Press Releases & Late Breaking News
---some of the following information has details of abuse and may be triggering--
Jury awards women $15.4 million for sexual abuse in prison 2-2-08 By Tina Lam, Detroit Free Press---Ten current and former prisoners at the state's Scott Women's Correctional Facility held hands and sobbed as a Washtenaw County jury awarded them $15.4 million in damages today for rapes, invasions of privacy and sexual harassment at the hands of corrections officers.The 10 jurors took the unusual step of reading a formal apology to the tearful women on behalf of the citizens of Michigan for what they had suffered. READ MORE
PITTSBURGH -- Target 11’s Rick Earle began investigating after receiving pictures of racist drawings taken inside the security office at the State Correctional Institution in Green County. At first the photos looked harmless. One showed a guard smiling at his desk in the security office at the state prison. When Earle looked closely he could see a confederate flag and a drawing of a swastika on the wall behind the guard. READMORE
Physical Abuse at Red Onion State Prison Increases with New Assistant Warden – Rowlette
November 30, 2007 ---Over the last month, prisoners report the atmosphere at ROSP has intensified in regards to racial harassment of prisoners as well as physical abuse. It has become a regular occurrence for prisoners to be called racial slurs when receiving food. If the prisoners responds in anyway their food is taken from them and the Sergeant says the prisoner refused the meal. Personal property of the prisoners is also being destroyed. Prisoners believe this upsurge in abuse is related to the reinstatement of Assistant Warden Rowlette. Richard Rowlette was a Major at Red Onion State Prison when it was first opened and sited for extreme acts of abuse by the Human Rights Watch. READ MORE
Correctional Officer Hung Noose on Prisoners Cell Door at SCI- Houtzdale - Pennsylvania
November 15, 2007 ---Two weeks ago, I reported an incident of racism by a Correctional Officer in which the officer made a hangman’s noose and hung it from another inmate’s door. One of the witnesses filed a DC-804 (grievance) about the incident and here’s the status update to this point: READ MORE
Prisoner Sues over Racially Charged Attack By Guards
September 3, 2007---Jo’nathan Talbert, an inmate at Red Onion State Prison in Pound, Virginia, will be entering district court on September 27, 2007 for a trial by jury of his civil suit against correctional officers at Wallens Ridge State Prison. He is suing them on a number of counts after allegedly being severely beaten by these officers on September 18, 2005. READ MORE
prison officials at ROSP are illegally interfering with legal process
July 2007--Kevin 'Rashid' Johnson is attempting to pursue civil litigation in both state and federal court concerning ongoing patterns of abuse: mail censorship and obstruction, medical neglect, and denial of food as well as physical abuse. As it stands, prison officials at ROSP are illegally interfering in this process. READ MORE
Alleged prison
abuse still deserves scrutiny
The Justice Department could ease concerns by finishing its investigation at Red
Onion.
June 2006 -- The Roanoke Times --by Laurence Hammack In the fall of 2000, the U.S. Justice Department launched an investigation into alleged prisoner abuse at Red Onion State Prison. It has yet to reveal its findings, if any. Even if things have gotten better, as some officials claim, a final report that affirms to taxpayers that their government is treating prisoners humanely is overdue. READ MORE
Kevin 'Rashid' Johnson, co-founder of FedUp! Indicted on 2 1/2 year old incidents
May 2006 --Within a short period of coming into existence, FedUp! was flooded with many complaints and accounts of prisoner abuses, tortures and beatings at ROSP and WRSP. Copies of this information was made public, turned over to prisoners families and supporters and to top level Virginia Government officials. These exposures led to outside rallies and demonstrations outside of ROSP, and demands for answers from officials. Within Red Onion I was a principal source of spreading the word about FedUp!, and collecting facts and articulating reports on the routine abuses. My activities did not escape attention of prison officials. In response to my activities I’ve been routinely threatened by guards with attacks and destructions of my property, my mail has been routinely destroyed and mishandled. There have been efforts to set me up to have feces thrown on me by inmates who work with guards to carry out such attacks on select prisoners, etc. READ MORE
letter to governor kaine - If you haven't heard...
May 2, 2006 ...Prisoners are complaining of their grievance procedure being obstructed, the denial of food as punishment, physical beatings of prisoners while in hand cuffs and shackles, denial of medical care, verbal abuse (mostly racially motivated), being contained for extremely long periods of time in solitary confinement and that nepotism exists amongst the guards in these institutions which plays into the obstruction of justice. Prisoners feel that they don’t have a chance in legally pursuing there claims because many siblings, spouses and other relatives are the ones that are the superiors to whom the prisoners are to complain. In other words, the family members look out for each other. READ MORE
demonstrators rally at Richmond City Jail On Human Rights Day, they decry prisoner treatment in U.S., abroad
BY JULIAN WALKER--TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER--Sunday, December 11, 2005--From cell doors that haven't locked properly to the beating death of one inmate by another, Richmond's jailhouse has faced its share of criticism this year.It received more yesterday from a handful of folks who protested across the street in recognition of International Human Rights Day.Specific criticisms of prisoner treatment were leveled against the city jail and correctional facilities across the nation and U.S. military prisons abroad. READ MORE
Abuse and Torture of Prisoners Continues at Red Onion State Prison in Pound, Virginia
January 1, 2005--A flurry of activism followed the summer, 2000 death of electro-shocked prisoner Lawrence Frazier at Wallens Ridge State Prison, one of two Super Maximum Security facilities in western Virginia. One prisoner who has done time in both Wallens Ridge and the nearby “supermax”, 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. READ MORE
15 Articles published in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette about abusive guards at SCI-Greene in 1998
Horn announced April 9 that the department's Office of Professional Responsibility was investigating inmate complaints about abuse in the restricted housing unit. All transfers there are recorded on videotape, although several current or former employees said some videos have been destroyed or erased. abuse happened. Guards were fired and demoted then guards were reinstated. READ MORE