On Wednesday afternoon, Virginia Delegates Mike Jones and Holly Seibold addressed a crowd in freezing weather at a rally about the abuse at Red Onion Prison. This is an issue that The Virginia Defenders have been leading on, reporting about prisoners who are holding hunger strikes and intentionally burning themselves because of the abuse in the prison.
Delegate Seibold spoke about her experience touring the supermax Red Onion Prison in Wise County (about 400 miles away from her district in Fairfax). Last year, Seibold sponsored a law that limited the use of guard dogs.
.
“The inhumane conditions that I had read about and learned about through the hunger strike remained unchanged even after I visited,” Seibold recalled. “A significant portion of Red Onion’s population, as you know, is being locked down in a concrete cell for 20, 22 hours a day.”
Seibold mentioned the law she passed about guard dogs in prisons. “I went in May before the policy took effect, so the dogs were still out… They should only be deployed if there’s a fight of three or more.”
Delegate Mike Jones also made the long trip to Wise County from Richmond. Jones shared that he could hear the barking from outside the facility.
“They (prison officials) may say the dogs are not roaming—they were sitting by the wall. There was a striped area, which lets you know that dog will hit anything inside that area… They’ve got to be retrained or get a new group of dogs. A properly trained dog should sit right here until I tell them to do something,” Jones said.
Last month, Virginia Director of the Department of Corrections Chad Dotson testified to the Virginia House Committee on Public Safety that Virginia prisons are the safest in the country. Dotson blamed the self-burning on the prisoners’ behavior.
The concerning question is: Is Dotson lying to the committee? Is Red Onion breaking the law with its use of guard dogs? What’s happening with the inmates who are self-harming at the prison? An investigation into Virginia’s prisons is underway and could produce answers about what’s happening at that facility in the farthest reaches of Virginia. What Jones and Seibold are saying is at odds with Dotson’s testimony.
Interestingly, Dotson has a Substack where, instead of writing about Red Onion, he writes about the Cincinnati Reds.
Read more updates from Goad Gatsby HERE
Main photo by Goad Gatsby | Delegate Mike Jones at Rally Against Red Onion Prison. January 8, 2025. Richmond, Virginia
