One big prison yard?

 Last year, the Legislature passed a bill creating a sentencing commission to jump start reforms in the criminal justice system.

There was a consensus that West Virginia’s penalties were out of sync and, often, more severe than those of neighboring states, at great expense to the public and without making anyone any safer.

As then chairman of the House Judiciary Committee John Shott, R-Mercer, said: “Among the many challenges facing our state, the reform of our criminal justice system is one of the least publicized. To keep this in context, we have a system in which we are 20 to 25% over capacity, and our prisons, our regional jails are overflowing.”

And that was before COVID-19 hit, which makes the issue of reform even more urgent.

The pandemic slowed the work of the commission, but things are starting to move.

Unfortunately, even before the commission gets down to the heavy lifting, proposed legislation in the House of Delegates would drastically rewrite the state’s criminal code before the process has a chance to work.

The measure in question, House Bill 2017, is truly gargantuan. The introduced version was no less than 391 pages. At present, it’s up to 411 pages. It was sprung on the House far too late in the session for members to digest the implications of what they’re going to vote on.

While the bill is no doubt well intentioned, it was crafted without consulting with prosecutors, public defenders, judges, others who work in the system or advocates — much less those directly affected.

If enacted, the bill would increase prison sentences for many offenses (with some exceptions), while also delaying parole eligibility. In particular, it changes many sentences from an indeterminate system, which provides some flexibility, to a determinate system that often would increase the minimum and maximum sentences.

This also would have the effect of reducing the incentives for people in prisons to participate in rehabilitation, education and/or recovery programs, since they would have to serve longer before being eligible for parole.

One provision of the bill that seems especially harsh would increase fines for many offenses and even require some inmates to pay the cost of their incarceration. Since people with low incomes are more likely to get caught in the system to start with, this would increase debt of those families and contribute to the criminalization of poverty.

According to the American Action Forum, which describes itself as center-right, “Adults in poverty are three times more likely to be arrested than those who aren’t, and people earning less than 150% of the federal poverty level are 15 times more likely to be charged with a felony — which, by definition, carries a longer sentence — than people earning above that threshold.”

The Prison Policy Initiative reports: “Poverty is not only a predictor of involvement with the justice system: Too often, it is also the outcome. Criminal punishment subjects people to countless fines, fees and other costs (often enriching private companies in the process). A criminal record, meanwhile, does lasting collateral damage.”

Rather than gallop to a premature decision, a wiser step would be to refer the ideas contained in HB 2017 to the sentencing commission so that its provisions, along with the ideas of others familiar with all aspects of the system, can be evaluated in consultation with all stakeholders.

In the meantime, lawmakers might do better to focus on reforms to reduce mass incarceration and its cost to individuals, communities, families and taxpayers.

(This ran as an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

It's past time for bail reform

On May 15, 2010, Kalief Browder and a friend were walking home from a party in the Bronx when they were stopped by police officers. He was accused of stealing a backpack stuffed with a camera, an iPod Touch, a credit card and $700 in cash.

Browder, a 16-year-old African-American, had no incriminating evidence against him and denied stealing anything. He was arrested and charged with robbery, grand larceny and assault.

Because he was on probation for taking a bakery truck on a joyride, Browder was not released. Instead, he was sent to a juvenile facility on Riker's Island known for "a deep-seated culture of violence."

Bail was set at $3,000, a sum his family could not pay.

He wound up spending three years at Riker's, much of that time in solitary confinement. During this time, he was brutalized by guards and other inmates, some incidents of which were captured on video.

Not surprisingly, he was traumatized by the event. He attempted suicide on more than one occasion in and out of custody. On June 16, 2015, he succeeded.

He was never placed on trial and never convicted of the offense. Charges against him were eventually dropped.

This example of what I can only call bureaucratic murder makes me feel sick every time I think about it. It also makes a travesty of the promise of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, according to which no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.

As far as I know, nothing on that scale of awfulness has happened in West Virginia, but we have similar issues with low-income, low-risk nonviolent offenders wasting away in regional jails because they can't afford bail.

It causes untold suffering, clogs up the jail and prison system and costs a lot of money.

