A Story of Hope

Author: Corinthian Sublett

I am a lifer who has spent 10 of my first 11 years in incarceration in the mountains between WRSP and Keen Mountain, since standard DOC policy states that lifers must serve 15 years (down from 20!) before becoming eligible for a level 3. It took me a while to develop the “I’m going to be stuck here, might as well make the best of it” mindset.

Access to programming has always been an issue for me. Of course, obtaining my GED proved to be quite easy. However, the CORIS annual review questionnaire recommends m for anger management and vocational training. It sounds good in theory, and looks even better on paper. But, in application, I spent over seven years on the waiting list because lifers get automatically bumped to the bottom despite current vacancies. Again, it took me a while to come to terms with the fact that this is my new reality.

During this time, my hopes ebbed and flowed with each legislative session, with the passing and vetoing of certain bills. Naturally, I was ecstatic over the passage of the “Good Time” bill for my brothers. “Get out, take the chance that I don’t have, and leave this place in your rear view”, would be my genuine response to everyone. My mask did its job by hiding the hurt of not having the same opportunity. However, my spiritual approach required me not to give up hope for myself and to always instill hope for the next guy.

In late 2024m the DOC launched the LVCC incentive program. Like many others, I applied for it. Out of everyone I knew, I was one of the rare ones who actually got a response stating that I qualified, but that they could not accommodate my sealed religious diet, and asked if I was still interested. After affirming my intent, I excitedly informed my family of this. As months went by, I watched people trickle out to LVCC to eventually discover that not only was there a waiting list, but that they could not accommodate security level 4 inmates.

Not giving up hope, I kept on. Through discussions of our potential new governor, hope began to rise again. Then the announcement comes out in June about the intended Virginia model, and once again, I applied. A few weeks later, the warden called over a hundred people out to speak with him (sans me), basically saying that these people qualified for the incentive program, and encouraged others to apply because Keen Mountain was on track to receive the “problem inmates”. My hope went haywire in trying to rationalize the fact that I was not included in the warden’s powwow and that I was already approved for the Lawrenceville initiative. Come to find out, I was in the first wave of “incentive transfers” to go to Buckingham only a few days later. This has been an incredible lesson that the universe has taught me. Everything in the universe is in a constant state of motion. Physics teaches us that the only difference between states of matter, thoughts, energy, and spirit is the frequencies of vibration; philosophy teaches us that you get out of life the thoughts and the energies that you put in. Like attacks like. The lesson I learned is that action and reaction are not always simultaneous and that life has its own way of rebalancing the scales, on its own time.

Hope is one of those vibrations that you must continuously maintain for a long time in order to see anything arise from it. I’ve been so used to hearing ‘no” on a regular basis, and maintaining my hope has not been easy. It took a decade of maintaining my hope before I got to see its results. And now, with the prospect of bringing back parole and prison reform and looking more attainable than ever, hope is beginning to burn within me once again.

Never give up on Hope, lest hope gives up on you.