THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, February 22, 1995 TAG: 9502220422
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines
Friends and relatives of Virginia prison inmates plan rallies today to protest Allen administration policies of shipping inmates out of state, limiting visits and building prisons in remote areas.
Members of Heartlinks to Inmates and other prisoner support groups will protest at the Capitol.
They specifically object to a new Powhatan Correctional Center policy that limits an inmate's visits to eight hours a month. The Department of Corrections has also restricted visitation at other state prisons.
The dispatching of 150 inmates to Texas last week and the appropriation of money to send an additional 500 has added another item to the groups' agenda.
``We just want the folks at Powhatan and those who run other prisons across the state to see that those who visit inmates are at a great disadvantage when these kinds of policies are suddenly applied,'' said the Rev. Marcellus Harris, a rally organizer.
``A lot of people are impacted. They're disrupting families, these policies,'' said Harris, pastor of First Baptist Church Morrison in Newport News.
``People just have no idea what goes on - how families suffer,'' said Jean Auldridge, director of Virginia Citizens United for the Reform of Errants.
``They go through much of what people go through when they lose a loved one to death. It's losing a loved one to a system you have no control over,'' she said.
With longer sentences under the state's new no-parole policy and more prisons planned for remote areas, maintaining contact with inmates will be even more difficult, Auldridge said.
Robert Andrew Wright Jr., a Richmond resident serving a 10-year sentence for growing marijuana, said his wife and two sons will no longer be able to visit him weekly because he was moved to Texas last week.
``I knew the day I was sentenced it was a hardship not only for me but for my family . . . but I never expected anything like this,'' Wright said in a telephone interview.
``My children are very young - 2- and 3-year-old boys. They're at an age when time doesn't mean much, but seeing a person does,'' he said.
Jim Jones, a Department of Corrections spokesman, said family support of prisoners is important. ``We certainly encourage that, but we must balance that with security needs,'' he said.
Gov. George Allen's prison director, Ron Angelone, has ordered a review of visiting hours at all of the state's prisons to make sure existing arrangements are not jeopardizing security, Jones said.
The eight-hour restriction imposed at Powhatan a few months ago will be included in the review. by CNB