Speaking of money, the Gazette-Mail's Phil Kabler recently reported, "Counties paid the Regional Jail Authority more than $1.9 million in 2018 to jail individuals unable to post bond of $1,000 or less for misdemeanor charges."

That year, 3,750 people jailed on misdemeanor charges spent an average of 11 days in jail before they were released or were able to post bail. One person spent 127 days in jail due to lack of money to post a $500 bond.

That added up to 41,058 days that the counties had to pay for, to the tune of $48.25 per person per day. Because that doesn't cover the full cost, they had to kick in an additional $18,750.

In human terms, this can have devastating effects on those incarcerated and their families. Even short of extreme violence and suicide, lots of bad things can happen behind bars, many of which are not conducive to improving civic behavior or promoting public safety in the long run. And overcrowded jails and prisons are unsafe both for those who work there and those who are incarcerated.

There is a further issue here. Our state prisons are already overcrowded. So much so, in fact, that hundreds of people (1,205 in 2016, for example) sentenced to state prisons are still warehoused in regional jails, which are not designed to be long-term facilities. Many cannot access educational and other programs offered in prisons that might make them eligible for treatment, training or parole.

To state the obvious, having hundreds of people doing time in the jails at public expense simply because they are poor only makes things worse all the way around.

Fortunately, there is a growing and bipartisan awareness of this problem at the legislature these days. A (very modest) bail reform bill, HB 2190, passed the House and is up for consideration in the Senate. It allows people charged with certain nonviolent offenses to be released on their own recognizance. It could have been stronger, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

Words written by then U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy in 1964 still ring true today: "The rich man and the poor man do not receive equal justice in our courts. And in no area is this more evident than in the matter of bail."

(This appeared as an op-ed in the Huntington Herald-Dispatch.)

Talking sense on WV's prison crisis

This op-ed by co-worker Lida Shepherd appeared in the Charleston Gazette-Mail. It's worth a look.

Even in this moment of divisiveness, there is one thing Republicans and Democrats, Tea Party activists, taxpayers and politicians can all agree on: We have lost the so-called “War on Drugs.”

A generation ago, a steady drumbeat began for policies that were “tough on crime,” resulting in more arrests, harsher sentences and more prisons. Now we know what happens when you treat our generation’s greatest public health crisis as if it were a criminal justice problem.

In four decades, our prison population has increased 500 percent, and hundreds of billions of our tax dollars are spent on the incarceration, probation or paroling of 2 percent of the entire U.S. population (disproportionately people who are low-income and people of color).

And yet, today, the drug crisis rages on and the overdose deaths are higher than ever, especially in West Virginia.

In response to the inextricably linked crises of mass incarceration and the drug epidemic, people across the political spectrum, including Newt Gingrich, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris and Rand Paul are calling for policies that are “smart on crime,” emphasizing drug treatment centers instead of prison beds.

Despite this marked shift in the conversation, some of our state legislators continue to pursue the unsuccessful and costly strategies of the War on Drugs, all which would continue to tear families apart and reverse the gains made since the Justice Reinvestment Act of 2013, which sought to reduce the prison population through alternative sentencing, speedier paroling and enhanced parole services.

The West Virginia House of Delegates just passed House Bill 2607 that extends the maximum period of confinement, from 60 days to six months, that a judge may impose for minor first-time probationary violations. Without question, this measure will increase the prison population at a cost to taxpayers, and yet this bill was passed with no fiscal note.

Another bill that would add to the prison population, the West Virginia Senate passed Senate Bill 37 which will make daytime burglaries carry an extra five-year penalty. Is the rationale that a person who may commit a burglary — probably to feed a drug addiction — spends his or her time reading obscure statutes and will now think twice?

And last but not least, the Senate passed Senate Bill 73, which creates a whole new felony and mandatory minimum sentence for a person who leaves the scene of an accident, which effectively ties judges’ hands instead of allowing them to consider all the facts in what is already a tragic case.

Lawmakers want to show they are “tough on crime” instead of “smart on crime,” so they pass laws to create longer sentences and more felonies. Then, prosecutors can use the threat of a long sentence to pressure people — most of whom are low-income people and people of color — into taking a negotiated guilty plea now, instead of risking a 10- or 20-year sentence at trial later, which may not happen for a year or two, if ever.

