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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

Cruel And Unusual Punishment

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Hoping to protect at-risk youth from coronavirus, youth advocacy organization RISE For Youth is calling for the release of juveniles currently incarcerated in Virginia for non-violent offenses.

During the COVID-19 pandemic the focus for many of us is on the health and financial fortunes of ourselves and our loved ones. But one portion of the population that is being overlooked by many is that of juveniles incarcerated in Virginia. As they find themselves trapped within facilities where the novel coronavirus puts populations “at highest risk for infection,” they face a possible death sentence. Their current situation certainly fits the bill for “cruel and unusual punishment,” and this is why non-partisan youth advocacy organization RISE For Youth are calling for Virginia to release juveniles incarcerated for non-violent offenses within the Commonwealth.

As of April 13, there have been over 1.8 million COVID-19 cases worldwide, and over 115,000 deaths, including 5274 cases and 141 deaths here in Virginia. And despite early understandings of the virus’s effects, recent events have revealed that COVID-19 does not discriminate by age. In several instances, hospitalizations have been required for individuals under 20 with no pre-existing conditions.

RISE for Youth, an nonpartisan campaign committed to dismantling the youth prison model by promoting the creation of community-based alternatives to youth incarceration, are currently advocating for the release of incarcerated juveniles, as well as an end to new admissions to juvenile detention and correction facilities, for the duration of the crisis.

While the Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) has implemented COVID-19 safety measures, Valerie Slater, RISE for Youth’s Executive Director, thinks that Virginia DJJ’s plans are not ambitious enough to keep youth safe.

“We need to make sure that they have immediate and consistent access to health care,” said Slater. “We need to start releasing young people so that the numbers are not so high, and are not at risk of becoming infected or infecting others, simply because we’re afraid to let young people out. We can’t operate based on fear.”

At the beginning of this month, the DJJ announced that multiple employees at the Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center had tested positive for COVID-19. Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center presently holds 205 juveniles; carriers of COVID-19 are likely to infect two to three others on average. The fact that carriers have a prolonged asymptomatic stage makes it difficult to pin down exactly who may be a carrier.

Despite quarantine measures implemented for those employees, on April 6, DJJ announced that an inmate at the facility also tested positive for COVID-19. The inmate had not been in contact with any of the staff members who’d previously tested positive.

All units were placed on medical isolation after the inmate tested positive; DJJ stated that those who shared the inmate’s unit will be reassigned and the unit itself will be “fully sanitized.” These efforts, along with daily screenings and the requirement that all inmates leaving their units wear masks, were put in place in order to prevent further spread. However, in light of the fact that none of the staff members that tested positive were in contact with the youth who tested positive, Slater believes this will not be the only inmate who has contracted COVID-19.

“Taking a young person’s temperature and asking them a series of questions to determine whether or not they have been exhibiting the symptoms — that’s fine, but it’s not sufficient, especially when you can reduce the numbers,” Slater said.

RISE For Youth Executive Director Valerie Slater. Photo via Facebook

The DJJ first implemented social distancing measures on March 13, including suspension of all visitations, an end to any intermingling of inmates from different housing units, and all large group activities being put on hold indefinitely. These measures are still in effect, and visitation has since been replaced by video conferences and phone calls; families have also been encouraged to send more letters.

However, family members on the outside are aware of the ongoing psychological toll these measures can take on inmates, especially in addition to that of being in a correctional facility in the first place.

“I don’t think like the safest place to get quarantined,” said Sherrod Jenkins, 18, whose brother is currently incarcerated in a Richmond City jail. “They gotta sit in that room and I think it’s gonna mess with their heads.”

RISE for Youth haven’t been in contact with anyone within the DJJ, but they have spoken to judges and prosecutors about their hopes to release the nonviolent offenders.

“We’ve got five commonwealth attorneys who have already signed on, and we’re still working to get more,” said Slater. “There are several legislators who have also signed on to our list of recommendations. So this is something that our leaders in both the legislature and the judicial system are in agreement.”

Releasing these youth is not as simple as opening the doors and letting them out. Many have medical conditions that require ongoing monitoring, as well as educational needs that must be met. Further complicating the situation is the fact that some of the inmates were incarcerated for violent acts. However, RISE For Youth has foreseen these issues and has a working model to use as an example: Albemarle County Jail, where 113 of the 400-plus adults incarcerated at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak have been released. Of the 113 released so far, only one has re-offended since, and it was for a violation less severe than what he was originally incarcerated for.

