Prisoners Burned Themselves. So Staff Discussed “Making Them Pay Money.”

Last year, six prisoners at Red Onion State Prison, a supermax facility on the state’s rural west side, intentionally burned themselves, prompting scrutiny of the prison from lawmakers and the public. 

But rather than address the conditions that may have led to such desperate measures, emails obtained by The Appeal show that corrections staff discussed how best to punish those who’d self-immolated. In the documents, which were obtained through a public records request and partially redacted, staff members discussed how to deter further incidents of self-harm. Suggestions included charging prisoners thousands of dollars for medical care and criminally prosecuting them.

“I believe on Monday, we pull policy and start charging the inmates thousands of dollars for the hospital and medical treatment,” Red Onion’s chief of security wrote in September. “Once we iron through this, we can send the word through the inmate population that they’re going to be changed [sic] thousands for their medical due to intentional manipulation. Just my thoughts on how to prevent this kind of behavior.” 

One of the recipients, Assistant Warden Dwayne Turner, voiced his approval.

“Yeah, sounds good,” he wrote. “But, the first thing we need to figure out is why? Do they think they will get transferred? If so, we need to make sure they don’t…. obviously they think they can gain something from doing that. We need to make sure they know they won’t gain anything….but making them pay money is good too[.]”

The minimum wage for incarcerated workers in Virginia starts at $0.27 an hour. Local media outlet VPM News reported that Turner was promoted to assistant warden after he was accused of choking a restrained prisoner. Turner did not respond to The Appeal’s request for comment.

Employees also discussed filing criminal charges against those who’d committed self-harm. In an internal email, the prison’s institutional investigator said that the assistant warden had spoken with a Wise County prosecutor, who “stated that she will prosecute these inmate’s [sic] for their actions.” 

In the same email, the investigator reported that “in the past few weeks” three prisoners had “set Fire [sic] to themselves.” This characterization contradicts the Virginia Department of Corrections’ (VADOC’s) previous public statements.

“To be clear, these inmates did not set themselves on fire or self-immolate,” a spokesperson wrote to The Appeal in November. “They were treated for electrical burns at the Department’s secure medical facility at the VCU Medical Center and cleared to return to the facility.” 

Brett Hall, the Commonwealth’s Attorney for Wise County and the City of Norton, Virginia, told The Appeal in an email that “no official decisions have been made regarding these specific matters, as of today.” 

“We have a great working relationship with the Virginia Department of Corrections and will continue to do so,” he wrote. “These matters, just like any others, take time and require extensive review of the facts and the law. I do not have a timeline of when a decision may be reached regarding whether these specific cases will be prosecuted.”

In an email, a VADOC spokesperson told The Appeal that the six prisoners were charged with disciplinary violations. Two were charged with “setting a fire damaging or injury to person or property.” Four were charged with “self-mutilation.” None have yet been billed for their hospital visits.

In the years before this latest wave of self-immolations, a man named DeAndre Gordon set himself on fire inside the facility. He later told a Virginia public radio station that guards had been routinely beating him, and he feared they might kill him. He said he decided to self-immolate because Red Onion did not have a burn unit, thus guaranteeing he’d be taken off-site.

Prison Radio first reported last year’s incidents, which The Virginia Defender then investigated. On Wednesday, the Defender is holding a rally to call for Red Onion’s closure and VADOC director Chad Dotson’s termination. 

In December, Dotson told state legislators at a hearing on Red Onion that prisoners should “behave” if they want to be transferred to different facilities. He dismissed concerns about the prison’s conditions. 

For decades, prisoners and their loved ones have decried conditions at Red Onion. At the December legislative hearing, one woman told lawmakers that her son in Red Onion was often given “ghost trays”—meal trays that contain no food. She said he lost 40 pounds in two months. Another woman said that when she was on the phone with her loved one, she heard officers beating a mentally ill man. She told lawmakers that Red Onion holds men in “harsh, degrading, and inhumane conditions.” A VADOC spokesperson told The Appeal in an email that four of the people who burned themselves were held in the Restorative Housing Unit, a restrictive area in which prisoners are confined to their cells for at least 20 hours a day. 

One man who self-immolated, Demetrius Wallace, previously told The Virginia Defender that he lit himself ablaze in an attempt to get transferred out of Red Onion. 

“I did actually set my foot on fire,” Wallace said. “I got the charge that shows it. They came to my cell door and saw the flames on the side of my leg.”

Wallace said he’d been the victim of retaliation over a lawsuit he filed. According to his hand-written complaint, he told two officers that his toilet and sink had been broken for weeks. They allegedly began cursing at him. One guard handcuffed him. Another officer then maced him. Wallace says several officers assaulted him before putting him in segregation.

“I was in unbearable pain all over my body and still had an [sic] tremendous amount of mace in my eyes,” Wallace’s complaint says. 

In response to the incidents of self-immolation, Virginia State Delegate Michael Jones visited the prison in December. Jones is scheduled to speak at Wednesday’s rally.

Jones told The Appeal that, during his visit, he spoke with a man who had burned himself. The prisoner’s wound was still bandaged. Multiple men told Jones the facility had racist guards, poor medical care, and few educational opportunities. 

Jones said Virginia’s correctional system must change its culture and treat prisoners “like people.” 

“If you can’t do it to me, then you shouldn’t do it to them,” he told The Appeal. “If you wouldn’t do it to these brothers when you just walk by them on the street, you shouldn’t do it in there.”

But rather than addressing whichever conditions led to the self-immolations, internal emails suggest that VADOC staff was focused on punishment.

In one email thread, a prison nurse asked employees and other medical staff, “What can we do to prevent further burn injuries? Do we believe this is a manipulation of transfer?” 

Assistant Warden Turner replied. 

“We have been talking about this all morning, i [sic] do believe they are trying to manipulate a transfer, or just a trip to MCV [the VCU medical center] for whatever reason,” he said. “As far as preventing further burns, I spoke to the commonwealth attorneys office this morning about prosecuting these inmates for setting a fire in their cell. We will charge these inmates with 104 and if found guilty, they will be charged restitution and have to pay for the hospital visit as well as the transportation costs.”

The VADOC’s disciplinary code defines a 104 as “setting a fire resulting in actual damage or injury to persons or property.”

In a separate thread, VADOC’s chief of security management contemplated why people would take such drastic measures.

“Not sure the motive except- contact visit(not sure if that would happen) [sic],” he wrote, “which we should make sure doesn’t happen.”