Indeed more than 95 percent of cases never even go to trial. Never mind that the Sixth Amendment says, “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury.”

Policies that establish longer sentences, stiffer penalties and new crimes is how mass incarceration happens; it is no accident. Continuing down this path means there perpetually will not be enough money for prevention, jobs programs, higher education or treatment beds.

On a positive note, the House Judiciary Committee passed House Bill 2727, which instructs the Division of Motor Vehicles to work with the Division of Corrections in assisting people leaving prison to obtain a state ID. HB 2727 addresses a huge barrier people face when trying to get on track to becoming stable taxpayers. We hope the House Finance Committee will see the impact this bill could have on recidivism and workforce participation, and put it on its agenda.

Is this the year we finally choose treatment beds over prison beds, and reject policies that do nothing to enhance public safety or West Virginians’ ability to get an education or a good-paying job? Only if we tell our lawmakers to “Just Say No” to the failed policies of the past that have cost us so much, in tax dollars and, even more tragically and incalculably, in human potential.

Lida Shepherd is program director for the American Friends Service Committee.

Mandatory minimums: a dead end road

This op-ed in today's Charleston Gazette-Mail was a collaborative effort between my friends Pastor Matthew Watts, Lida Shepherd and myself:

Across the country and the political spectrum, many people have begun to realize we took a wrong turn a while back.

While pursuing legitimate concerns about crime and drugs, Americans set off on a decades-long binge of prison building and mass incarceration. The good we sought never materialized, but the collateral damage was massive.

Unfortunately, two bills that just passed the West Virginia House, HB 4240 and 4578, would put us back on that wrong road by imposing harsh mandatory minimum sentences on nonviolent drug offenders.

These measures would do nothing to make our communities safer, help people recover from addiction, reduce recidivism or help fund education or economic development.

On the other hand, they would lead to another prison population explosion, further bust the state’s budget, destabilize families and communities, deplete West Virginia’s shrinking workforce and make it harder for the state to invest in education, early childhood and economic development. And they would threaten to undo the progress the state has made with Justice Reinvestment legislation.

These bills also go against the grain of the work of many Republican leaders who have advocated a more intelligent approach to these issues. Some who have opposed mandatory minimums include former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, former Texas governor Rick Perry, Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, and Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky.

A little background from the Coalition for Public Safety might help put things in perspective. The coalition is a national effort of unlikely allies and supporters that includes such conservative giants as Koch Industries, Americans for Tax Reform and Freedom Works as well as groups like the ACLU and NAACP.

According to their research:

•  While the U.S. has 5 percent of the world’s population, it has 25 percent of its prisoners. We now lead the world with 2.2 million in prisons or jails. Our prison population has gone up by 500 percent over the last 30 years.

•  The federal prison population has increased by nearly 800 percent over the last few decades. Of these, 60 percent are nonviolent offenders.

•  Taxpayers are paying $80 billion per year to pay for this. And the costs are rising.

•  Between 70 million and 100 million Americans — nearly one out of three — has some kind of criminal record, “which carries lifelong barriers that can block successful re-entry and participation in society because of restrictions on employment, housing and voting. Mass incarceration contributes to a cycle of poverty that traps individuals, families and entire communities for generations.”

•  People who have been incarcerated typically earn 40 percent less per year than those who haven’t.

•  While drug abuse and crime occur across ethnic and socio-economic lines, punishments fall hardest on low-income communities and people of color. African-Americans are four times more likely to be imprisoned than white Americans and more than 60 percent of the prison population now come from minority communities.

It’s pretty clear. The blind alley of mass incarceration doesn’t make us safer, but it has destroyed lives and families and sucked up resources urgently needed elsewhere. Millions of Americans now live under the burden of felony convictions, which has been called “social death,” a lifelong loss of rights and privileges, along with poor life chances for work, education, asset building and family life. Meanwhile, the drug epidemic continues unabated.

Rather than repeat the mistakes of the past, we need to move forward based on evidence-based approaches that actually work to promote public safety, such as substance abuse treatment, community corrections for low-risk nonviolent offenders, validated risk and need assessments of offenders, and help with reentry to avoid recidivism.

Going backward is not an option.