“They had the judges on board, they had the prosecutors on board, and the defense attorneys — everyone working in concert to make sure that room was in place for those that needed it,” stated Slater.

RISE For Youth are not advocating for the release of all inmates currently incarcerated in Virginia; they believe those who are still a threat to their community should be given appropriate care within correctional facilities. However, they do have a list of circumstances under which they believe inmates should be released.

“Number one, making sure that we’re looking at the kids that are not posing a threat,” said Slater. “Number two, if need be, that they are released on electronic monitoring. And number three, we need to be considering how we make sure that families are supported.”

New York’s Rikers Island was one of the first in the nation to implement a mass release of around 400 inmates with technical, noncriminal parole violations after an inmate was diagnosed with COVID-19. However, over two weeks after the initial announcement, hundreds remain in limbo, and in the meantime multiple inmates have died of coronavirus.

Coronavirus has also infiltrated adult prisons in Virginia. Currently, 65 staff members and prisoners in Virginia’s prison system have tested positive for COVID-19. Central Virginia Correctional Unit #13 and Virginia Correctional Center for Women both have had small-scale outbreaks, with multiple inmates and some staff testing positive. Five of these offenders are currently hospitalized for their symptoms.

As much as Slater is dissatisfied with the DJJ, she wants to work with them and the rest of the community to minimize the damage COVID-19 will do to Virginia’s youth.

“This isn’t a job for the DJJ to do alone,” said Slater. “This is something that should require the help of every agency in every organization that supports and provides services to young people, to ensure that they are supported appropriately.”

Top Image: Bill Dee, CIYP, via RISE For Youth/Medium

ACLU Urges Release Of Some Nonviolent Offenders To Combat Coronavirus Spread

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Once COVID-19 hits the corrections system, it spreads quickly. The ACLU wants Virginia to do whatever they can to prevent this from happening — even if it means early release for some currently incarcerated.

As the coronavirus hits correctional facilities, the ACLU is calling for the release of some nonviolent inmates to help prevent outbreaks and keep residents and staff safe. 

The Virginia ACLU submitted a letter to the governor, along with the executive guidance document. The document focuses on reducing the overall populations in local and state custodial facilities, including reducing the intake of people. The organization called for an immediate release of all people identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as at-risk for COVID-19, such as older people and people with underlying health conditions, whose sentences would end in the next two years. The ACLU also wants the governor to begin a process of immediate release for anyone whose sentence would end in the next year, anyway.

There are a limited number of eligible parole cases that can be reviewed for early release, according to Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security Brian J. Moran, who said at a press conference Monday that an expeditious review is “still ongoing.”

“There are a number of challenges because by the code we have no parole in the commonwealth of Virginia,” Moran said. “It is limited to geriatric release and limited to those who are sentenced before 1996.” 

Moran said the parole board has withdrawn warrants on technical violations for a number of individuals and has expedited release of parole for those already paroled, in effort to eliminate interaction between the parole supervisor and the individual.

 Three inmates at the Virginia Correctional Center for Women in Goochland have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, according to the Virginia Department of Corrections. One inmate at the Central Virginia Correctional Unit 13 for women has tested positive for COVID-19, according to VADOC. Four VADOC employees and one contractor have also tested positive for the virus. As of April 3, the Virginia Department of Health reports 2,012 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 46 deaths. From March 27 to April 3, 1,552 cases were confirmed, or 77 percent of all cases since the state’s first case was reported on March 7. 

 “We need strong leadership that will move us more quickly toward a criminal legal system that is safe for everyone,” ACLU Executive Director Claire Gastañaga said in a press release. “To do this, we must jettison the ‘tough on crime’ hyperbole and recognize this pandemic as an opportunity to rethink the way we choose to use the criminal legal system to address issues of poverty, income inequality and addiction.”

Governor Ralph Northam (CNS photo by Lia Tabackman)

Two weeks ago, the governor announced measures to battle the coronavirus outbreak among residents and staff, such as modifying sentences, diverting offenders from serving jail terms, utilizing home electronic monitoring, and reducing low-risk individuals being held without bail. 

Elliott B. Bender, founder of Bender Law Group in Richmond and president of the Virginia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said that the governor’s measures are great in theory “for the safety of all of us.” However, he is concerned that they are not being implemented consistently and completely. Consistency and getting all branches of government on the same page are important in this process, according to Bender.

Moran said state code mandates that the victims involved need to be notified of a prisoner’s potential early release. 

“And you have to provide victims time to weigh in on the decision,” Moran said. “And that is an ongoing process as well.”

