Although redistricting is often thought of as something best left to the politicians and the experts, nothing could be further from the truth. Every voter has a vital stake in redistricting because it determines the composition of districts that elect public officials at every level of government.
This report examines local redistricting in Virginia from the viewpoint of racial fairness. You will find inside a brief history of redistricting in Virginia over the last twenty years and tips on how you can have an impact on redistricting today. If you have been involved in redistricting before, you might want to pay close attention to the changes in the law that have taken place since the early 1990s, when Virginia's local governments last went through this process.
One warning in advance: the law in the voting area is always evolving, and sometimes rather complex questions arise. The first part of this document presents a general overview of the redistricting process in Virginia, but it is by no means intended to offer definitive answers. The question and answer primer on the Voting Rights Act that follows delves deeper into redistricting law. But it also may not answer all the questions you have. The last section, which is a list of contacts, is the place to go when your needs move beyond the text of this document.
Date
Tuesday, May 15, 2001 - 10:15am
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Ask anyone who corresponds with Virginia’s prisoners, and invariably they will relate a story about inadequate or indifferent health care in one or more our correctional facilities. The ACLU of Virginia, as an example, receives hundreds of letters each year from inmates complaining about medical treatment. Their stories are often horrific.
A near lethal confluence of factors makes the practice of medicine in prison a risky proposition. First, it is only one part of a massive government bureaucracy that must oversee practically every minute of the lives of 30,000 individuals. Second, inmates do not elicit a great deal of sympathy from those appointed to care for them. Third, because prisons are virtual islands, where security is paramount, they function with little public oversight. Fourth, who believes the stories prisoners tell anyway?
We began this study with the idea of analyzing government documents to shed light on a health care institution that we only knew through anecdotes. What we discovered was that bad attitudes, bad laws and bad policies make getting to the bottom of health care in Virginia’s prisons an arduous, if not impossible, task.
Although far better informed than when we started, we end our study where we began: Health care in Virginia’s prison system, based largely on anecdotes, is woefully inadequate and leads to much unnecessary suffering and, in some instances, death. Along the way we discovered that Virginia’s correctional facilities are breeding grounds for Hepatitis C both inside and outside prisons, and that Virginia promotes cruelty and indifference by walling off the truth about prison health care from the public.
As a society, how civilized we are is reflected in the way we treat those whom we punish for not being civilized. It is our sincere hope that legislators and others will read this report and use it to begin addressing this problem of health care in Virginia’s prisons.
Date
Thursday, May 15, 2003 - 10:15am
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The administration of the death penalty in Virginia suffers from several systemic and fundamental failings. These failings raise doubts about whether the process is just and the results accurate. Without widespread reform in this system, support for the death penalty will continue to decline.
For proponents of the death penalty, this report should serve as a primer on the reforms necessary to ameliorate concerns about the fairness of the system. But it is more than that. This report describes how the death penalty is administered in Virginia more completely than any study with which I am familiar. It should be studied carefully by any person, and certainly any political or civic leader, who seeks an informed and responsible position on this controversial subject.
~Steven D. Benjamin
In April of 2000, the ACLU of Virginia published its first report on the status of the death penalty in Virginia. Since that time, a remarkable number of changes have taken place on this issue both in Virginia and throughout the country, which necessitated a second edition of the report. The first report examined four aspects of the administration of capital punishment in Virginia: prosecutorial discretion in the charging of capital crimes, quality of legal representation for the accused at trial, appellate review of trials resulting in the death penalty and the role of race. This report will look at those four areas and also add several other issues: the problem of prosecutorial misconduct in capital cases, the problem of executing mentally retarded offenders, the question of executing juvenile offenders and the danger of executing wrongfully convicted persons, as shown by the growing number of individuals who have been exonerated while on death row.
Date
Sunday, November 30, 2003 - 10:00am
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