Update: The Virginia Department of Corrections. Today is February 2, 2026. It’s a Monday.
This is another update regarding the Virginia DOC. We recently reported a couple weeks ago about the tennis ball incident here at Haynesville. As it turns out, there now exist allegations against members of the Haynesville prison kitchen staff and the head of the barber school who were involved and possibly masterminds. We know that admins are using this as a way to, an excuse for, collective punishment by withholding access to the main recreation yard on one side of the compound. Along those same lines and quite in opposition to Virginia DOC Policy number 841.6, administrations are likewise using weather as a means of preventing outside recreation.
Outside recreation is a daily need for proper health, both physical and psychological. It is no surprise that Haynesville is weaponized weather. This has been documented at both Dilwood and Lawrenceville Prisons. The administrators at Lawrenceville finally conceded the point, announcing by email on 7/29/2025 that they could not use the weather, at that time heat indexes, as a means of preventing outside recreation.
Another interesting example of the Virginia DOC’s errors was the transporting of a wrong person to Virginia Commonwealth University and the Medical College of Virginia a couple days ago. This error screwed up prisoner accounts over the the entire day because staff simply could not put two and two together; no idea who it was that wasn’t supposed to be where they had moved them to. The person who was scheduled to go, and this is grand, missed their chemotherapy appointment. Now they have to wait for a new rescheduling, which could take weeks or months.
Do you ever wonder why so many Virginia prisoners are sick and dying? I can tell you this, the prisoners don’t wonder why. They know exactly why. The prisoners do wonder when someone will finally listen, and just how many dead, dying and broken prisoners it takes. We are all humans here.
I’d like to mention the national news regarding Don Lemon being targeted for being a journalist. Mr. Lemon, I am in total solidarity with you sir, having been repeatedly targeted for doing nothing more than reporting the news about the Virginia DOC. Fact, I too was recently attacked viciously by bad actors in the Virginia DOC for exposing what appear to be criminal acts. Litigation is now on the docket with the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, where you can find the names of those Virginia DOC staff being sued.
Finally, and I’ll probably repeat this again in a week or two, on February 28th at 1pm at the Byrd Theater, the documentary All That’s Left will be shown addressing the Virginia justice and carceral systems and the effect that it has on the families of those being put through that system. For more details, you can contact the Coalition for Justice here in Virginia. That’s Justice B, as in, boy Burg, B, U R, G at gmail.com. That’s JusticeBBurg@gmail.com.
My name is David Annarelli. I’m a contributing writer to Prison Journalism Project. davidannarelli.wordpress.com, you can Google me for tons of writing, and you can find more of my articles, essays and commentaries listed here on Prisonradio.org. Thank you very much, and stay warm.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.
