Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 23, 1995 TAG: 9502230086
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
Now she doesn't know when she will see him again. Maybe after her income tax refund arrives and she can afford the $450 round-trip air fare.
``I think it's totally unfair,'' the 21-year-old Portsmouth woman said Wednesday. ``This is more punishment on him than what the court ordered.''
Her fiance, Gregory Coffey, isn't the only one suffering, Warren said.
``Now I'm being punished just because I love him,'' she said.
Their daughter, Kalie, who will be 2 in May, also is being denied an opportunity to see her father on a regular basis, Warren said. Coffey is serving a 10-year sentence for malicious wounding.
Warren was one of about 50 people who came to the Capitol to protest the transfer of about 150 inmates to a prison in Newton, Texas.
The rally degenerated into a shouting match when Anne Kincaid, Gov. George Allen's director of constituent services, tried to explain the reasons for the transfer.
``This was not Gov. Allen's first choice,'' she said before being virtually drowned out by angry protesters.
``It's illegal! It's state terrorism,'' shouted Maurice Baskins of Richmond.
Kincaid said the inmates were transferred because prisons are getting dangerously crowded.
``The safety of your loved ones was very much at stake in these overcrowded prisons,'' she said.
Kincaid said the transfers were necessary because the General Assembly has refused to go along with Allen's aggressive prison-building plans. She said the protesters' anger should be directed at lawmakers, not Allen.
``Obviously, I hurt for them,'' she said in an interview. ``First they are victims of a loved one who committed a crime, and now they are a victim of legislators.''
But the protesters clearly blame Allen, whose no-parole plan approved by the General Assembly last year has helped drive the need for more prisons.
Virginia has a contract with Texas to house the inmates at the privately run, 872-bed Newton County Detention Center. Virginia pays Texas $43 per day per inmate - about the same amount it would cost to house the prisoners in a similar facility in Virginia, said Department of Corrections spokesman Jim Jones.
Texas would accept only nonviolent inmates with no mental health or medical problems, no infractions of prison rules and less than two years remaining until their discretionary parole date.
``In other words, inmates who ought to be in community service in the first place,'' said Jean Auldridge, chairwoman of Virginia CURE, an acronym for Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants.
Some of the protesters were upset that Powhatan Correctional Center has cut the time a visitor can see an inmate from 48 hours a month to eight hours a month.
``The philosophy seems to be lock folks up and just forget about them,'' said the Rev. Marcellus L. Harris Jr. of Newport News, who organized the protest.
Jones said visitation was cut because the visiting room was staying crowded, jeopardizing security.
Memo: different version ran in the Metro edition