Brian Moran and The Indefensible Red Onion State Prison By William Thorpe

Okay. So the Virginia prison system has a low recidivist rate. But what does that have to do with the lawlessness of it's Red OnionState Prison officials who assault batter prisoners, deny showers, outside exercise, meals and falsely accuse prisoners in solitary Confinement-with contrived charges. Detain prisoners in solitary confinement arbitrarily and in violation of Virginia law OP 861.3 that requires a 90-day maximum, yet prisoners are held in solitary multiple decades. Then in violation of Virginia law, OP 866.1 impede the prisoner's ability to file complaints and grievances on the violations.

These accounts are comprehensively documented in the may 10, 2018 ACLU of Virginia's report: Silent Injustice: Solitary Confinement in Virginia which exposes the Virginia Department of Corrections behavior at Red Onion State Prison.

Instead of responding to, even denying the accounts in the ACLU'S report, the Virginia Department of Corrections through Brian J. Moran, Secretary of the public safety and Homeland Security in his Washington Post, June 15,2018; "Virginia Corrections System Is A Model For Other States" Op-Ed, chose to deflect and distort which typically is the classic recourse posture to the indefensible

Messers. Brian Moran and Co. lecture us that "correctional systems are often targets of criticism and skepticism"....."as if the numerous lawsuits filed by Red Onion State Prisoners seeking redress of violations of the U.S. Constitution and Virginia law by prison officials are mere exercises of "criticism and skepticism". Or the voluminous letters, petitions to Virginia politicians concerning prison official malfeasance including the ACLU's work are hallucinations to be dismissed and ignored and instead we should commend prison officials for selectively performing what the taxpayers of Virginia, the U.S. Constitution, and Virginia Law require they professionally do.

Contrary to Brian Moran's assertion: Red Onion State Prison was not built to specifically and exclusively be a "lockdown prison".  When it opened in 1998 as a maximum security prison it had approximate general population of 688 prisoners and solitary confinement or "lockdown" population of 352. Programs were also available to the prisoner population and the "fear" that Brian Moran speaks of..." "that increased movement and access to programs would jeopardize safety" could not have existed in its then operational model because a relative 2/3ds of the prison's population had more movement than what is allowed general population in 2018. Also, Virginia's General Assembly had in the middle 1980's instructed the Virginia Department of Corrections to never again detain all of the states so-called "worst of the worst" prisoners at one prison as a result of lessons learned from it's Mecklenburg Correctional Center experience circa 1984. (note page 169) However, the Virginia Department of Corrections logic which are for purposes of this work speculatively irrelevant, in 1998 did just the opposite with its opening of Red Onion State Prison.

The Red Onion State Prison solitary confinement question is specifically about prison officials intractable inability to comply with the same law that even permits them to work as prison officials.

We are told by Brian Moran, that since under the leadership of Virginia's Department of Corrections Director Harold W. Clarke, there has been a culture change that has resulted in statistical decrease of prisoners detained at Red Onion State Prison solitary confinement, underscoring a program, Step Down. Yet the findings of the ACLU's report exposing Red Onion State Prisons officials behavior for the specific 2011 to 2018 period details reprehensible malfeasance that are diametrically at odds with Brian Morans laudatory conclusions.

This is what Brian Moran should have responded to because this historical narrative of prison officials conflating their malfeasance and extra-judicial behavior with speculations of the prison condition has to change if equal justice before the law isn't mere opportunity conditioned by whatever idealistic narrative spouted by a status quo. If the context, as Brian Moran writes that "offenders housed at Red Onion have murdered, raped and attacked others including inmates," is supposed to mitigate, excuse even absolve the lawlessness of Red Onion State Prison. Then within Virginia society writ large are murderers, rapists, and all sorts of violators because each legal jurisdiction within the Commonwealth has its significant statistics of unsolved murders, rapes, attacks and other violations. Is the Commonwealth of Virginia via its Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security instructing us that murder, rapes, attacks within the Commonwealth justify violating the Virginia Constitution and laws by its elected officials and legal offices? Because that is the argument made by Brian Moran in his deflective defense of the lawlessness of prison officials.

In summation, Brian Moran and Red Onion State Prison officials are not even conveying to the Virginia public a true correct account of the number of prisoners detained under solitary confinement conditions and managed according to Virginia Department of Corrections solitary confinement operating procedures. What we are instead expected to accept is, renaming a thing fundamentally changes it? So solitary confinement is in the media now called restrictive housing and not it's historical, Administration Segregation and prisoners detained in other units i.e. D-building apart from C-building for years on end are not counted as solitary confinement prisoners.

This exercise in renaming exposes the reality which is messers. Brian Moran and Co. recognize that the odorous nature of those conditions which in the aggregate characterize solitary confinement are indefensible.

Note
Willliam Thorpe is detained in solitary confinement at Virginia's Red Onion State Prison