Although attack dogs have been routinely used in Va prisons for decades (since the early 2000s), it is only now becoming an issue of public awareness and concern. The subject has begun receiving public attention through reports such as the July 23, 2023 INSIDER article by Hannah Beckler titled, “Patrol Dogs Are Terrorizing and Mauling Prisoners Inside the United States.” The use of dogs in Va prisons was the main focus of this article, because of the extreme numbers of uses of dogs in Va compared to other states. The INSIDER found reports of 271 dog attacks in Va prisons between 2017 and 2022 compared to the next highest number during the same period which was in Arizona of only 15 dog attacks.
In several recent articles Comrade Rashid publicized numerous incidents of abuses of these dogs in Va and has initiated public calls to remove these animals from Va prisons. He also connected the subject of Va prison dog attacks with the widely unknown history of the uses of canines as weapons of racialized terror to mass murder and exterminate Native peoples in this hemisphere, specifically the Tainos of the Caribbean by Spaniards; to enforce slavery against Blacks and track and often kill escaped slaves across the Amerikan South, especially in Va; to repress slave resistances such as the Second Maroon War in Jamaica (1795-1796) and the Haitian Revolution (1795-1804); and to attack Black Civil Rights demonstrators during the 1960s.
The uses of dogs to attack and maul humans was deemed barbaric and inhumane during each of these periods and led to public opposition. Their uses against the Tainos and slaves was protested by such figures as the priest Bartolome de las Casas called the ‘Protector of the Indians,’ Voltaire, Harriet Tubman, Martin Delaney and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Public outrage at the use of dogs to terrorize and maul Black slaves was one of the main outrages that won widespread white support for the Abolition Movement against slavery. Media images of dog attacks on civil rights demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama during May 1963 by the notoriously racist police chief Eugene “Bull” Connor galvanized international opposition to Jim Crow segregation and racism in Amerika. Yet, today, the revival of racialized uses of dogs hidden behind razor wire and concrete walls on Va’s predominantly Black and Brown prisoners has gone unchallenged.
Interestingly, the uses of dogs to maul humans was criminalized during the U.S. Civil War, when Confederates began using their slave hounds against Union soldiers in combat and prisoner of war camps. Some cases led to executions, such as that of Henry Wirz, the Confederate prisoner of war camp commander at Andersonville, Georgia, who was tried in September 1865 for using canines on unarmed Union prisoners of war. But these uses of dogs was criminalized ONLY when it was done to other whites.
What is particularly telling is, the U.S. Supreme Court has expressed that the purpose of the 8th Amendment, which forbids cruel and unusual punishment, is to reflect “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” Rhodes v Chapman, 452 U.S. 337, 346 (1981). So the standards of decency in Va have not evolved, but devolved to periods of Native genocide and Black slavery. But even then mauling people with animals was publicly opposed and deemed uncivilized.
During 2024 the Va legislature passed a law, Va Code section 53.1-39.3 limiting the circumstances in which attack dogs (which VaDOC euphemistically calls working and patrol dogs) may be used against prisoners; namely in violent situations where there is imminent danger of serious physical injury or death to anyone, or altercations involving three or more prisoners. It should be noted that the “use” of these animals includes their presence and barking, growling and lunging at prisoners for purposes of intimidation.
The push for laws limiting the uses of attack dogs came not out of concern for the widespread abuses of the animals on Va prisoners, but rather after a dog was allegedly killed by a prisoner at Sussex 1 during 2023, which was widely and sympathetically publicized in the media and included VaDOC director Chadwick Dotson giving a eulogy to the dead animal on the televised news. This reflected the observation in many Black slave narratives that the animals that were used to brutalize and terrorize them were generally treated better than they were. From which came the term “treated worse than a dog.”
As everyone confined in Va prisons where the dogs are present knows, these animals are “used” in situations where absolutely nothing is going on, such as during general movements, where they are allowed to violently lunge, strain against their leashes and attempt to attack prisoners, which specifically violates the limits set on the uses of these dogs by the new Va law. The exact same practice of using attack dogs to terrorize detainees generated an international scandal against the U.S. war in Iraq in 2004, when photographic images were leaked to the media of U.S. soldiers allowing military dogs to strain against their leashes towards Iraqi detainees. Several soldiers were court marshalled for this practice. Yet this practice occurs all day everyday in Va prisons in defiance of the new Va law.
These animals are also being assigned for use only at prisons in the VaDOC’s predominantly white-staffed Western region, where Va’s high security prisons are strategically located in remote segregated white communities, while the vast majority of those confined in these prisons are Black and Brown. This repeats the historical use of dogs as weapons of racialized violence.
Independent of anything contemplated by the Georgetown Law Civil Rights Clinic, Comrade Rashid is filing suit in state court about the use and abuse of these dogs. The suit will seek a declaratory judgment acknowledging the violation of the new law limiting the uses of these dogs and relief for the uses of these animals for racially targeted harassment and assault. The governing laws will be Va Code sections 8.01-184 – 8.01-191 (declaratory judgment act), 8.01-42.1 (civil action for racial or ethnic harassment, violence or vandalism), and 8.01-221 (damages from violation of statute).
Before the routine use of these dogs began in the early 2000s, the VaDOC used them in a handful of isolated cell extractions in an experimental pilot program in the old solitary confinement unit at Powhatan Correctional Center’s M-building in the mid-1990s. Comrade Rashid was a target of several such cell extractions in M-building. The use of these animals was ended after less than two years and less than ten canine cell extractions, when one animal severely mauled a prisoner’s forearm, nearly requiring its amputation.
It’s important that prisoners and our loved ones and supporters understand the history behind and laws governing conditions we live under, penetrate the lies used to falsely justify what is done to us and to make it seem just, and so we understand how we got where we are, the context of the conditions we live under, and how to legally challenge them.
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