A Native Americans Views of Virginia’s Red Onion State Prison. This is an exchange featured on [unclear]. During January 2024, I was transferred away from Virginia’s notoriously racist and abusive Red Onion State Prison. after participating in a group hunger strike protesting conditions at the prison. My strike ultimately lasted 71 days. I returned to the prison during September 2024, where I was placed in general population for just over a month, but was ultimately thrown in solitary confinement after officials claimed I was trying to procure weapons to attack guards after they attempted to instigate conflicts between me and other prisoners, by trying to put hits on me and spread false rumors that I am a pedophile, rapist, and a snitch. Numerous prisoners came forward as witnesses to this to my attorneys. No weapons were ever recovered from me, however, so an inmate informant, Dennis Webb, was used to implicate me in all this in a statement he gave Red Onion investigators, that I received copies of in litigation I had against Red Onion officials.
In the solitary cell block I was housed in a cell next to Arlen Hatten, a Native American who was recently transferred to Red Onion from South Dakota, and he witnessed my efforts to challenge and bring public attention to the conditions at Red Onion, which he commended. Although reluctant, he agreed to share and for me to publish his impressions about Red Onion, given the perspectives of someone new to the prison and Virginia who had no agenda for, or against, Virginia officials. This article expresses all his perspectives which he gave during an exchange between us in [unclear] 2024, November.
Arlen was surprise transferred to Red Onion on October 6, 2024 directly from a South Dakota prison. He received no prior notice or hearing to facilitate nor contest the transfer. Arden is a registered Oglala Lakota Sioux who was a spiritual leader among Native Americans in the South Dakota prison system. When he arrived at Red Onion, he was escorted into the prison from the transport vehicle by a group of guards led by Lieutenant Joshua Massengill. Massengill made a lasting impression on Arlen with his first remarks to him, namely, “Don’t give officers here a hard time, because we will fuck you up.” Arlen said he initially laughed in response, not thinking it was meant to be taken seriously. I asked if he now took it serious. He replied with an emphatic, “Yes!” I asked what changed his mind. He responded that he had seen how quickly things can, and do, escalate from zero to 100 with guards at the prison.
Arlen said, in just the two months he had been at Red Onion, he’d seen guards repeatedly tear gas prisoners in the cell block for next to nothing. Many others he’d seen slam face first to the floor, beaten while restrained from behind. Others still, he’d seen attacked by groups of guards, dressed out in body riot armor. He even witnessed an elderly prisoner beaten by a group of guards who just entered his cell and attacked him for no cause. He noted the psychological effect of Red Onion on prisoners: it’s that if they get out of line in the slightest way, or guards even believe they have, the situation would instantly go from something small to something huge, which induces a sense of terror, like experiencing an abusive parent.
He feels he was sent to Red Onion to instill fear in him, because he is not supposed to have gone there as a new admission to the Virginia prison system, in the first place. As a new intake he was supposed to go to the Virginia Department of Corrections Reception Center, Nottoway Correctional Center, to be classified and orientated into the prison system. But instead, he was sent to a super maximum security prison before he had even been classified to any security level at all. Worse still, once he was classified at Red Onion, he scored a level three security level, which is medium security, meaning he didn’t meet the level five and six security levels of Red Onion, and was by Virginia’s own prison policies, never supposed to have been housed there.
Arlen said his biggest takeaway from observing and experiencing Red Onion officials is their total lack of decency or moral fiber. “They have no sense of right or wrong,” he noted. With them, “It’s my way or the highway.” Arlen said Red Onion staff simply don’t treat prisoners as human beings, in which case they obviously didn’t regard them as such. He points out that their practices of hurting and abusing people only traumatizes the victims, worsening their problems. “They’re only doing more damage,” he pointed out. I responded that these officials have no intention of helping us. Their abuse is motivated by disdain, hatred, and a conditioned compulsion to dehumanize us, with which he agreed.
He noted that officials at Red Onion are deeply deceitful. They merely pay lip service to being humane, rule abiding and considerate, and one must take everything they say with a grain of salt. They almost never do what they say they will when it is something of benefit or service to a prisoner. They lie as a matter of routine. He advises one to not believe anything they say. He says facility requests he writes never come back. When he first got to the prison he was told by counselors that they would contact his family and let them know where he was. They never did.
He observed that when around me, all the guards were required to wear and activate body cameras, and with the cameras on, their demeanor immediately changed from not talking or being arrogant and rude, to being courteous and polite. But as soon as they turned the cameras off, they were not nice at all, and seemed relieved to drop the act and take off their masks. He said he avoids trouble with them by simply not talking to them or giving them any reason to notice him. He observes they are openly racist, and sees the way Blacks are treated at Red Onion a lot like he has experienced racism as a Native American. He wants to be away from Red Onion as soon as possible. This is Kevin Rashid Johnson coming to you from within America’s Gulag Archipelago. Dare to struggle dare to win. All power to the people.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.