To combat the virus, visitation and volunteer activities remain closed at correctional facilities, according to the VADOC. People entering VADOC correctional facilities will be screened using thermometers. In addition, the department ordered 112,000 additional bars of soap. Virginia Correctional Enterprises, which employs incarcerated people to produce a variety of goods, is now manufacturing about 30,000 sneeze and cough guard masks per day for inmates and staff, according to VADOC. All employees must assess their risk on a daily basis prior to work. Also, there are measures taken to ensure safety once a person leaves a VADOC facility. All inmates leaving a correctional facility are screened for COVID-19 on the day of their release, according to  VADOC.

Written by Rodney Robinson, Capital News Service. Top Photo: Satellite view of Virginia Correctional Center for Women, via InmateAid

Data Shows That Virginia Denies Vast Majority of Parole Requests

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In November 2019, Jen Soering and Elizabeth Haysom received parole after serving 30 years in state prison for the sensational murder of Haysom’s parents in 1985.

Soering, a German national who had been given two life sentences, and Haysom, a Canadian who had been sentenced to 90 years, were turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation.

“The Parole Board has determined that releasing Jens Soering and Elizabeth Haysom to their ICE deportation detainers is appropriate because of their youth at the time of the offenses, their institutional adjustment, and the length of their incarceration,” Adrianne Bennett, who chairs the board, said in a statement at the time.

Haysom and Soering at the time of their trial. Image via WSLS/YouTube

Soering and Haysom each had been denied parole several times before being granted parole in late November. Their release from the prison system may have given the impression that Virginia has become more lenient in granting parole.

And that’s true: The percentage of parole requests approved jumped from around 3 percent in 2014-16 to 13.5 percent in 2017, according to a Capital News Service analysis of Parole Board decisions.

But parole is still pretty rare in Virginia. Between January and October of this year, the Parole Board granted parole 5 percent of the time. Of more than 17,000 cases considered over the past six years, about 6 percent received parole.

The system’s critics say Virginia should grant parole more often.

“Considering that parole is a conditional release of an individual, this rate should be much higher,” said Jwa’n Moore, director of Taking Back Our Youth. “I believe that parole was created to prove that incarcerated people can learn from the mistakes that they have committed.”

Taking Back Our Youth is a nonprofit organization dedicated to “breaking the cycle” of juvenile incarceration.

Almost 30,000 people are serving time in prison in the commonwealth. In addition, 1,922 people were on parole as of October, according to the Virginia Department of Corrections.

The newest member of the Parole Board, Kemba Smith Pradia, was appointed in September. At age 24, Pradia was sentenced to 24 years in prison for her participation in her boyfriend’s illegal drug activities. After serving a quarter of her sentence, she was granted clemency by President Bill Clinton in 2000.

Following her incarceration, Pradia earned college degrees in social work and law and started a foundation that raises awareness about drug abuse, violence, rehabilitation of ex-offenders and other social issues.

“She would probably bring compassion and empathy to the board,” Moore said. “People who have a personal history with the system have a unique vantage point that those who have historically served on the parole board haven’t had.”

Virginia abolished parole in 1995, but inmates still can get parole if they were sentenced before the law went into effect; were sentenced under the Youthful Offenders Act; or are eligible for geriatric parole.

Inmates can apply for geriatric parole if they are older than 60 and have served at least 10 years, or are older than 65 and have served at least five years.

Since 2014, of the approximately 2,900 applications for geriatric parole, 147 — about 5 percent — have been granted, the data indicated.

Of the 151 inmates older than 80 who have applied for parole, six have been granted. The offenders were denied for various reasons, including the seriousness of the offense and risk to the community. The Parole Board’s decisions generally do not list the crimes that the applicant was convicted of.

The oldest inmate to apply for parole was 92 years old; he was denied.

Of the 182 inmates under 21 who have applied for parole, four have been granted.

According to the data, the youngest inmates to apply for parole were 16 years old: One applied in 2014 and the other in 2018. Both were rejected.

“Minors are still learning and making mistakes that they have to learn from,” Moore said. “They should be held accountable for their actions, but parole gives our youth another chance at a positive lifestyle.”

In 1995, the Virginia General Assembly abolished parole on grounds that doing so would lower the frequency of reincarceration after release. State and federal officials say Virginia has the lowest rate of reincarceration nationwide: 23 percent of Virginia inmates are reincarcerated within three years of their release from prison.

“Virginia’s latest recidivism numbers are the result of a lot of hard work on the part of both the Department of Corrections and the incarcerated offenders,” Gov. Ralph Northam stated in a press release.

