by Laurence Hammack | Jan 2, 2011 | Prisons
INDEPENDENCE — As John Garman walks the hallways and cellblocks of Virginia’s newest prison, he is met at every turn by eerie silence. Prisons are noisy places, and by now this sprawling, 1,024-bed complex should be a cacophony of buzzing electronic gates,...
by Laurence Hammack | Mar 7, 2010 | Prisons
STATE FARM — Henry Stump is quick to smile, even though he’s spent all but one of his adult years in prison and is now pushing 50. His face betrays no anger when he talks about being denied parole 18 times since 1991. More than anything, Stump is puzzled....
by Laurence Hammack | Oct 15, 2007 | Prisons
She had to try hard to get there, but Linda Lee Kraige is where she wants to be: an isolation cell on the first floor of the Roanoke County-Salem Jail. Wearing a blaze orange jumpsuit that makes her long white hair all the more striking, Kraige smiles often during an...
by Laurence Hammack | Sep 26, 2004 | Prisons
CAPRON — Behind locked steel doors and fences topped with razor wire, old men sit in wheelchairs and wait for their life sentences to end. Floyd Brown of Roanoke is one of them. He hopes it will be parole, not death, that releases him from Deerfield Correctional...
by Laurence Hammack | Jun 28, 2002 | Prisons
BLAND — Six inmates stood at the edge of the prison yard, waiting like expectant fathers. A white van pulled up to the gate of Bland Correctional Center. Karen Hough stepped out. “I’m so excited I could cry,” she said. Hough swung open the van...
by Laurence Hammack | Dec 9, 2001 | Prisons
HICKORY FLATS — From a hillside near his Lee County farm, Edgar Fannon gazes at a sprawling complex of concrete bunkers and razor wire, not quite sure what to make of his new neighbor. Below him, a huge federal prison is as quiet as it will ever be. The last...