Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 12, 1995 TAG: 9511130051
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURA LAFAY LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
There also would be no grills, no hot dogs and no hamburgers at the prison, about 20 miles west of Richmond. In place of the annual Family Day cookout, the facility's two vending machines would be dragged outside. Each prisoner could have four guests, but could not invite their stepchildren.
The decree so outraged the 446 mostly nonviolent inmates that they boycotted Family Day altogether. For them, the incident was an intentional affront - the latest in a barrage of new rules and policies, which, they say, are calculated to isolate and dehumanize the 25,000 men and women behind bars in Virginia.
Since July, the state has begun charging prisoners a nominal fee for medical and dental care, confiscating their money to pay for court costs and fines, and restricting visitation in some facilities to eight hours a month.
In addition, the Department of Corrections has announced plans to monitor and record all inmate phone calls, except ones to their lawyers, and says it is considering eight-hour limits on visits in all facilities. Also under consideration: a policy of conducting criminal background checks on those who come to visit inmates.
Prisoners and their advocates see dark motives behind the new rules. And they fear they will provoke an inmate revolt in Virginia's already overcrowded and understaffed prisons.
''One has to wonder what they're up to,'' Kent Willis of the Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union said before this month's legislative elections. ''Virginia doesn't have the security problems to justify these kinds of measures. And the cost factor doesn't make any sense, because all of these things are likely to cause behavioral problems in the system, and behavioral problems are the most costly. Of course, it all makes for good politics, particularly at this time of year.''
The Department of Corrections insists politics have nothing to do with it.
''There is no specific reason which has guided these changes,'' department spokeswoman Amy Miller wrote in response to questions submitted last week.
''The department continually reviews its procedures and strengthens them when necessary. Many of these programs have been in the conceptual/discussion stage for well over a year and are just now coming to fruition.''
A number of smaller, unannounced crackdowns have taken place quietly. In August, for example, a chaplain at the Augusta Correctional Center in Craigsville was arrested and fired for trying to smuggle vitamins into the prison in his sock. In October, members of the Baptist Women's Missionary Union were told they no longer can bring monthly birthday cakes to prisoners at the Virginia Correctional Center for Women in Goochland.
The department also is tightening media access. All questions about the agency and its policies must be submitted in writing to the office of Director Ron Angelone. According to one warden, Angelone has announced his intention of eliminating face-to-face interviews of inmates by reporters. All requests for such interviews, he told wardens assembled for a meeting last week, should be referred to his office.
Such measures are ''not atypical,'' according to Jenni Gainesborough of the National Prison Project in Washington.
''It's very cold-blooded on the part of politicians,'' she said. ''It's not their lives that are going to be on the line. It's the poor correctional officers who have to work in those prisons and implement these kind of rules.''
Inmates confirm that the new policies have taken a toll, especially in facilities where long-term prisoners are housed.
''It's tension. Tension is high,'' said Kenneth Stewart, an inmate on death row at the Mecklenburg Correctional Center. ''Really, what they're trying to do is make everybody snap and riot or something. But I'm not giving them the satisfaction.''
Stewart, 40, said he is a walking example of how the new policies are working. The state's Department of Taxation recently mailed him a $57,900 bill for court costs related to his 1991 trial in Bedford County at which he was given the death penalty for the murder of his wife and 5-month-old son. At the time, Stewart had $136 in his prison canteen account. The state took $116, leaving him $20.
Since then, the $20 has dwindled to $5, and Stewart has developed a skin condition. His body, he said, is covered with sores that ''start out like a bump and then turn into an open sore and then leave scars.''
The Department of Corrections insists that no one will be refused medical treatment because of inability to pay the $5 fee. But if Stewart seeks medical care for his skin, the state will take his last $5, leaving him without money for stamps, toothpaste, shampoo, legal materials and other canteen items that are not supplied to inmates. If the doctor prescribes medicine, his account will be debited an additional $2, the state's fee for prescriptions. For the moment, Stewart is unwilling to give up stamps.
''You have to be able to pay for postage to write letters or pay for phone calls to your family and your children and your friends,'' said Lem Tuggle, one of Stewart's neighbors on death row.
''You have to stay in communication, or else, pretty soon, there's absolutely no one left," said Tuggle, whose death sentence for a 1983 murder in Smyth County has been sent back to a lower court for review by order of the U.S. Supreme Court. And you're in here all alone.''
Other inmates are making similar choices. Since the policy was implemented, said Miller, medical visits have dropped 25 percent in prisons statewide.
Those who need care are not necessarily getting it, inmate advocates say, and when illnesses go untreated, especially in overcrowded and poorly ventilated areas, they spread.
''It's inhumane to force inmates to have to choose between toothpaste and medical treatment,'' said Richmond inmate advocate Laura Rinier.
Because prisoners are not allowed to have cash, their families and friends must deposit money into accounts for them. Inmates who work - earning about 35 cents per hour in low-level prison jobs - have their wages deposited. Then, whenever they buy something from the prison canteen, the price is subtracted from their account balances. Since the imposition of medical fees and liens for court costs, however, many families say they have stopped making deposits into the accounts.
''That's not his money they're taking,'' said one woman whose husband is serving time at the Brunswick Correctional Center in Lawrenceville. ''That's my money in there. And they don't have any right to take it.''
About 1,000 state prison inmates owe court costs, according to a Department of Taxation court debt collection unit. The collection unit, created by the General Assembly in February, is authorized to collect outstanding fines, costs, forfeitures, penalties and restitution from all citizens. State prisoners are neither mentioned nor excluded in the authorizing statute.
Inmates argue that the Department of Taxation is collecting their money illegally. In most cases, they point out, judges order them to pay court costs and fines upon release. In addition, they say, the Department of Taxation is charging them interest on the money, in violation of state law.
Bobby Russell Tilley, a prisoner at Keen Mountain Correctional Center, got a notice of lien for court costs totaling $4,974.06. But according to the clerk of Bland County Circuit Court where Tilley was tried, he owed only $519.65.
The mistake was discovered when Tilley wrote to the clerk, asking to be allowed to pay $10 a month. ''Could the system have accidentally calculated interest ...?'' the clerk wrote in a letter to Court Debt Collections Manager Bobby Arnold.
Phone calls are another issue of contention. The department has a five-year contract with MCI for inmate phone service. Under the terms of the service, prisoners can make only collect calls, and a $3 surcharge is levied for each call.
Efforts to get the company to charge the same rates that apply on the outside have not succeeded. And although the contract expires in December, inmate advocates speculate it will be renewed, because MCI does not plan to charge for the new program of monitoring and recording inmate phone calls.
The high phone rates, coupled with such other new measures as the plan to record calls, will further alienate prisoners and isolate them from their families, said Jean Auldridge, director of the Virginia chapter of Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants.
''Monitoring the calls will make people less free to talk about personal problems and work out solutions. They're discouraging conversation. ... It's an ongoing process of cutting them off, and I can't help but think it's intentional,'' Auldridge said.
''To me, doing time is bad enough,'' said an inmate at the Powhatan Correctional Center. ''As long as we're not in here killing each other, there's really no reason for all these new deprivations.''
by CNB