This is “The Virginia Model: Failure of Grievance Process.” Today is December 19, 2025.
If the Virginia model is about anything, it’s about ideas and policies that are archaic and failed. Harmful punishment, prejudice and bigotry, and eugenics are just a few among the litany of banned policy. Over the years and decades, the Virginia DOC [Dept. of Corrections] has implemented a variety of policies and processes to at least give an illusion of legitimacy and propriety. Among these is the offender grievance process.
To begin with, the grievance process is an absolute requirement for two other avenues of relief: lawsuits, whether they are tort claims or suits filed under USC 42, Section 1983, regarding violations of civil rights, and the other is the recently implemented Oversight Committee, which is based out of the Office of the State Inspector General. Regardless of its use as an internal means to address issues from rotten food to abusive guards or anything else that may present problems, the captive must exhaust any sort of administrative remedy if there is any hope to pursue relief from the outside – from outside the prison. Courts have acknowledged that this process is flawed and leaves options for filing suit when the process fails or is hindered from within, which is often the case.
Within the Virginia DOC, the Virginia model grievance process is a non starter. Staff consistently label captives who exercise their rights. That label will follow a captive throughout the Virginia DOC. That label draws unjustified targeted harassments and abuses by staff, especially where staff abuses are the subject of grievances. The process amounts to asking the Virginia DOC to police and correct itself; always problematic among government institutions, but particularly so within institutions as corrupt as the DOC. As an example, I will point out the recent exposure of a HIPAA violation under US 42, Section 1320, Subsection D. Culprits of that crime conspired as a group to file a false in-house charge against me, violating the 1st Amendment and several laws. I filed approximately 10 complaints against every staff member involved in the criminal act. Every one of those grievances has disappeared, poof, never to be seen again.
This is all too common, even with the least of [inaudible] issues. As stated previously, the courts have recognized this issue and have ruled that a process so cumbersome or hindered amounts to no process at all. The new Oversight Committee, an outside entity whose entire purpose, it is expected, is to check the Virginia DOC and, when necessary, force it into compliance with standards including human and constitutional rights. One would also expect, rightfully, that the Oversight Committee would hold the Virginia DOC and those standards set by the paragons of corrections, Norway, for example, to be held. Sadly, that would be a non starter, because the Oversight Committee requires that captives use the grievance process first and exhaust it.
So, for example, when Virginia DOC staff committed numerous crimes against — regarding the incident mentioned above — several of which were violent in nature, they did not investigate because no grievances were filed. I wonder if the dead captive at Greenville Correctional a few weeks ago, or the two injured and one dead guard from an altercation involving a single captive at River North Correctional will have Oversight Committee investigations. For that matter, there was a rape at this facility just a week ago. I wonder if the Oversight Committee will look at that or the reports of five dead at Nottoway [VA correctional facility] over the last couple of weeks, which we’re trying to get more details about.
It’s difficult to write a grievance if you’re dead or held in solitary confinement. These are only a few of the examples showing the grievance process to be all but useless. No doubt, there are dozens of other examples illustrating an array of other problems with the process and likewise exposing the bad actors in the administrative and press positions governing the process. It would be quite revealing, I would suggest, to investigate the prison records in Virginia CORIS system [Corrections Information System} notes of those captives labeled as paper pushers. From my own personal experiences as a journalist, I am often of the opinion that somewhere in my record is a flag telling staff to cause me whatever harm they are able to get away with. On its face I know that sounds like a classic case of paranoia and I’m conceding that point, yet when you review my reports of having been physically beaten among an array of targeted harassments and abuses, you will find that, in fact, I am not so paranoid, and my supposition may have more merit than it’s given credence for.
These examples alone warrant independent investigation, but even more so when I say there are dozens more, dozens more at every Virginia DOC prison; 37 prisons, amounting to hundreds, maybe thousands of instances of grievances disappeared, shut down, rubber stamped, and those who wrote them in good faith left to face harassment and abuse. To this point, the Oversight Committee must expand its scope of powers and influences over the DOC, especially where mental health is of concern. More to the point, with the grievance process of no value or use, and provably so, a new process must be implemented that goes immediately to the Oversight Committee so that the rabid dogs of the DOC can be brought to rein, something that is decades overdue.
My name is David Annarelli. davidannarelli.wordpress.com, prisonjournalismproject.org where I’m a contributing writer. You can find me on Instagram @david_anarelli, and you can Google my name. Thank you so much.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.
