Today is March 9th, it is a Monday. There are a dozen and more deficiencies that represent the Virginia Department of Corrections and its Virginia Model: Dangerous overcrowding of its prisons, all of which are substandard environments, even for warehousing people; archaic policies that fail daily and have done so for decades; poorly trained, poorly educated staff, who too often are of questionable character and attracted to Virginia DOC jobs for all the reasons that should prevent their being hired.
The Virginia DOC is a network of interwoven problems and nothing besides. When you couple that with the Virginia Model politics that reflect Virginia’s four hundred years of unsavory oppression, you end up with a national pariah known for excessive sentencing, distressingly backwards laws and programs and too many other problems to list here. And among that list is the lacking medical care, an unwritten Virginia DOC policy that has been the root cause of death and disabled humans across the Virginia DOC’s thirty-seven franchise prisons. The Virginia DOC spends 1.56 billion annually. That amounts to 27% of the entire state budget. Of that amount, 294 million was allotted to the medical care of its twenty-four thousand captives in 2025, approximately one fifth the Virginia DOC budget. The Virginia DOC went over that budget by 23 million in 2025.
Going over budget is generally a tendency of the Virginia DOC. With the amount spent, it is curious that proper medical care is still not being provided and not at the standards expected or required to resolve health problems. Too often, the Virginia DOC simply slaps a band-aid on the issues, pun intended. A policy of delay and deny is regularly applied as a means of lowering cost. This, of course, backfires, leading to an ever increasing number of lawsuits against the Virginia DOC, and all those are part of the public record. The impact on captives, victims of the Virginia DOC is high as any reasonable person would expect, and it is disgraceful.
Justice is defined simply as squaring up a debt. The delivered extrajudicial punishments and harms inflicted by the prison industrial complex as a whole, and notably, the Virginia DOC is beyond the requirements of achieving justice and are also rarely accounted for, making for poor calculus. That impact becomes dangerous, violently so, to captives who have teeth destroyed, limbs removed, cancer treatments ignored, surgeries delayed and denied for years and years — gross disability created and forced upon the bodies of captives.
Such victimization then extends its impact to the wider community when the captives file suit, or, more importantly, when they go home. Then their families bear the burden of care and the struggle to cover costs of care affects more than just the captive, and this extends to the cost of Medicaid, Medicare, and other insurance premiums, costing taxpayers more and making the community suffer more. This is the Virginia Model working over the citizens of Virginia, and in fact, the U.S. entire. How ironic then that Governor Abigail Spanberger gave her recent State of the Union response from the House of Burgesses. The House of Burgesses turned against the British crown in revolt because of over taxation, under representation and general despotism. Ignoring citizen demands led to that, and so would suggest that Governor Spanberger supports such grand action when necessary.
For example, when the citizens of Virginia have demanded dramatic and drastic reforms to both the Virginia DOC and the Virginia system as a whole, yet the Virginia General said, “Well, it does not apply.” These demands have included the repeated call for decarceration in a state with the ninth highest level of incarceration known for excessive sentencing, while having a statewide population of 8.7 million, only a half million less than New York City. So many problems in Virginia and never a solution or resolution. The options seem quite thin, given the general lawless and unconstitutional behaviors of Virginia staff from the top down and including delayed and denied medical care. Questions need to be asked, serious questions. and a demand for serious people able to provide serious and sensible solutions.
Why did I order medications for allergies and for chronic pain last week and still can’t get them? Why have I been trying to get chronic pain medicine for six weeks and still don’t have it? Virginia has none of this and expectations of a continued downward trajectory are high. More captives will become ill, disabled, and death will follow the pestilence, all at the hands of sick and twisted people who excel only at squandering resources, destroying people and the communities they came from in the process.
My name is David Annarelli. I’m a contributing writer of Prison Journalism Project. You find me on Instagram @davidannarelli, prisonwriters.com, minutesbeforesix.com, davidannarelli.wordpress.com. Thanks.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.
