ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, December 20, 1995 TAG: 9512200023
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-17 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN MANNING
WITH ALL THE iron prison doors being slammed shut, and all the switches being thrown at Greensville Correctional Center, you should feel a lot safer in your community. If you do not, you should ask why.
It would truly be a mistake for us as a nation to rationalize that repairing our judicial machinery is more important than bringing change to our correctional institutions that provide uninhabitable housing, low-level medical care, and inadequate educational and insufficient training programs to the people who commit the crimes that concern us. We must reform the legal system on all levels. Prisons in Virginia must become colleges and learning centers, not breeding grounds for future crime.
What's being learned now is unorthodox. The problem in Virginia today is not that the people have lost touch with reality. It is that our government has lost touch with its people. Under the present system these problems will continue to be compounded because they are not properly addressed. The Virginia "corrections system" is lavishing hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on methods that simply do not work. The state is vividly chained to old conceptions of corrections. The Virginia Department of Corrections must be reformed and modernized.
The political elites must listen to the people of Virginia, as they haven't done in years. We must hold them accountable. We want actions, not words. Slick campaign commercials and entertaining television spots should not work any longer. You are the owners of this state, and if you ask the questions and demand the answers as well, change will soon follow. Reassert your ownership. One voice is tiny, and cannot be heard above the din of politics as usual. However, the people's voice, when cried as one, becomes a great roar.
Look at the system Richmond has created. Our elected representatives spend most of their time raising the millions of dollars needed to finance future campaigns, so they can get back into office. Whenever a Virginia citizen raises questions pertaining to what is going on with our government and programs, the officials quickly look around for someone to blame. Modern politics has become little more than shrinking responsibility and passing the blame onto another.
There is, however, a very obvious answer to all this nonsense. If anyone wishes to know who is the blame for all the failure, just go look into your mirror. That's if it hasn't already been stolen. Not only are the criminal elements responsible, you are to blame as well. You are the shareholders of this state. You own it.
We have allowed a system to develop wherein the political committees have more power than the people they represent. You have allowed the politicians to win your votes by promising newer and grander solutions that never quite seem to reach the surface. We have allowed them to continue their fancy speeches, while we re-elect them time and time again.
Are your communities any more secure? Are the children of the commonwealth any safer than before? The Department of Corrections spends millions of dollars yearly on "research statistics" and "assessments." These studies end up in the basement collecting dust. They are reports no one needs or reads. Funding for them should be used to create and encourage more treatment, education and training.
Let's stop trying to reinvent the wheel. The time to debate is after the results are in. Virginia doesn't have the answers yet. I'm not saying inmates have the answers either, but one thing is clear: They are as close to the problem as anyone will ever get.
We cannot expect overnight success - but we can start with steps that will turn into strides. Dozens of prison programs have proved successful in regions throughout the country, and new pilot programs are being undertaken.
Virginia should establish the means to measure those results and to spread those successful programs throughout the prison centers in the commonwealth. Tax dollars need to be moved away from the programs that don't work into the programs that do work. By now, these individuals should be experts at knowing what doesn't work.
Department of Corrections officials don't even have minimal standards of rehabilitation in place. So they are not held accountable for their product. They must become more than the custodian of bodies that they currently are. They have yet to make intelligent learning and rehabilitation their top priorities. The Corrections Department is not, as it should be, organized to meet society's needs. This department must stop hiring people to hold briefcases and fetch the morning coffee. The money should be used to bring more treatment professionals into prisons.
The primary responsibility for law enforcement and public safety rests with local and state government. So far, they have borne the brunt of a losing battle. We have been fighting phony wars on crime and drugs. If this were a real war, the enemy could comfortably declare victory.
The citizens of the commonwealth no longer desire a state government that tries to hide the facts with colorful word pictures and to paint a rosy picture on a dark and crumbling wall. We need a government that confronts its problems on a daily basis, that spells out its success and failures to the public.
That's the only way we will ever reach a day in which our government can stand proudly before the people and honestly say, "We have found the solutions, and we are putting them to work right now."
As the Earth moves on its endless journey through time and space, the world moves on toward the 21st century. So must our commonwealth's government. That way, we can stop spending all these billions of dollars annually on a "corrections" system that doesn't work, and be able to create new industries and technologies that will dazzle the world, as we once did.
Active citizen participation is a small price to pay for responsible representative democracy. This is as our founding fathers intended. That's proved in the pages of history.
Kevin Manning of Roanoke is serving 16 years at Augusta Correctional center for grand larceny involving a check-cashing scheme.
LENGTH: Long : 105 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Anthony D'Adamo/Newsday.by CNB