Nearly 32,000 woke up this morning in a cell inside one of Virginia’s state prisons.
They will survive today under harrowing circumstances, despite being a ward of a state agency tasked with providing basic human needs.
Inmates too often suffer from self-harm and disease while guards are either too overburdened to notice or they simply look away. Emergency medical care is too often not administered and for many, confinement is severe enough to exacerbate underlying mental illnesses. The routine of daily isolation becomes a form of torture.
That’s what makes the intentions of the Virginia Department of Corrections to restrict its visitation policy – to only allow prisoners to be visited by a roster of 10 people throughout their incarceration – a form of wanton cruelty.
Brian Moran, the secretary of public safety and homeland security, said the new policy is being enacted to limit opportunities for contraband to be smuggled into state prisons.
Yet, a more effective screening process would work just as well without unnecessarily alienating inmates further from the people they love. Visitors, after all, aren’t the only people who have opportunities to smuggling contraband into secured facilities – guards and other staff can as well.
A Department of Corrections spokesperson said people have been caught 114 smuggling drugs during visitations during the past two fiscal years.
Contraband is a danger to both the guards and inmates, regardless of whether the items unduly brought in are hard drugs, cell phones or paraphernalia that can be turned into a weapon.
In June, eight inmates overdosed after they used smuggled drugs at Haynesville Correctional Center in Richmond County. One of them died.
Yet, the state’s new visitation process doesn’t address the myriad ways drugs or other dangerous items can be smuggled into prisons.
In August, five people, including a former correctional officer, were indicted on charges they conspired to smuggle marijuana and other contraband into the Hampton Roads Regional Jail.
The state’s new policy also does not consider the drug dependencies of inmates or their mental health needs that can only be corrected by face-to-face interactions with visitors.
A U.S. Department of Justice report published in June 2017 notes 58% of state prisoners and 63% of sentenced jail inmates had met the criteria for drug dependence or abuse when a survey was conducted from 2007-’09.
In comparison, approximately 5% of the total general population age 18 or older met the criteria for drug dependence or abuse during that same period.
The state would be better served by addressing drug dependencies as soon as they are incarcerated, rather than trying to spend their entire prison term combating drug smuggling.
Mr. Moran, state’s highest law enforcement official, said the policy will include exemptions for children, reporters and lawyers. And it will be flexible enough for prisoners with large families. That means the state will be responsible for reviewing every request for an exemption, further taxing resources.
Inmates must submit new visitor’s lists by Oct 1; the new policy goes into effect Jan. 15. They will be limited to changing who is on their list to twice a year which is another restriction on the existing rules.
Nearly 5,000 inmates – of the state’s 32,000 population, have a visitors list, and 363 inmates have more than 10 people on that list.
The new policy is clumsily written, flexible enough to be broken and still does not address the point to which it originally intended – to crack down on contraband.
Instead, it sends a message to inmates that they are to be further secluded from communities in which they, someday, will return.
The American Bar Association suggests inmates be allowed to receive “… any visitor not excluded by correctional officials for good cause.” Visits with counsel and clergy must not be counted as visiting time, and should be allowed to visit as much as reasonably possible.
Correctional officials should also facilitate and promote visits, even if that means working with public transit companies to ensure families can see their loved ones.
Virginia, it appears, is heading in the opposite direction. It’s a shame, and Mr. Moran should take some time to reconsider his heading and make a U-turn before Virginia get too far off course.
Versions of this editorial appear in The Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press
