My name is David Annarelli, I’m a contributing writer for the Prison Journalism Project. Today is April 30, 2025, it’s a Wednesday. The Virginia DOC is notorious for a wide array of human rights abuses and a staggering level of failures; failures to those it holds captives, their families, and to society at large, that encompassing not just Virginia, but in fact, the whole of the nation.
With an enormous budget of 1.5 billion per fiscal year, a whopping 27% of the entire state budget, it is flabbergasting to discover that medical care of the Virginia DOC is at best a cursory thing, by design, to create a paper trail strictly to prevent lawsuits for deliberate indifference of medical care. Actually, some 78% of the Virginia DOC’s, 1.5 billion budget is spent on medical care, more specifically, payouts for lawsuits, or so all research seems to suggest. It’s with this in mind, that we report the newest scam perpetrated by the Virginia DOC against taxpayers; bribery to sign up for Medicaid.
On April 25, 2025, an email was sent to all inmates and CCAP [Community Corrections Alternative Program] probationers by the Virginia DOC director, Chadwick Dodson. The subject is stated as “A Medicaid enrollment incentive Program”, and is apparently “in honor of Medicaid Awareness Month”, which sounds entirely made up, but may actually be a thing. The meat of the email is that the Virginia DOC will give a “free commissary incentive pack” in the next 60 days if you are already enrolled in Medicaid, or “60 days following an application submission”.
It is worth noting that the Virginia DOC no longer receives federal subsidies or grants because of a very long list of cited reasons, which include failures to meet federal standards, overcrowding, wrongful conviction rates, etc, etc. It is understood that just recently, it was reported that the White House once more snubbed the Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin’s request for funding, as well as Virginia’s beyond abysmal DOC records decades long, and it’s overcrowded.
A free commissary bag of any dollar amount for approximately 23,800 captives adds up. With a $1.5 billion budget apportioned to the Virginia DOC, and with a state surplus up around 3 billion and better, it is offensive that the Virginia DOC would attempt to further refuse its responsibilities to those held captive, wrongly or otherwise, as they are wards of the state, and therefore the state is required to foot the bill, and not those taxpayers who pay into Medicaid and Medicare.
Yet again, investigations are being called for, and it is long past time that the Virginia DOC be turned inside out to deal with aging captives, 4,500 known wrongful convictions. Getting those who are eligible signed up for Medicaid post incarceration is one thing. Virginia wants to dodge the bill on the 23,000 plus in its prisons, but the bill will come due. My name is David Annarelli, contributing writer for Prison Journalism Project, davidannarelli.wordpress.com. Thank you very much.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.