In 2000, in Fishback v. Commonwealth, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that juries must be told that parole has been abolished. Between 1995 and that court decision, 471 prisoners were sentenced without their juries knowing that they would not be eligible for parole, according to the Governor’s Commission on Parole Review.

In 2015, the commission recommended that those inmates receive an opportunity for sentence modification. The panel said juries might have had a misconception that offenders could receive a shorter sentence through parole.

“This misconception likely had real consequences, since juries typically hand down harsher sentences than judges,” the commission stated.

During the General Assembly’s 2019 session, legislators filed two bills to allow parole for those convicted before the Fishback ruling. One bill died in a House committee, and the other was defeated by one vote in a Senate committee.

A similar bill has been submitted for the legislative session that begins Jan. 8. In addition, Sen. John Edwards, D-Roanoke, has proposed reinstating parole, and Sen. Dave Marsden, D-Fairfax, has filed legislation to study that idea. Other legislators have suggested expanding the possibility of parole for inmates who committed crimes as juveniles and have served at least 25 years in prison.

The parole process begins with an interview in which an examiner compiles a summary and recommendation for the Parole Board. The board then evaluates the case based on a number of factors, including compatibility with public safety and the offender’s criminal history and conduct in prison.

Since 2014, the parole board has provided more than 2,000 unique reasons to explain its decisions not to grant parole. The most common reasons include:

  • “Serious nature and circumstances” of the offender’s crime.
  • “Release at this time would diminish seriousness of crime.”
  • “The Board considers you to be a risk to the community.”
  • Extensive criminal record
  • History of violence

About the data in this report

The Virginia Parole Board posts PDFs listing the decisions it makes each month. When the board denies parole, the PDF also lists one or more reasons.

To begin this investigation, we converted 70 PDFs — all of the Parole Board’s decisions from January 2014 through October 2019 — into an Excel file. The exported data, which included both decisions and reasons, totaled almost 76,000 rows.

From the Excel file, we extracted the Parole Board’s decisions in parole cases only (regular parole, geriatric and board review cases). There was a total of 17,240 cases.

We then used Excel’s pivot table feature and Microsoft Access to calculate the percentage of parole requests had been granted or denied each year.

Written By Emma Gauthier and Anna Madigan, Capital News Service. Top Photo by Emiliano Bar on Unsplash.

Fighting The System With Carole Leonard of Prison Reform Movement

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*This article originally appeared in RVA Mag #35, on the streets now at all your favorite spots.

Earlier this year, administrators at Nottoway Correctional Facility issued a ban on the use of tampons and menstrual cups during prison visitations. Criminal justice activist Carole Leonard, founder of the Prison Reform Movement, broke the story on Twitter — and sparked an immediate backlash, propelling the story into the national spotlight virtually overnight.

The story was picked up by local and national news outlets, and the ACLU of Virginia issued a statement calling for reversal of the ban. In the next 24 hours, the Virginia Department of Corrections suspended the rule indefinitely.

That day was a huge win for Nottoway Correctional Facility prisoners and their families. For Carole Leonard, it was just another day in the fight for criminal justice reform.

Leonard established Prison Reform Movement (PRM) in 2003, as an online group meant to help the families of prisoners with housing and medical issues. Since then, PRM has become a vital source of information for ongoing prison and criminal justice issues.

When did you start Prison Reform Movement?

I started in 2003, I came out to Tennessee from California to look out for my father. I got involved in some Yahoo groups, and I noticed that families of loved ones were on the internet asking for help with various issues. Housing issues, medical issues — medical issues mostly. So I just dove in head first, and created a group called Inmate Advocates.

Yahoo started changing things around, so we moved over to Facebook and it really took off. I was amazed at the people I met on Facebook who were also doing the same thing, trying to draw attention to criminal justice and prison issues. And from there, we went to Twitter.

I’ve got roughly 85,000 followers, and they’re varied. Some will champion one cause more than another. Social media does have a reach, and it’s one of the best tools I’ve found to share with others what’s really going on behind the wall.

Could you tell me a little about why you’re so dedicated to prison reform?

I’m a former felon, and my son is also currently in jail awaiting trial… It’s been over 20 years for me. I didn’t go to prison, but I spent a lot of time in county jail and I did four years felony probation. So it’s a deeply personal cause.

What is the goal of Prison Reform Movement?

