“The Virginia Model, Banning Amazon, Hardback Books and The State Farm Robberies.” Today is August 4. It’s Monday. It’s 2025. The Virginia Model: Virginia is 50th, dead last in education, and yet it spends 27% of its entire state budget, $1.5 billion annually, on prisons. The Virginia DOC is among the worst in the U.S. Virginia has a 20% wrongful conviction rate, a number that studies show has risen in the last four years under Virginia Attorney General, Jason Miyares. The Virginia Model has the ninth-highest incarceration rate, and 46% of its captives are diagnosed with moderate to severe mental health issues. The Virginia Model guards less than 1% of its eligible paroles: 19 total last year; 2600 plus eligible. The Virginia model is horrific and abysmal.
With all of this, the Virginia DOC is attempting to sell its citizens a painted picture of changes. These are lies, and to quote Public Enemy, “Don’t believe the hype.” Behind closed doors are bizarre decisions based in zero reason or logic. On July 10, 2025, an email from the Virginia DOC was sent out via JPay email services titled “Memorandum.” The purpose was to inform captives that, “Effective immediately: Amazon is no longer an authorized vendor for Virginia DOC facilities. Items received at the central mail distribution center from Amazon, for inmates, starting July 14, 2025 will be refused.” The email went on to state that hardback books would be banned as well beginning September 1, 2025. I’m not even able to fathom what sort of asinine person bans Amazon. The email then names only a small number of Books Behind Bars as authorized to donate books, nine in total. I know of 18 that serve Virginia’s DOC, 50th in education, and the reason is disgustingly obvious: it is called The Virginia Model. Such deprivations are the hallmark of The Virginia Model and the Virginia DOC, but banning Amazon and hardback books are only some of the examples.
Quietly, an investigative report has been underway regarding the central mail distribution center since its implementation. We were able to speak with several inside sources who, under conditions of anonymity, were willing to shed some light on what was going on behind closed doors. Among the list of poor decisions is a target list. These are captives who have been secluded, excuse me, selected for deliberate mail interference. While some may be gang members or have histories with illicit substances, all allegedly strictly by the Virginia DOC, with no other supporting documentation besides, many are listed for political purposes: organizers, religious rights proponents, and especially those who push and exercise their First Amendment rights to speak out and write about the Virginia DOC.
Such behavior is not new or surprising, and it does extend to legally protected mail from courts and elsewhere. More worrying is the fact that many of the items turned away are often not returned to the senders. Books and magazines, sometimes gifts ordered in error by well-wishers who didn’t know the rules; these items are listed as “destroyed.” That is, according to employees, they’re not the truth. Instead, they are taken by employees to give as gifts to family, friends, or to be resold on the internet. We heard the same claim from those different sources inside of the central mail distribution center, totaling three separate individuals. So along with all of the other human rights abuses under The Virginia Model, robbing the people who care about the captives, mothers and fathers, wives or husbands, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, is just another part of the model. Just when you think that Virginia can sink no lower, there is yet another report to be released. Something has to change drastically and soon. My name is David Annarelli. I’m a contributing writer with the prisonjournalismproject.org, davidannarelli.wordpress.com. You can find me on Instagram at david_annarelli. Thank you.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.
