A NEW OMBUDSMAN FOR THE VIRGINIA PRISON SYSTEM IS BUSINESS AS USUAL (2024) By Kevin “Rashid” Johnson

In a token response to widespread exposure and calls for investigations of prisoners setting themselves on fire in desperate response to rampant racism and abuse at Virginia’s Red Onion State Prison, the prison system announced the appointment of a new ombudsman, Andrea Sapone.

The ombudsman operates under the prison system’s Inspector General’s office, which has done absolutely nothing to address mountains of abuse complaints coming out of Red Onion since it opened in 1998. It has done nothing to address the ongoing illegal abuse of long-term solitary confinement at the prison (euphemistically called Restorative Housing), which the prison system’s director Chadwick Dotson recently went in the media lying claiming to be only a temporary status. I spent 14 years in solitary confinement at the remote prison and it’s sister supermax Wallens Ridge. There are people who’ve been held for just as long in solitary in Red Onion right now.

Furthermore, in violation of a law passed by the state legislature during March of 2023, prisoners in Virginia’s solitary units DO NOT receive four hours out of cell congregate activities – they’re given four hours locked inside a single person dog-kennel style cage that is SMALLER than their cell or they are chained like a slave by their hands and feet to a steel desk that is bolted to the floor in the middle of the solitary cellblock – an even more extreme form of restraint than being strapped to a bed or chained in handcuffs and shackles inside one’s cell, which is a common behavior control and disciplinary measure used at the prison. There is no RECREATION – congregate nor otherwise – in solitary confinement in Virginia’s prisons. But the state’s inspector general has been silent about all of this.

But let me share with you what a “best case scenario” investigation and outcome into abuses at Red Onion would look like. I’ve seen it before, and it not only goes nowhere, but more deeply entrenches the culture of abuse, racism, neglect and corruption at these prisons. In fact, the Virginia Defenders can weigh in on the situation I’m going to offer as an example, because it is the very incident that led to the founding of the group. Namely the beating of Thomas Plummer at Wallens Ridge State Prison in the early 2000s. I know all about it because I was there and witnessed it all unfold.

THE INSPECTOR GENERAL’S OFFICE AT WORK

Thomas Plummer was a Black man confined at Wallens Ridge, Red Onion’s twin supermax that is located just up the road from Red Onion. Both prisons have always cycled the same people between them as employees and their friends and relatives.

Plummer was targeted and brutally beaten because of filing grievances at the prison by a group of guards, including a captain Isaac Hockett, a sergeant Matthew Hamilton (whose brother, Israel Hamilton, is now the warden of Keen Mountain, another remote Virginia prison located just an hour away from Red Onion), and others. After the assault Plummer was thrown in solitary at Wallens Ridge.

Outside attention and protest of the attack was generated by a circle of people from which grew the Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice and Equality headed by Phil Wilayto, who presently edits their newspaper, The Defender.

This protest led to damage control by the VaDOC, much like the present response to the prisoner burnings at Red Onion.

An agent with the Inspector General’s office named Johnny Acosta headed up the investigation of the Plummer assault. Acosta found that Plummer was definitely beaten and pursued criminal charges against the involved guards. The prosecutions became major news in the local media of the tiny towns in the area. The guards were featured teary-eyed denying the abuses and playing up the same lying stereotype as Dotson is now using, that these prisoners are dangerous men (which should divert attention and concern away from the abuses inflicted on them at these prisons), which is just a rehash of the old racist stereotypes projected against Blacks in the old South to excuse savage abuses like lynchings.

Then came the coverup, which exemplifies the culture of corruption in these remote prisons and why nothing short of shutting them down will end it. The ENTIRE staff at Wallens Ridge closed ranks to ensure the acquittal of their colleagues.

The judge allowed the jury to visit Wallens Ridge during the guards’ trial. The entire tour was staged to tamper with the jury – a crime by the way. On the day of the tour, a handpicked group of flunky inmates was moved into an emptied-out cellblock and told that a scared straight group was coming through. They were bribed with extra food at mealtimes, jobs and other perks to become as disruptive as they could inside their cells during the tour to scare the group. They were only too happy to accommodate.

When the jury came through they were given a taste of pure pandemonium, a staged performance of the sorts of animals the guards claimed they had to contend with at the prison. The shocked jury returned to court and quickly acquitted the guards, who turned around and sued Acosta. The entire staff went around the prison boasting for months about what they pulled off and how. There have been no serious investigations or prosecutions of guard abuses since.

During 2011 I was met with by the same Acosta, who was staging an investigation into an incident where the investigator at Red Onion had himself assaulted me, ripping out a large portion of my dreadlocks while I was in handcuffs. I confronted Acosta about what was done to him in the Plummer case, which he ADMITTED to have occurred, and asked how he presumed I might take any investigation conducted by him or his office seriously when he did nothing about what they did to him.

Again, the ombudsman works UNDER Acosta’s office. The abuse and corruption at Red Onion will continue, business as usual.