This is “Ironic Habitual Behavior in the Virginia Department of Corrections.” My name is David Annarelli. I’m a contributing writer with Prison Journalism Project and wrongfully convicted inmate.
March 10, 2025. It is a Monday. The Virginia DOC continues to ignore its key issues even when they are glaringly obvious. Among these problems are constant introduction of contraband. In November 2024 Prison Journalism Project published a story about overdoses, addiction support, and the like. The Virginia DOC claimed to be spending more money on assorted solutions. Then, in February 2025, just last month, the Virginia DOC announced that it would be the first correction system to pilot a state of the art drug and contraband [unclear] scanner from the company ScanTech AI Systems Incorporated. On March 5, the Virginia DOC announced a 300,000 drug seizure. The main culprit was a Virginia DOC correctional officer, again.
When the COVID pandemic shut down all contact activities in prison, the Virginia DOC became painfully aware of an important fact: Virginia DOC staff are responsible for upwards of 90% of all contraband smuggling. An immediate subsequent fact reared its ugly head: the Virginia DOC had to cover up this fact at all costs, and the cost has been high in every way, especially for the Virginia taxpayers who continue to foot the bill for an institution that long ago stopped providing anything useful for society. That cost? 1.5 billion per fiscal year, 27% of the entire state budget, even as Virginia has dropped to 50th in education nationally. It is among the most expensive DOC budgets in the nation. The Virginia DOC is consistently among the worst DOCs in the nation, with a track record of only failure. In the U.S., this says a whole lot.
Claims that Virginia DOC guards are not paid enough are simply inaccurate. Guards start at $44,000 per year, with most only working six months per year. That’s a three-day-on, two-day-off, two-day-on, three-day-off, rotating schedule. Those with “rank”, sergeant or better, are paid more. They also receive moderately comparable benefit packages and other perks such as meals. If you doubled all of that tomorrow, you would still not eliminate the lure of tax free cash that smuggling has always offered as a benefit. That the VOD, the Virginia DOC, is without doubt keenly aware of the actual root cause of the problem, failed national drug war aside, and yet continues to openly dodge the reality and responsibility, also speaks volumes about the Virginia DOC and its agenda.
Addicts represent the highest recidivism rate. Violent criminals the lowest, at about 4%. This is interesting because that recidivism is not counted in Virginia’s entirely inaccurate 19% recidivism rate. The actual rate is 67%. They only test their “A plus students”. It is fair to say that repeat customers are the bread and butter of any business, even one failing as rapidly as the Virginia DOC, which resembles a ship sinking in dry dock. It is equally fair to say that the Virginia addicts are serving life sentences on installment plans. It might also be noted that, contrary to public statements, the opioid and meth crisis in Virginia is actually a benefit because it allows Virginia to easily put more white people in its prisons as a means of padding numbers and a means to look even a little bit less racist.
The Virginia DOC provides no real means of addressing addiction and the myriad issues that usually go hand in hand with the problem, i.e., mental health and trauma being key among them. Putting these people into the prison environment itself, now known to be a cause of severe and permanent psychological harm, and the push towards continuing, or beginning, use of substances is complete; a hopeless concrete hole that is lorded over by staff known to be state sponsored criminals. The hypocrisy is blatant, and the job itself does not attract people of quality character, but instead leads to, tends to attract, quite the opposite. And there is no shortage of research and statistics to that very dangerous point. Guards tend to be those people who are one degree of separation from ending up in prison one way or the other. Being a guard is the other.
The bottom line is this: Virginia and especially its DOC continue to recycle the same bad policies, exercise the same failed ideas, all while willfully ignoring the root causes and squandering excessive amounts of resources. The results are always the same, and we have to simply stop tolerating this in every way. My name is David Annarelli, contributing writer at prisonjournalismproject.org, davidannarelli.wordpress.com. I’m on Instagram, david_annarelli. Thank you.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.
