WHO’S RUNNING THE VIRGINIA PRISON SYSTEM? (2024) by Kevin “Rashid” Johnson

The Virginia legislature enacted a set of laws governing the state’s prison system. Under those laws it designated a director as the system’s head of operations. (1)

Chadwick Dotson was appointed under the administration of present Virginia governor Glenn Younkin as the prison system’s new director. Dotson came into this position with no prior experience in running a prison system. In fact he was previously a prosecutor and a judge based in remote Wise County Virginia, where the state’s two notoriously racist and abusive supermax prisons Red Onion and Wallens Ridge are located. It must be noted that Wise county is a remote county is the mountains of rural Southwestern Va that is populated by communities of segregated whites. As prosecutor and judge, Dotson acted as an enforcer of abuses at Red Onion and Wallens Ridge, upholding selective prosecutions of prisoners by officials at these prisons and protecting the same officials from prisoner litigations and requests for criminal charges against abuses by them. It is no wonder that he went from Wise county judge to VaDOC director; reflecting his blatant sympathies with the prison system.

Actually, a peculiar trend is evident if we look at the composition of the Virginia prison system’s central headquarters.

Alongside Dotson, is A. David Robinson (Arnold David Robinson), the VaDOC’s Chief of Corrections Operations. Unlike Dotson, Robinson has been a fixture in the Va prison system for decades, and was the warden of Wallens Ridge, during periods of extreme abuses there. In fact, Robinson is the de facto director of the Va prison system, running things from behind the scenes, with Dotson operating largely as a figurehead and its public face. With this power, Robinson has implemented a system of cronyism and nepotism by inventing new positions at headquarters and placing a good ‘ol boy circle of racist dirty officials hailing from Wise County in those positions.

Among them is Randall Mathena, who is now at VaDOC headquarters as the Director of Security and Correctional Enforcement (a completely invented position). Mathena was assistant warden of Red Onion, when it first opened in 1998, under chief warden George Deeds. Red Onion came under fire almost from the moment it opened for operations for extreme racism and abuses against its predominantly Black prisoner population by its near totally white staff. This resulted from a 1999 Human Right Watch investigation and report. This exposure prompted a change of administrative personnel at the prison as window dressing, where Mathena and Deeds were removed. After a cooling off period, Mathena returned to Red Onion in Oct 2011 as the chief warden, restoring much of the prison’s old culture of racism and prisoner mistreatment. Mathena is now at VaDOC headquarters instituting such practices statewide.

Then there is Fletcher, who rose from the position of a petty guard at Wallens Ridge in the early 2000s to now presiding over the VaDOC’s special security group called the ‘Strike Force’ or Special Response Team (SRT). The SRT patterns itself after police SWAT units, and fancies itself a military style Special Operations Unit (even calling its activities “Ops”). The group exists ostensibly to respond to riots, hostage situations, and such incidents that require specialized tactical intervention. The SRT however operates as a prison guard gang, that has no oversight in its conduct when mobilized in prisons. Under Robinson, Fletcher has been expanding the role of SRT. HQ officials send SRT units all over the state at will to carry out targeted hits on disliked prisoners like myself. They operate without identification tags and routinely beat prisoners and destroy prisoners’ property with ZERO accountability. Once mobilized by HQ they have overriding authority over even the wardens of prisons they are activated inside of.

Across the VaDOC, Robinson and company have been systematically closing down the predominantly Black-staffed prisons and shifting resources to, and replacing them with, prisons located in rural segregated white communities like Wise county. And almost without exception, the prisoners disproportionately targeted for assignment to these prisons are Black and Brown. In response to recent reports of Black prisoners at Red Onion setting themselves on fire in desperate efforts to be transferred away from racist mistreatment there, Dotson ignored the long-standing complaints and notoriety of racist abuses at Red Onion claiming the prisoners had nothing to complain about (racist abuse is “nothing”), and basically took the position that these white-staff-dominated prisons are more secure and less inclined to introduction of contraband than largely Black-staffed ones.

This in itself is a thinly disguised position reflecting racist predispositions of VaDOC HQ officials. Indeed it is the same position held by racist Southern whites during the era of Jim Crow segregation (1865-1965) that kept Blacks out of government office, including as prison guards and police. This circle of officials at VaDOC headquarters is turning back the clock to that period. They are concentrating Va’s highest security prisons where predominantly Black prisoners are held because portrayed as the “most dangerous,” in rural white communities where they suffer the harshest treatment.

The VaDOC headquarters staff in composed of a closed corrupt nepotistic circle of officials who operate above the law and free of public accountability. A cabal that needs to be broken up and the invented titles given to them eliminated.

Dare to Struggle Dare to Win!

All Power to the People!
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Endnotes:

1. See, Va Code section 53.1-10