Strange bedfellows

This item from the NY Times caught my eye today. It looks like groups across the political spectrum--from Koch Industries and Freedom Works to the ACLU and Center for American Progress--are uniting to support policies to reduce the US prison population and recidivism.

One thing I'm hopeful about in the WV legislature is that there may be similar agreement about reducing the number of children in the juvenile justice system. I mean, really. If those guys can agree on the need to make the adult system a little less awful, one would think we could do something like that here for young people in the system.

IT'S NOT ALL LOVE-AND-HUGS. Here's an op-ed by a friend of mine on why right to work (for less) is a bad idea.

A little good news

According to longtime WV statehouse reporter Tom Miller, 

The idea of housing West Virginia's state prisoners at a private, for-profit prison in neighboring Kentucky has been shelved and is no longer a priority, Commissioner Jim Rubenstein of the state Division of Corrections told state legislators last week at one of the interim committee meetings.

Rubenstein said the idea has now "been put way back on the back burner" because of the current decrease that his agency has been seeing "within the total (inmate) population." This seems to put to rest this earlier proposal that called for the state to possibly house up to 400 inmates at a prison in eastern Kentucky that would be operated by the Corrections Corporation of America.

This is welcome news for all kinds of reasons. I was proud to work with WV allies to keep this from happening. The main reason it didn't was the success of a 2013 bill addressing prison overcrowding.

RACE MATTERS IN APPALACHIA. If you get a chance, please consider attending this conference or race on Nov. 10 and 11.

A little progress

In keeping with the occasional theme of positive things about West Virginia, today's Charleston Gazette included an article about a report on prisons given by Corrections Commissioner Jim Rubenstein to an interim legislative committee. According to Rubenstein, the results of prison overcrowding legislation passed in 2013 are already promising, with a drop from 1,700 to 900 inmates who should be in state correctional institutions backlogged in regional jails.

The overall population has dropped by 3.5 percent between July 1 2013 and June 30 2014, even though the effects of the reforms would take a few years to start working. The Division of Corrections is also implementing other policies aimed at reducing recidivism.

Next stop: the juvenile justice system.

NOW, go take a walk.

It's not all bad, continued

These days, I'm making a conscious effort to remind myself of things that my beloved state of West Virginia is doing right. And there are several. Last time around, I mentioned how WV is a leader in school/child nutrition. And my old sparring partner, the WV Department of Health and Human Resources, has done a stellar job of signing people up for the expanded Medicaid health coverage. And the decision to expand it was another good step taken by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin last year.

Something else that WV has started to get right is addressing prison overcrowding. Since passing legislation in 2013 along the lines recommended by the Justice Reinvestment project of the Council of State Governments, overcrowding in regional jails has dropped by half and the population in the state's prison system is below projections. Other steps along that line have been taken as well.

The latest positive sign is the involvement of state leaders with the Pew Charitable Trust in looking for ways of addressing problems in the juvenile justice system. I'm hoping we can take positive steps in that arena as well.

A small step in the direction of sanity

One encouraging trend in West Virginia these days--and there actually are a few, believe it or not--is a move away from the mindless tendency to lock people up whether there's a compelling reason to do so or not. Last year, the legislature passed Gov. Tomblin's prison overcrowding bill, which took some modest steps in that direction.

Thanks to a Republican-introduced amendment, the bill actually was strengthened by mandating drug courts in all counties by 2016. The decision to expand Medicaid will also mean that tens of thousands of people will have access now to treatment for substance abuse. Substance abuse, one way or another, is a factor in most prison sentences in the state.

The WV Senate last week passed another small but significant bill that could address the overcrowding issue. It would allow for pre-trial release for low-risk offenders. This would reduce crowding in regional jails, which are already filled to overflowing with inmates who should be held in the state's prison system, which offers more of the programs needed for parole.

Last year, a similar bill passed the Senate but was killed in the House after a public hearing dominated by the bail bond "industry." Fortunately, the WV House is under new management this year and I hope they concur with the Senate in this common sense step.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO WE? Here's Robert Reich on a certain American problem.

