THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 16, 1994 TAG: 9411160004
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Short : 39 lines
When Cunnard Lines built the Titanic earlier this century, the company touted the vessel as unsinkable. The ship collided with a iceberg and sank while on its maiden voyage.
I believe the recently passed law to abolish parole will suffer a similar fate.
Its provisions and the theory behind the law will collide with reality. The promises of reduced crime and cost effectiveness of its measures will not hold.
Since 1980, we have been building prisons as if they were assembly-line products without much deterrence to serious crime. With the need for 27 more prisons in the next decade, we will soon parallel our nation's World War II production of Liberty ships.
How are we going to finance this huge buildup? And where will we build all these facilities? Already we have seen Charles City County, Chesapeake and Halifax County give the commonwealth a thumbs down on any new prison construction.
Northampton County is interested. But can that county support the human-resource needs to run a maximum-security prison? The Department of Corrections is having difficulty finding qualified personnel to man existing prisons and those opening soon in Culpeper and Lunenburg counties.
History will prove that the interest of the commonwealth would have been better served had we not departed on this journey. Overhauling parole and improving post-release services are still our best options.
W. B. TWINE, chaplain
St. Brides Correctional Center
Chesapeake, Nov. 4, 1994 by CNB