meanwhile, federal jury trials were suspended back in April. In Richmond they resumed, at a much-reduced rate, in October and November. This means that, if you were incarcerated in RCJC and received a federal charge in April, you could still be behind bars awaiting your day in court. 

During this period, your access to confidential legal counsel might also have been significantly limited. Since “contact visiting” ended in March, Paner says, lawyers generally have two options for speaking with their clients: through a glass wall or by video. But if a client is in two-week quarantine, either because they are COVID-positive or have recently arrived, the jail requires lawyers to use confidential video-conferencing. This presents two problems, according to Paner. First, the video is often poor quality, and sometimes the tablets inmates use do not work at all. Second, the confidential video-conferencing may not actually be confidential.

“I have seen it, other attorneys have seen it,” said Paner. “We are exiting from the visiting area and we can hear the speaker on the deputy’s computer. We can hear another attorney’s conversation with the client. We have had deputies who think they are helping us listening because there’s a time limit on the video meetings.”

Paner said that, though the public defender’s office has been “very proactive” in seeing bond motions for people with pre-existing conditions, it has not had much success. “The judges are saying things like, well, I know somebody who had it and it wasn’t that bad,” she said, referring to COVID. Richmond Circuit Court Judge Bradley B. Cavedo, who blocked the removal of Confederate statues, has referred to the coronavirus in court as “the wuhan flu.”

Cash Bail Is Alive and Well

In 2018, former Commonwealth’s Attorney (CA) Michael Herring announced that prosecutors in Richmond would no longer seek cash bail for defendants awaiting trial. Though the CA’s office also adheres to this policy under Colette McEachin’s leadership, Paner says prosecutors’ actions still perpetuate the cash bail system.

“The attorneys from the commonwealth do not say the word ‘I object’ to releasing someone in the courtroom for low-level felonies,” Paner said. “But what they do is stand there with records and say, ‘In 1992, he was charged with robbery but it was dismissed.’ That means — wasn’t him, didn’t happen, couldn’t prove it. So they would stand there and bring up things, from 20 years ago or more, that weren’t convictions, in an attempt to sway the judges. The letter of the policy might be followed, but certainly not the spirit.”

“Our policy hasn’t changed,” said Commonwealth’s Attorney Colette McEachin when asked about cash bail. “We still don’t seek cash bail in most situations. Generally, the only time we do is if the defendant is a threat to himself or others, or is a flight risk, which are the two bond determinations that are supposed to be made by statute. Ultimately, anything we recommend is up to the judge, and sometimes the judge agrees with us, and sometimes he doesn’t.”

Whether the fault lies with judges and magistrates, prosecutors, or some combination of both, Richmond’s cash bail continues apace. In early September, The Richmond Community Bail Fund identified 98 people in four local facilities incarcerated because they could not afford bail. (These numbers, acquired by raking through inmate databases and entering Freedom of Information Act Requests, are not comprehensive.) The combined cost of the bonds for these individuals was about $450,000, according to Luca Suede, co-director of the Richmond Community Bail Fund. 

“That’s about a hundred people that judges across different counties have already determined could be released,” Suede said. “Now, obviously everybody should be released. I don’t give a fuck how a judge feels. But in the State’s rhetoric — who has the kind of power to do these releases — there is already criteria that’s being deployed.”

Northam’s guidance to Virginia jails stops short of recommending bail be waived or discontinued, however. Instead, it asks jails to “consider ways to decrease the number of low-risk offenders being held without bail.” 

Protesters at Richmond City Justice Center, June 2020. Photo by Kegham Hovsepian, via Facebook.

“They can get over it together”

In May, Leteisha Gordon’s fears for her son’s safety were confirmed when Riverside Regional experienced COVID outbreak: 36 people at Riverside tested positive, including Gordon’s son. (Fortunately, Dayon Jones did not end up experiencing any serious symptoms of COVID-19.) When Gordon learned her son had tested positive and was on lockdown with another COVID-positive inmate, she called the jail to express her concerns. A sergeant, she says, told her: “They can get over it together.”

“This is somebody that’s helpless,” said Gordon. “He’s in jail. He can’t get to any kind of emergency assistance to help himself. And you don’t have his mother there, so for them to tell me that it was really heartbreaking. You have no idea.”

Finally in June, weeks after her son had tested positive for COVID-19, his counselor called him into his office with Gordon on the phone. He gave her son the form to sign and said it would take three weeks to be processed. After weeks emailing, phone calling and letter writing, Gordon had finally succeeded. A form her son should have had access to months ago — a form that, she insists, would have secured his release as a non-violent offender with asthma — had finally materialized. By that time though, it hardly mattered: Gordon’s son was scheduled to be released on July 13, three days later. 

All her effort didn’t save her son a single day in jail.

Top Photo via Riverside Regional Jail