MOVE TO IMPROVE. Here's yours truly in support of proposed WV legislation that would mandate physical activity for the state's schoolchildren.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Stephen King land

El Cabrero has been a terribly irregular blogger lately, but at least I have a story about why. It goes something like this...

Once upon a time last Thursday, I went on a work trip to a certain northern WV town that's about four hours away on a good day. And this wasn't a good day.  Then, it was like the books of a certain author on which I have been binging lately seemed to come alive.

First, let me say that in general I'm a literary snob. If you don't believe it, search the archives of this blog. You'll find ancient Greeks, Chinese philosophers, Shakespeare, Melville, Dante, Homer, Emerson, Thoreau, etc.

But sometimes you gotta eat some popcorn, right? My popcorn stash consists of listening to an unabridged Stephen King book. I can go for years without indulging but his books always seem to eventually wind up on the menu. I've done three in the last month or so.

Now you know, all kinds of weird stuff happens in Stephen King books. Vampires, plagues, a cell phone pulse that wipes out civilization, haunted places, etc. Oh yeah, and evil cars.

It so happened on that on what turned out to be a road trip from hell, my car went Stephen King when I was driving back through darkness, ice, snow, high winds and freezing temperature.

The car, whose make will remain nameless except to say it starts with the third letter of the alphabet and ends with the twentieth, would randomly flash a "reduced engine power" message and stop going without warning. Oh and the lights would go out too. The only thing to do was restart the engine and hope it wouldn't do it again, which of course it did.

 Some places where it performed this endearing trick were busy two lane dark roads with no shoulder and with traffic right behind me. Others were interstates where getting to the side was a feat and getting back on the road on the ices was iffy as well. In general, it did this when there was no place to safely get off the road and seek shelter from the storm.

For the record, I'm no stranger to car trouble. But this was the first and only time (so far) when I felt like my car was consciously trying to kill me or someone else.

In a word, I got stranded. Miraculously, the car didn't succeed in causing a major accident, although it didn't seem to be for lack of trying. I eventually made it home in a rental but have to go back and retrieve said vehicle soon.

I just hope it has outgrown its homicidal phase.

IS INEQUALITY ON THE AGENDA? Maybe. Too bad this didn't happen a long time ago.

SPEAKING OF WHICH,  here's a look at the real redistribution of wealth (sneak preview: it's direction is upward).

A BETTER IDEA. The state of WV has been flirting lately with private prisons. Here's a better alternative.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A better idea

Prison overcrowding has long been a problem in West Virginia (and elsewhere). Here, though, well over 1,000 inmates who have been sentenced to prisons remain in regional jails, which are temporary holding facilities that don't offer the kinds of programs that can help people get parole and stay out.

For the best of reasons, the WV Division of Corrections is considering voluntarily shipping such inmates to out of state private for profit prison corporations, which, aside from being expensive is a bad idea for reasons discussed here, here, and here.

Recently, a better solution has been proposed by a program official with the state regional jail authority: hire counselors in the regional jails to offer programs specifically for those inmates. I think there are plenty of other things that need to be done, like actually following through on previously agreed on plans, but we need to reject the Trojan horse of private prisons.

Poverty: it's not as much fun as some think

El Cabrero spent a few years in (involuntary) poverty and one thing about that I'd like the world to know is that it's not nearly as much fun as people who have never been there seem to think. Back in the 1990s the writer Earl Shorris described it well in his book New American Blues. 

To use Shorris' term, living in poverty is like living in a "surround of force." It means always being on the defensive and feeling like a hunted animal. One damn thing after another, nearly all of which are bad. Today a friend emailed a post by someone living through that now and it rings true to my experience. You can find it here.

WHO'S WINNING? Here's an interesting look at two midwestern states that have taken different political paths and what the early results seem to be.

PRISON OVERCROWDING is an issue I've been concerned about in WV for the last few years. Here's a summary of where things are with that now.

UTERUS POLICE TAKE NOTE. According to a recent poll, West Virginian's have little enthusiasm for an abortion inquisition such as that advocated by the state's attorney general (and friend to drug companies, but that's another story).

