FedUp! was founded in January of 2005 in response to reports of abusive 

conditions at Red Onion State Prison (ROSP). For the last 2 years, FedUp! has 

focused on countering the continuing abuse at Red Onion, along with two other 

high level security institutions located in the isolated, western district of Virginia - 

Wallens Ridge State Prison (WRSP) and Keen Mountain Correctional Center (KMCC). 

As of January 2007, FedUp! has become a chapter of the Human Rights Coalition

and is expanding its scope to include Pennsylvania. 

History of Abuse at Red Onion State Prison 

Human Rights Watch Summary of violations at Red Onion State Prison

http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/redonion/

A flurry of activism followed the summer, 2000 death of electro-shocked

prisoner Lawrence Frazier at Wallens Ridge State Prison. Wallens Ridge is

one of two super maximum facilities in western Virginia. One prisoner who

has done time in both Wallens Ridge and the nearby, Red Onion State

Prison, has carefully documented that while the activism has died down,

the racist abuse and torture of prisoners in these secretive facilities

continues.

Kevin (Rashid) Johnson, currently an inmate at Red Onion State Prison

(ROSP), documented in a recent expose (released on October 31 of 2004 and

supplemented on January 1 2005), numerous incidences of Correctional

Officers beating restrained prisoners; and using tear gas, electrical stun

weapons, and five-point ambulatory restraints to punish prisoners who do

not, Rashid writes, “show appropriate deference and submission to guards.”

The expose details denial of meals, confiscation of mails, and

Correctional Officers enabling the suicide of prisoners. According to

inmates, the officials of Red Onion State are failing to let prisoners

file the standard grievance process leaving little evidence of abuse and

obstructing any further litigation.

Rashid’s complaints are not new. Investigations of cruel and unusual

punishment, including torture, have dogged ROSP and its sister supermax

facility Wallens Ridge State Prison (WRSP) since the prisons were opened

in 1998 (ROSP) and 1999 (WRSP). These prisons have been the target of a

1999 Human Rights Watch report (“Red Onion State Prison: Super-Maximum

Security Confinement in Virginia”), letter-writing campaigns by Amnesty

International in 1999 and 2000, and a 2000 investigation by the Civil

Rights Division of the Department of Justice (under the Civil Rights of

Institutionalized Persons Act).

Following the intensive struggle for changes in ROSP and WRSP, Ron

Angelone, Director of the Virginia Department of Corrections, resigned on

May 9, 2002. The states of New Mexico and Connecticut, and the District of

Colombia recalled the state and district prisoners they had bought cells

for in WRSP. These and other changes seemed to indicate progress in

Virginia’s compliance with Constitutional and international conventions on

protection of human rights. However, the Commonwealth failed to implement

any of the recommendations made by Human Rights Watch in 1999, and reports

of excessive force and brutality continue to pour from the prison.

Rashid sent his exposé, “Racism and Brutality Equal Kind and Usual

Punishment in Virginia”, to Governor Mark Warner on 31 October, 2004. The

Governor routed the document to Sgt. D. Tate at ROSP. According to Rashid,

Sgt. Tate is “both the ROSP investigator and a supervisor in the

super-segregation unit – he has himself been involved in various prior

abuses of prisoners, myself included….” In fact, Tate is named frequently

in Rashid’s exposé and proceeded to find himself not guilty of any

allegations.

Prisoners must be treated with respect for their dignity as human beings

and for their fundamental rights, whatever their crimes.

Since January of 2005, FedUP!, has been receiving complaints from inmates

including beatings of prisoners while in handcuffs and shackles, one

instance of a broken arm and another of a fellow needing 18 stitches,

medical staff complying with guards to cover up abuse, medical neglect in

general, administration refusing to look into inmate grievances, personal

property destroyed, and throughout Wallens Ridge, Red Onion State, and

Keen Mountain racism is playing a major role and a contributing factor into the abuse.

The flow of letters FedUp! has been receiving exposes that these

events are not isolated instances but prove a pattern of abuse.

In the first addendum (January 1,2005), Rashid ends with the following

statement: “The state’s government is using a poor, economically depressed

and exploited segregated White community to brutally oppress a vastly

non-white prisoner body, exactly as impoverished whites were deliberately

used to savagely brutalize Blacks with license and impunity during the

chattel slavery process of this same rural Amerikan south. There is

clearly no interest and no intent by government officials to reign in such

abuses. [In fact, the situation is] created by such authorities.”

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