Ombuds Report Doesn’t Rule Out Racism or Retaliation at Red Onion State Prison
by Douglas Ankney
A January 2026 report (“Report”) released by Andrea Sapone, Virginia’s first Corrections Ombudsman from the Office of Inspector General (OSIG), did not rule out claims of racism and retaliation at Red Onion State Prison (ROSP) in rural southwestern Virginia. The Report was released after an extensive investigation of ROSP by the OSIG and Virginia lawmakers.
The investigation was sparked by at least six prisoners who set themselves on fire at ROSP in 2024 to protest conditions inside the supermax prison. Lawmakers from Virginia’s Black Caucus put the number of prisoners who harmed themselves in protest of the living conditions at twelve. Additionally, the ROSP prisoners went on a hunger strike.
“People who have been incarcerated at [ROSP] describe being regularly subjected to racial and physical abuse from correctional officers, medical neglect including the withholding of medicine, excessive stays in solitary confinement with one report of 600 consecutive days, inedible food having been covered in maggots and officers’ spit, and violent dog attacks,” according to a release from the Black Caucus. “These repeated and tragic self-immolation attempts, and accompanying hunger strikes, reflect the psychological and physical toll the gruesome prison conditions can have on incarcerated individuals.”
Then-DOC Director Chadwick Dotson attempted to downplay the events. He argued semantics, stating the prisoners had not self-immolated but that they “had burned themselves by using improvised devices that were created by tampering with electrical outlets.” Dotson said all six of the prisoners were treated for their injuries and returned to ROSP. where they were referred to mental health staff for treatment.
Whether the burns to the prisoners were caused by self-immolation or electricity seemed to have no bearing on Sapone’s response. In December 2024, she told the Public Safety Committee of the Virginia House of Delegates that the OSIG “takes all allegations of abuse seriously” and promised that “a Red Onion investigation will be prioritized as soon as we have full staff to do it properly.”
True to her word, Sapone’s promised investigation began “[w]ith a series of both announced and unannounced visits to” ROSP. The team of investigators reviewed over 500 complaints, 77 incident reports and associated camera footage. The investigation prioritized claims of physical or sexual abuse, inhumane treatment, poor food quality and extensive periods of isolation. One shortcoming of the investigation was its limitation “to relevant circumstances as specified in the complaints.”
At ROSP, as well as at all of Virginia’s prisons classified as security level 4 or above, wrist watches are prohibited. Compounded with the property limitations on calendars, radios and televisions, it is very easy for a prisoner in segregated confinement to become disoriented as to day of the week or even the time of day when an incident occurred. Checking video footage from the date and time written on a complaint may not reveal the incident because the date and time on the complaint is likely to be incorrect.
The Report concluded that most of the prisoners’ complaints were unsubstantiated. For example, the Virginia DOC refers to isolation and segregation as “Restorative Housing.” The Report concluded that ROSP officials did not violate DOC polices regarding Restorative Housing, and noted that many prisoners were confined for longer periods because they refused to be searched before exiting their cells. Yet the Report apparently did not address how the investigators discerned between the instances when a prisoner had refused and when a guard falsely stated he had refused.
The Report also found unsubstantiated the claims of “medical or mental health neglect, poor food quality, inhumane living conditions, and physical or sexual abuse.” And the Report found that ROSP was in compliance with the DOC’s grievance policy.
Yet these findings are difficult to square with ongoing litigation in the federal courts. For example, in Barnes v. Mullins, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 123880 (W.D. Va. 2025), the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia found that the prisoner plaintiff had alleged a plausible claim of retaliation related to his transfer to ROSP because he had filed a grievance regarding the lack of medical treatment he was receiving. And in Malvo v. Clarke, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 181341 (W.D. Va. 2025), the Court determined that a prisoner plaintiff in ROSP’s protective custody unit had stated a plausible claim related to a guard at ROSP threatening him and another guard writing a false disciplinary report in retaliation for the prisoner exercising his First Amendment rights. These are only two of the many cases litigated.
The Report did, at least, state that the investigators concluded that evidence of claims of racism and retaliation was “inconclusive.”
Additional source: Virginia Mercury
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