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A better solution to prison overcrowding

Note: the following op-ed of mine on prison overcrowding ran in Sunday's Charleston WV Gazette-Mail. For some reason, however, they didn't put it online. Here it is:

Earlier this year, the WV legislature passed a bill proposed by Gov. Tomblin aimed at reducing the state’s chronic prison overcrowding problem. It was a step in the right direction, although in the short term it will keep the problem from getting worse rather than make it a whole lot better.

As of Nov. 1, there were over 6,808 people under the supervision of the Division of Corrections (DOC), although there are only enough beds for around 5,778. This means that 1,252 were held in regional jails rather than the state’s correctional facilities.

In recent years, the backlog has been as high as 1,874. Part of the reason for the recent drop in the backlog is the transfer of some inmates to Salem, which was formerly a juvenile detention center.

This kind of overcrowding causes all kinds of problems, including a more dangerous situation for inmates, corrections officers and ultimately the community at large. Jails are meant to be temporary holding facilities. For the most part, they don’t offer the kind of programs, treatment, education and rehabilitative activities provided by the DOC.

In some cases, inmates have languished in regional jails for long periods of time after being sentenced to state prisons. Some have even been denied parole because they didn’t complete programs that weren’t even offered where they were held. It’s a pretty classic catch 22 situation.

The underlying reason for this problem is that over the last few decades, despite a fairly low crime rate, West Virginia, like much of the country, began incarcerating more people than in the past for offenses that once had been dealt with in other ways. It also began keeping them in prison longer and making less use of parole.  A 2012 study by the Pew Charitable Trust found that West Virginia’s sentences for most crimes increased dramatically between 1990 and 2009 and were often longer than the national average or those of neighboring states.

To use an overworked plumbing metaphor, the pipeline to prisons got bigger but the drain got smaller.  The end result was an expensive system that ate up more and more of the state’s budget, devastated many low income families and communities, and didn’t contribute as much to public safety as a more rational approach would have done.

Things have gotten to the point now that DOC officials are contemplating relocating around 400 prisoners to out of state, private, for-profit prisons so that they can take part in the kinds of programs not offered in jails.

While those motives are praiseworthy, there are some problems with this approach. For one thing, private prisons are expensive. For another, their track record isn’t very good. Caroline Isaacs, a co-worker of mine in Arizona, recently published a study on the subject, the punch line of which is in the title: Private Prisons: The Public’s Problem. Read more here: http://afsc.org/sites/afsc.civicactions.net/files/documents/AFSC_Arizona_Prison_Report.pdf

Isaacs concludes that “The profit motive of privatized prisons stands in direct conflict with the purpose of corrections, which is to correct behavior—thereby reducing future crime. Unfortunately, these corporations are counting on future crime for the financial health of their business.”

Shipping inmates out of state could  weaken family and community ties that may already be frayed.

Finally, even if 400 inmates get services, that would still leave over 800 inmates stagnating back in the regional jails.

Ironically, a more promising solution was arrived at more than 10 years ago as a result of a WV Supreme Court decision which created a long-term plan for dealing with overcrowding and which was agreed to by the DOC and the Regional Jail Authority.

The Supreme Court ordered the creation of a plan in a 2000 ruling in the State ex rel Sams v. Kirby case, which at the time dealt with a much less severe jail backlog of 850. Had the plan been fully implemented, the problem would have been permanently eliminated by 2007. Instead, it has grown much worse.

Some aspects of the plan included granting extra good time for certain offenders. Specifically, it called for the DOC to “identify those prisoners who, through their work records, educational accomplishments, and good conduct qualify for recommendations of extra good time, thereby reducing the amount of time left to serve for prisoners whose conduct warrants it.”

It also called for the creation of special work or education programs to allow appropriate inmates to earn extra good time. In addition, it called for the division to identify low risk prisoners “who, through years of good conduct and successful completion of rehabilitative programs, are appropriate candidates for commutation, or shortening of their sentences.”

Other common sense elements of the plan were reviewing the sentences of older inmates who no longer constituted a threat to public safety and removing harsh and restrictive parole practices. West Virginia’s rate of granting parole to eligible inmates dropped from 65.9 percent in 1990 to 28.3 percent in 2002. Last year, the Justice Center of the Council for State Governments estimated the effective parole rate to be 33 percent.

In the years since this plan was issued, significant progress has been made in risk and needs assessments of offenders, which should simplify the implementation of the plan.

