At least six inmates at a Virginia prison burned themselves using “improvised devices” in recent months, prompting renewed concerns about conditions for incarcerated people there and a call by some state lawmakers for an independent investigation.
Chadwick Dotson, the director of the Virginia Department of Corrections, criticized reports that said the burnings had been in protest of poor conditions at the facility, Red Onion State Prison, in Wise County, Va.
Mr. Dotson said in a statement on Wednesday that the inmates had burned themselves using “improvised devices” that were made by tampering with electrical outlets. The inmates did not set themselves on fire or immolate themselves, he added. He did not elaborate on the improvised devices they used.
Some inmates were treated for burns at a hospital, he said, and others did not need outside medical treatment.
“All six inmates have been referred to mental health staff for treatment, and it should be noted that several of these inmates have a history of engaging in self-harm,” he said.
Mr. Dotson issued the statement after the burnings were covered in news reports, including by Radio IQ, a Virginia public radio station, and addressed by human rights groups and politicians. Prison Radio, which broadcasts dispatches by incarcerated people, brought attention to the cases in October.
Kevin Johnson, a correspondent for Prison Radio who was one of several prisoners at Red Onion to participate in a hunger strike that began in December 2023, said in an audio recording that he had spoken to one of the men who had burned themselves.
He said that the man had told him that “the racism and abuses, the hard and inhumane conditions at Red Onion were so intolerable that he and others were setting themselves on fire in desperate attempts to be transferred away from the prison.”
“These were not protests, he made clear, but acts of desperation hoping to get out of an insufferable situation” at the prison, Mr. Johnson added.
Reports about the burnings prompted the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus to issue a statement on Tuesday that said that since Sept. 15 at least 12 Black men incarcerated at Red Onion had set themselves on fire “in response to the degrading and inhumane conditions” at the prison.
People who have been incarcerated at Red Onion, a supermax prison that has an average of about 740 inmates, described “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,” the statement said.
The caucus, which has 32 members, called on Virginia’s governor, Glenn Youngkin, and Mr. Dotson to start an independent investigation into allegations of abuse and mistreatment at the prison and at any other state correctional facility with similar complaints.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia seconded the call for an investigation. The group filed a lawsuit against the prison in 2019 to stop its solitary confinement program.
Mr. Dotson said in his statement that the prison had sent invitations to each member of the caucus to visit the prison.
“The recent round of stories about Red Onion are nothing more than bad-faith efforts to try to score cheap political points by advocacy groups who pursue prison abolition and policies that would make Virginians less safe,” Mr. Dotson said.
Mr. Youngkin said at a news conference on Tuesday that the cases of self-burnings had been investigated by the Department of Corrections.
“I do think that part of the investigation is to understand how they’ve happened and why they’ve happened,” he said.
This was not the first time there have been reports of inmates at Red Onion setting themselves on fire.
DeAndre Gordon, a Red Onion inmate, suffered third-degree burns in May 2023 after he set a fire in his cell to get out of the prison, Radio IQ reported.
Red Onion State Prison has been the subject of numerous reports and lawsuits that have raised concerns about its conditions, including a 1999 report by Human Rights Watch and a 2001 report by Amnesty International.
The post Virginia Lawmakers Want to Know Why 6 Inmates Have Burned Themselves appeared first on New York Times.
