Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing to you in hopes that you can help "us". I am one of thousands of Virginia's old law prisoners who are being denied parole every year, not because I am a threat to society, but because I am needed to occupy the excess prison space that the state created.

Under former Governor George Alien, this state built four supermax prisons with the belief that Virginia had the kind of prisoners that required this type of facility;

and that with the eighty-five percent law, it would be getting more. But after re-classifying all of it's prisoners, twice, and eight long years, the DOC has not found enough 'Dangerous Prisoners' to fill even one of these institutions. And I assure you that the criteria is steadily decreasing.

The state immersed itself into the prison space for rent business. It contracted with Michigan, New Mexico, Delaware, Connecticut, and Vermont to house their excess prisoners. The successor to George Alien, Jim Gilmore, even sued the District of Columbia to force it to close its Lorton facility, while at the same time he held a proposal in his other hand to house those prisoners in Virginia facilities, at a financial benefit to the state. The DOC was desperate to get those contracts and to cover up the thousands of beds it erroneously created in anticipation of the arrival of thousands of young Black males; whose lives they planned to summarily throw away!

Fortunately they didn't get their wish. The crime rate and the prison growth rate for the state went down. Hopefully it will continue to stay low. However, the prisoners who were already in the system bore the brunt of DOC's failed plan. Like pawns we have been moved back and forth to fill spaces that are indefensible against-the greater aims and objectives of the public. Year after year after year they give thousands of us xerox-copied parole turn downs with the same over used five word rationale "Serious nature of the Crime". Though no one can deny the seriousness of any crime, this is no justification for continually denying parole to the majority of Virginia's old law, parole eligible, and society ready prisoners. In fact, the seriousness of every crime was taken into account by the judges and or juries who imposed the sentences which we are now under. And they were well aware of the point at which we would become eligible for parole.

The parole board is using the discretion that it has to impose an unreachable criteria upon old law prisoners. Not one of us will ever be able to go back and make our crimes less serious. Therefore we'll never be able to overcome the serious -ness of our crimes. The ultimate effects of this practice is that it breeds resentment. Instead of us being in line for 'corrections', and given that second chance that our sentences allow for, provided we demonstrate our fitness for society, we are slated to be sacrificed to another objective. No matter how much time we do, or how we change, it is clear that we are going to be used to keep prisons open and jobs within the system, at their current levels. The recent protests by Correctional Officers to the proposed the closing of three unnecessary facilities is a testament to that fact. As a result, only one facility eventually closed, and the DOC will, no doubt, find or maintain enough prisoners to keep the other two in operation. —— Does the public really want more prisons and prison jobs rather than rehabilitated and productive people?!

The Ploy that politicians used to get Virginians to invest in building prisons and to trust them while they dealt with the state's crime problem is about to backfire. After having essentially corrected the problem, the prison system that was created,

is now working to maintain itself. Quietly they are saying to the public that the problem still exist; That the convicts which it now holds, are as detrimental to society as they were ,ten, fifteen, twenty, and thirty years ago. And ultimately that the system must not be dismantled or moderated. This is a travesty of the Justice system. And no doubt, it would not occur, would not be so quietly accepted, were it not for the fact that the majority of prisoners here are African American males. What could otherwise be thousands of productive people in society —— Fathers, Sons, Husbands, and Brothers, —— are instead doomed to remain only prisoners. Until the system has no more need of them, they die, or their sentences end.

I have to remind myself, constantly, that I'm one of the fortunate ones. I am a healthy and alert thirty-six year old, after fourteen years of this place. I have no children or a wife waiting on me. And my sentence ends in thirteen more years. My family, although they care deeply for me, have deduced from my three parole denials, three year deferral, and lack of any hearing at all last year, that the only day they can hope to see me again, free, is the day my sentence finally ends. I'll have to live with that if my fight to change it doesn't produce anything. But what about the men here who do have wives and children out there waiting on them? What about those whose sentences do not have an end? And what about the future of all of us, more than twenty thousand, old law convicts, who the DOC is extracting the most they can from; Who are unforgiven and left to languish in these 'sorely needed’ prison? — What do they expect us to be when they are done with us?

It does not benefit the state to allow the DOC to misuse its powers under the law; the powers granted to it in the name of Justice, in holding old law prisoners for as long as they can. In the first place, our sentences are longer because of the probability that we would make parole. If we end up doing the entire sentence we will in most cases be doing more than the new eighty-five percent guidelines require. Secondly, there is a point at which a person can become incorrigible. I believe that point is when you've tried to do the right things and behave the right way and yet the people who are suppose to encourage and recognize this when they see it, have turned a cold eye towards you. In addition, after all of this, you watch your loved ones grow up, old, and even die away while you assure them at every parole turn down " I'm doing everything I can". And yet it's never good enough. This cry about the 'worthlessness' of people behind bars is quickly becoming the state s own self-fulfilling prophecy. If you treat people like waste, disregard them and their families, while you yet claim to be acting according to the law, you create a ' class ' of people who reject the law, and all that would enable you to act as you have against them.

I say today I recognized a Slave ship!

E-Mail     By Rashi'd Qawi' Al-Ami'n    Bio/Address

Today I recognized a Slave ship
One still in existence and used today
It was packed to the max with racks of Blacks
The sight of it took my breath away
Identically it was filled with 'livestock'
And chains connecting everyone
Cruel and tyrannical shipmates and overseers
And men up high with guns

I say today I recognized a Slave ship!
But no sea was under it
It was a modern day vessel going nowhere
Like the one they got at Jarratt
Oh sure, they fill the media with other ideas
To obscure the clear sight of their plan
But I can see and all the Brothers with me
That we're headed for slavery again.