Sometimes in West Virginia we are pretty good at coming up with solutions but not so much on making them happen.

I have profound respect for the people charged with the difficult job of running West Virginia’s corrections system. In this case, however, the path laid out by the Supreme Court’s long term plan seems more promising to me than the Trojan horse of private for-profit prisons.

Wilson is director of the American Friends Service Committee WV Economic Justice Project and a Gazette contributing columnist.

Poisson d'Avril

I think I've found the special purpose of my life. It will be to attempt to plant in West Virginia the French custom of "poisson d'Avril" or Fish of April. It is an April Fools Day prank which today involves sneaking a paper fish somewhere onto the body of unsuspecting people. 

Except I want to do it Old School style. That would involve sneaking real anchovies or sardines into the pockets, clothing, purses or other possessions of unsuspecting people. The smell would give away the prank sooner or later.

I can think of no greater contribution to the progress of the human race.

NOT A PRANK. Here's a great op-ed by Davitt McAteer and my co-worker Beth Spence about what has and hasn't happened in the wake of the Upper Big Branch mine disaster of April 5 2010.

PRISONS. And here's an op-ed by yours truly on WV prison crowding legislation.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Funeral for a friend

I can't say that I intellectually subscribe to the creed of animism, the idea that various things in our world have spirits. But I kind of act and feel like I do. For that reason, I am feeling a little sad at the passing from my hands of a car I've driven for around 15 years, a worthy grey Saturn sedan that I christened the Pequod, in honor of the whaling ship in Moby-Dick. My Pequod, however, had a much better run than Melville's.

I could probably have kept in on the road a bit longer, aside from the fact that it overheated when idling, had an exhaust leak that probably wasn't all that good to breathe, and had a window that would roll up or down. Oh yeah, and the brakes were shot too. Still, I feel attached to the fine old thing. I would like to think that the spirits of good cars go to a nice place like that to which good dogs ought to go when they pass and that we can all be reunited sometime in the Elysian Fields.

And, lest anyone bash the workmanship of American union members, let me point out that the Pequod had almost 322,000 miles on it, which is far enough to get to the moon and almost halfway back. Taking its place will be a 2011 American union-made car, a red Chevy Cruze, made in the neighboring state of Ohio, otherwise known as The Land of White Castle Hamburgers.

I need to think of a good name for the car. Candidates include Bucephalus, the name of Alexander the Great's favorite horse; Rocinate, the worthy steed of Don Quixote, or The Red Special, in honor of the train used by Socialist Eugene Debs in his 1908 run for president. (If Trotsky had taken the trouble to name his armored train that might have been another possibility). The car that preceded the Pequod was named Traveler, in honor of Robert E. Lee's horse, which in fact was a native of what is now West Virginia. I'm open to other suggestions if anyone has any.

COMMON SENSE about prisons can be found across the political spectrum these days. Here's an op-ed by yours truly about the growing conservative movement to address prison overcrowding.

MORE ON THAT here.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED? Here's an interesting Gazette story on what might have been the real motive for the firing of WV school superintendent Jorea Marple.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Nothing funny about it

Arcadia S. Venus, pictured above, is another admirer of Brother Larry.

Last week I was asked to participate in the retirement roasting of Larry Matheney, a good friend who has served for years as secretary treasurer of the WV AFL-CIO. At such events, one is generally expected to say something funny about the occasion…which was precisely the challenge.

 As a rule, I can find the humor, however grim, in just about any circumstance. When my late father was full of wires and tubes in intensive care, I told him not to bother getting up when I visited him. (He marshaled the strength to perform an obscene gesture in my general direction.)

My daughter recently reminded me that when I was being wheeled away to open heart surgery, I could be heard saying “They’re not gonna get my uterus.”

I have made jokes about any number of misfortunes and disasters.

But I could find absolutely nothing funny about the retirement of Larry Matheney. He is irreplaceable. Larry is a fierce and fearless voice for social justice. Coming from the United Steelworkers, Larry is a social unionist cut from the same cloth as that other native West Virginian labor leader Walter Reuther.

