Originally published in the Winter 2024 edition of the Virginia Defender, issue 74, printed February 21. Reproduced here for accessibility and archival purposes. To find other stories in the Winter 2024 issue or to download the full PDF, see this post. For other issues dating back to 2012, see the Full Issues page.

The Democratic Party controls the upper senate and lower house chamber of the state legislature.

The state government [must] end the egregious, racial policy of warehousing African-Americans to decades of higher sentencing guidelines than Caucasians recommended by Commonwealth’s Attorneys and enforced by the Court.

Real criminal justice reform starts with repealing the Truth-in-Sentencing “Proposal X” in Virginia, the sentencing reform movement of the 1990s, implemented under former segregationist George Allen (Governor 1994–1998), to effectively restrict and eliminate parole eligibility and good-time credits.

The Truth-in-Sentencing law became effective in Virginia on Jan.1, 1995. Virginia’s sentencing reforms abolished parole, reduced good-time allowances to ensure that inmates serve a minimum of 85% of their imposed sentence, and became the most effective, profitable warehouse prison-complex business that disproportionately affects ethnic minorities.

Along with the federal government, Virginia is the worst state for ensuring civil rights and one of eight states that abolished parole and implemented Truth-in-Sentencing legislation that requires offenders to serve 85% of the imposed sentence.

The amount of time served by nonviolent offenders was supposedly not changed by the Truth-in-Sentencing. Judge-imposed sentences for nonviolent offenders are supposed to be lower, [but] the time served in prison remains the same 85% because sentences are no longer reduced dramatically by parole and good time allowances.

Under Truth-in-Sentencing, offenders serve an average of 89.7% of the judicially imposed sentence.

Although parole was abolished for all offenders convicted after Jan. 1, 1995, parole remains in effect for individuals incarcerated prior to Truth-in-Sentencing reform. Post-statute inmates are repeatedly denied parole and good-time allowances based on decades of blanket denials of the serious nature of the offense and disrespect of the law, backdoor enforcement of the Truth-in-Sentencing.

Mr. Roy L. Perry-Bey

Executive Director of Civil Rights

United Front For Justice

NORFOLK