Later this month the Virginia legislature will begin a special session to review the rules governing police conduct in this state, but advocates hope lawmakers might also consider other parts of the criminal justice system -- like prisons and parole.
On August 18th, Askari Danso will turn 41 – having spent more than half his life in prison. Over the years, he’s grown to a prison philosopher, and he sees the Department of Corrections as a racist institution.
“The majority of people who have been in the system have been African-American," he explains. "Males in particular we make up 9% of the state population, but we’re making up close to 65% of the prison population.”
He also rails against a “truth in sentencing law” passed in 1995 under Republican Governor George Allen – a measure that abolished parole and left a teenaged drug dealer, who accidentally killed a customer, to contemplate five decades behind bars.
“The average sentence for second degree murder for a first-time offender in Virginia is 23 years. I was given 53 years. You know I could be a father. I could be a leader in my community. There’s a lot of young boys who need male leadership. I could be working and helping my family, helping the economy of Virginia, creating business, but instead I sit here as a slave and get exploited. My labor power gets exploited for 27 cents a day, and they enrich themselves off me.”
Which is why Danso and others have formed a chapter of Black Lives Matter in Virginia prisons.
“You know people talk about criminal justice reform, but it’s often times done by advocates on the outside. Very rarely do people get a chance to see those of us who have been in here -- what we believe.”
State regulations bar prisoners from organizing, so they work through friends and family members on the outside. The last time Danso tried to circulate a petition behind bars, he was transferred to a maximum security prison – Red Onion -- where he was first sent in 1999.
“You have white security forces who have unlimited power over black prisoners. It created a certain level of hostility that not only existed between staff and the prisoners but ultimately bled over to prisoners and prisoners. You might have a guy on security level three at Buckingham or Augusta, he’s out every day, he doesn’t have a weapon, he’s not thinking about violence He goes to Red Onion. The next thing you know he’s carrying a knife every day because of the tension.”
So he’s calling for better training and treatment of guards and an expectation that they will be professional and humane.
“Because they’re trained from the very beginning to see us as the enemy. That’s the reason the prison itself is violent. You take the same guys. You put them in different environments, they have no issues. Just like you could take me right now – me or you – we could go to Afghanistan, we’re going to survive differently than we would survive in Charlottesville or Lynchburg.”
He also wants Virginia to reinstate parole.
“You know we’re human beings, and some have made horrific mistakes. That shouldn’t be overlooked, but they served time, and they deserve at least to be considered. I mean some people are just drastically different people! You know you’re 45 years old, you’re not the same person you were at 18.”
They want state lawmakers to act on that issue during the special session.
“Black women are without mates. Black children are without fathers. It’s a leadership issue – a void, a vacuum in our communities because of that. That’s definitely what we want to highlight with Black Lives Matter. If this was a situation where the majority of guys in this system were white, the state would look at it totally differently. Because it’s blacks, it’s easy to just incarcerate us and throw us away, and that’s a Black Lives Matter issue.”
Delegate Charnielle Herring, who heads the Courts of Justice Committee and the state’s crime commission can’t say yet whether reinstating parole is an issue for the special session, but if not she plans to act on it in January during the regular session of the General Assembly.
