VIRGINIA OFFICIALS HIDE THE CONTINUED ABUSE OF SOLITARY CONFINEMENT BEHIND EUPHEMISMS (2025) By Kevin “Rashid” Johnson

The government’s use of euphemisms is simply a sly way of lying. When a cop murders a defenseless child of color in cold blood, shooting him in the back, police departments call it a “police involved shooting.” This serves to disguise the reality of what actually happened with a vague term that implies many things, and typically nothing wrong on the cops’ part. Actually, this euphemism rouses images in the mind that the cops may have been the victim of the shooting, hence it invokes sympathy for the cops when the actual sentiment should and would be outrage if the public only knew what ACTUALLY happened.

This is but one example of the government’s use of euphemisms to deceitfully water down and disguise things that would otherwise galvanize the public if clearly and honestly described.

Another example is the term used by the Virginia prison system for solitary confinement, namely “Restorative Housing” (RH). Va officials began using the term in the wake of public protest of the ongoing use and abuse of solitary, after the UN declared the condition torture in 2011 and that its use should be confined to no more than 2 weeks, and a federal lawsuit brought by Va prisoners challenging long term solitary confinement in Va, titled Thorpe v. Virginia Department of Corrections.

The VaDOC has repeatedly denied using solitary confinement, disguising what is clearly solitary behind the euphemism RH.

But EVERY judge and human rights agency that has seen or heard evidence of the conditions of this status in Va’s prisons immediately call it solitary confinement.

In the federal lawsuit challenging the status, the presiding Judge, James P. Jones, has unwaveringly called this status solitary confinement in every ruling he has made in the case, and made the point that the term RH doesn’t disguise what is clearly torturous solitary confinement. (1) Virginia delegate Holly Siebold has said the exact same thing. In a Jan 9, 2025 Richmond Times Dispatch article she points out that calling this status RH doesn’t change the fact that it isolates people, and for long periods. As she was quoted saying, “Whatever words you use, it’s still isolation.” (2)

I might add that on Nov 20, 2024 during closing arguments in a hearing in my own federal district court case of Johnson v. Virginia Department of Corrections, that was brought in Richmond, Virginia, assistant attorney general Margaret O’Shea specifically admitted to the judge, Henry Hudson, that RH is in fact solitary confinement, but the VaDOC just doesn’t like to call it that. She brought the subject up, discussing the VaDOC’s security level S (as in solitary or segregation) that exists solely at Va’s notorious Red Onion State Prison, in relation to my housing status. Judge Hudson asked her, “What is Security level ‘S’ ?” O’Shea went on to explain that it is in fact “long term solitary confinement.” An admission the VaDOC and Va’s attorney general’s office has avoided making publicly and in lawsuits challenging the Restorative Housing status at Red Onion, and has made repeatedly lied in the media claiming doesn’t exist in Va prisons.

Not only does long term solitary confinement exist, hidden away in Red Onion in the remote mountains of Southwestern Va, but it exists in defiance of laws enacted by the Va legislature in 2023, that supposedly set specific limits on the use of RH.

The law, Code of Va section 53.1-39.2 requires that all restorative housing policies be written by the VaDOC director and be made publicly available. Also that prisoners on the status receive no less than 4 hours out of cell congregate activities daily.

Living conditions on the status are also supposed to be no more restrictive than general population. None of this is applied with Va’s RH, especially at remote Red Onion State Prison.

There are actually two levels of RH used in the VaDOC and are governed by two different policies. One is applied at all Virginia prisons and is relatively short in duration under Operating Procedure 841.1 titled “Restorative Housing Units,” the other is a long term status that exists secretly at Red Onion and Wallens Ridge on which prisoners remain from months to years to life.

The policy governing the long term “Restorative housing reduction step down program,” Red Onion Local Operating Procedure #802.A is a secret policy, unavailable to the public. It was written by the Red Onion warden and Western regional officials not the director of the VaDOC.

There is no out of cell recreation in either RH status, congregate nor otherwise. Prisoners in RH at all VaDOC prisons (whether you’re talking about Greensville, Nottoway, River North or Red Onion prisons), only receive 4 hours locked inside a single man dog kennel-style cage or chained immobile by their wrists and ankles to a steel desk bolted to the floor – a higher degree of restraint than being locked inside the cells.

Furthermore, in RH prisoners otherwise sit idle inside their cells all day with NOTHING TO DO. They have no property, no communication or musical devices, no televisions, etc. I sat in RH at Nottoway, Greensville and Red Onion for and experienced and witnessed all the prisoners held on the status search desperately for anything to do; begging for a book to read from guards and other prisoners who might have happened upon a book. In fact during July 2024, A. David Robinson, the VaDOC’s notoriously corrupt Operations Chief and de facto director issued an order to all VaDOC facilities to remove all Jpay tablets from RH, leaving prisoners unable to listen to music or send and receive email messages. This is nothing but punitive and torturous, but RH is not supposed to be punishment, only an increased security status or one used to safely house prisoners whose safety may be in jeopardy in general population.

The tablets were taken specifically to deter prisoners from resorting to RH confinement and prevent them from communicating abusive conditions, which are especially prominent in the RH units, to the outside. Robinson issued the ban after I used the Jpay system to send out articles and generate support and ongoing public attention to the hunger strike that groups of us undertook beginning in Dec 2023 and which I remained on for 71 days partly in protest of conditions at Red Onion. In response to my use of the Jpay tablets to communicate in this manner my tablet access was cut off.

Just as officials have repeatedly lied about the need of Va’s remote high security prisons to house the many chronically dangerous prisoners THAT VA NEVER HAD, and the director Chadwick Dotson lied about prisoners setting themselves on fire in desperate reaction to abuses at Red Onion, they are lying about the use of solitary confinement in Va prisons.

As Huey P. Newton pointed out long ago, it is an exercise in futility and a waste of the people’s time to beg unresponsive legislators to enact more laws when officials don’t obey the multitudes of laws that already exist.

This is why these remote prisons need to be shut down and Dortson and Robinson fired!

Dare to Struggle Dare to Win!

All Power to the People!

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Endnotes:

1. See for example, Thorpe v. Virginia Department of Corrections, 2021 U.S. LEXIS 112284 (June 15, 2021) (From the very beginning and throughout this opinion and ruling, Judge Jones refers to RH as “solitary confinement”)

2. Luca Powell, “Red Onion Official Suggested Making Inmates Pay For Burn Treatment” Richmond Times Dispatch, Jan 9, 2025