We just want to educate people. We want to help the loved ones of prisoners learn how to advocate for those who are doing time. A lot of people don’t know how to advocate for their loved ones, and some of them are very fearful of advocating for them due to retaliation. Unfortunately, that is the reality — sometimes when we speak out on behalf of a prisoner, the prisoner pays the consequences. And sometimes if the prisoner speaks out, they pay the consequences as well.

Are you approaching your work from a particular academic perspective, or a particular political framework?

Oh boy. It’s funny that you say that, because today I got called a political hack on twitter. I’m still kind of licking my wounds at that one. I try to take no clear-cut political stance, although I do tend to side with the left.

I’m a Criminal Justice major currently, and I’m quite pleased to see a lot of the current issues being discussed — but we still have a long way to go. I think we need to address trauma-based reforms and restorative justice, and actually apply these principles. That would really change the system.

The U.S. prison system is a point of intersection for a lot of other issues: Capitalism, racial justice, and environmental justice, to name a few. Does your work address the intersectionality of injustices in the prison industrial complex?

We’re all about intersectionality. There are so many widespread issues that fall under the umbrella of criminal justice and criminal justice reform. You mentioned capitalism: We have these huge corporations that are literally breaking the bank on the backs of our prisoners, and most importantly, the prisoners’ families. We have huge corporations taking advantage of slave labor.

I mean, if you’re behind bars and you’re doing work that you’re being paid a dollar an hour for, that’s still considered slave labor… because you don’t have a choice whether you get to do it or not. If you don’t work, you get punished.

And racism in the system: All one needs to do is walk into a visiting room, and it’s pretty self-explanatory. We incarcerate more blacks than any other race. Black and latino people get harsher sentences versus you and I.

You’re constantly posting current, up-to-date information about prison policies and prison injustices all over the country. It seems like you’re often ahead of the news curve on these stories, and sometimes you’re even the one breaking these stories. How do you get this information? Do you do investigative work?

I do. I’m in constant contact with families of prisoners. I’m also in contact with prisoners themselves. Those are my best sources of information, because they’re in the trenches. And I try to stay abreast of what’s happening, because I have a lot of people following me — and I feel like they rely on me to give the facts, what’s really going on.

Is it difficult to get in contact with prisoners to obtain information about what’s going on inside prisons? Prisons seem like they’ve gone out of their way to make this a difficult process…

They do, and this is why cell phones are such a big issue. We do have email now — a lot of prisons have email. Not just federal, but even county and state prisons have email. It can be a little pricey. I think it’s 47 cents per stamp through JPay, and one stamp equals one email.

Sometimes, it is difficult because the prisons will say “we’re taking away your phone calls, we’re taking away your email, or we’re taking away your visits.” And then we don’t get information in a timely manner. So my position on the cell phones, regardless of whether you want to hear it or not, I see the need for the cell phones in prisons. It keeps us informed and it keeps our loved ones safe, because the DOC is not likely to retaliate as harshly when they know that people are on the outside looking in.

Can you talk a little about getting information from the prisons themselves? What’s that process like?

The process is extremely difficult. We are usually stonewalled. If you can get through to someone directly, it’s pretty much amazing. Most of the time, like if you want to get any medical information on a loved one, you have to have a signed medical release by the prisoner on file. And even then, they’re not very transparent. Sometimes even with a signed medical release, they refuse to give us information. That’s happened numerous times. So trying to get information from any department within the DOC, or within the prison, can be very difficult. We’re kind of looked at as an extension of the prisoner, and oftentimes we’re made to feel like we’re criminals as well.

Can you talk about the difficulties that you’ve had bringing attention to some of these issues and how you’ve been able to do so successfully?

The general public really is still under the impression that people in prison must be the worst of the worst. That’s changing gradually, but it’s taken years for people to realize that the criminal justice system is not what it appears to be — the public’s perception has been our biggest issue. Some people still don’t understand that it’s very easy to go to prison with the laws that we have in the United States. You don’t have to kill someone in order to go to prison, unfortunately.

The more people know, the more likely we will have criminal justice reform. And that’s what the goal is: We want to reform, or even abolish, what we currently have in place. It’s a huge failure, and we need people to know that and be on board with that.

What are some of your biggest achievements with Prison Reform Movement?

The tampon ban was pretty good because it happened in one day. We got an immediate response. It started late Saturday night, because I got the information Saturday night. It started mushrooming on Sunday, but as you know there’s nobody in administrative offices on a Sunday night. Monday it really took off, and by Monday evening, we got a response from Virginia that they were going to look at this closely. But we have to remain vigilant, because they could be sneaky and slip this right back.

Illustration by Amelia Martin