 He’s the kind of person you want on your side in any serious fight for justice, whether it takes place in the streets or the halls of the legislature. He has always stood on the side of the disadvantaged, downtrodden and oppressed and he has always done whatever he could not just to make oppression bearable but to end it.

 I’m not the only person to feel this way. I know plenty of people who as irreverent as myself who view Larry as a hero.

I wish him all the best in retirement. But mostly I wish he was still in the thick of the fight.

SPEAKING OF BROTHER LARRY, here's his latest rant in the Charleston Gazette. I love the cat food bit.

ONE GOOD RANT DESERVES ANOTHER. Here's another friend, the Rev. Matthew Watts on prison overcrowding.

AND HERE'S ANOTHER from the Rev. Jim Lewis. There's a great pun in there about generals and privates.

IN THE SPIRIT OF FAIR PLAY, here are a few words in praise of parasitic worms.

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Full house

Earlier this year, I worked with several allies on a report about prison overcrowding in West Virginia. We were hoping that the report might nudge the WV legislature into passing a pretty decent bill to begin addressing the problem.

Things looked pretty good until everything fell apart on the last day of the session. As a fallback, state leaders contacted the Justice Center of the Council of State Governments to study WV's system and make suggestions for addressing the problem. Some of those were released yesterday (and echo some of the points we made in our report).

The Justice Center has done similar work in other states, including some very conservative ones, so maybe their work can help provide political cover for state politicians to finally take action on this issue. It's all about reducing mass incarceration and saving money without compromising public safety. Here's hoping we can move this along.

On the same subject, here's an op-ed by my friend the Rev. Matthew Watts on mass incarceration and how it impacts the African-American community.

CALLING BS. Here's Media Matters for America on the whole "war on coal" thing.

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Prisons and such

Prison overcrowding is still a major issue in WV, as it is around the country. On the bright side, the issue is starting to get more serious attention here. The following news item is a good example. It cites a report jointly published by the WV Center on Budget and Policy, the Partnership of African American Churches and the American Friends Service Committee.

I was also glad to see this item in the Daily Mail, which looks at the issue of parole violations. A good bit of recidivism in WV is the result not of additional felonies but rather of technical violations. One way of whittling down the problem of overcrowding is to find better ways of dealing with these than locking people up for additional months or years.

DOH. El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia got low marks for livability in a recent survey.

An ugly little spud. Loud too.

If anyone was worrying that we had a shortage of critters at Goat Rope Farm, allow me to assure you that you can cross that one off your worry list. A case in point is little Cedro, a baby chimney swift that fell or was exiled from his home nest and was rescued by the Spousal Unit. Little Cedro apparently didn't get the memo that little creatures should be cute in order to ensure survival. He seems to rely on loudness instead when he calls out for food at very short intervals.  

And what, you may ask, do you feed such a creature? In his case, freeze dried mealworms seem to be a hit.

(But I wonder who on earth came up with the idea of freeze drying mealworms?)

JOB GROWTH is slow, thanks largely due to austerity imposed by the majority in Congress. But if there was a political will, there are plenty of ways to improve the employment situation.

TWO WV ISSUES that are in the news these days include bad cuts to child care for working people by the Tomblin administration and prison overcrowding.

SPEAKING OF CHILD CARE CUTS, click here to do something about it.

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Mercy and rain

I always thought there was something particularly appropriate about Shakespeare's linking of mercy and rain in those famous lines from The Merchant of Venice:

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath.

It's been a hot and dry stretch around Goat Rope Farm until yesterday. The word drought was crossing my mind. The creek, which for me is a barometer of the state of the world, was drying up and, while it had water here and there, no longer flowed continuously. The Spousal Unit even rescued some stranded minnows.

Then yesterday, the rains came. Mostly slowly, off and on, 20 minutes here, 30 there, with an occasional cloudburst through the night. Then, as unlikely as it seemed a day or so before, the creek was back. So may it always be.

PRISON REFORM. The state of WV has contracted with the Justice Center of the Council of State Governments to study and make recommendations about dealing with prison overcrowding. Here's hoping it leads to action.


MAGICAL THINKING. Everybody does it.


COOL RANT. Here's another great post on the politics of coal  from last week at Ken Ward's Coal Tattoo holding forth on the latest from WV's junior senator.


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