America has a prison problem. This much is clear. The United States leads NATO countries in incarceration rate by a tremendous margin, and somehow, Virginia’s incarceration rate — 679 people per 100,000 — is still significantly higher than the national average of 614. The Virginia prison system, already harmful in its overwhelming scope, is only worsened by allegedly negligent health protocols, recently generating numerous injuries and deaths in Virginia’s prisons and jails. And state laws mandating the University to purchase various items from prison labor sources make the University inherently complicit in this harmful system. The combination of high incarceration numbers and healthcare failures has created an abusive system that demands change from both the state and the University.
Of the approximately 60,000 incarcerated Virginians, 30,000 are held in state prisons run by the Virginia Department of Corrections, while 24,000 are in locally-run jails. State prisons are used for sentences longer than a year in duration, while jails are used for people awaiting trial or serving shorter sentences. Despite institutional differences, Virginia’s two carceral systems have recently encountered notably similar — and wholly unacceptable — issues related to inmate health and safety.
Wise County’s Red Onion State Prison garnered national headlines near the end of 2024 after numerous inmates burned themselves in response to inhumane conditions. Included in inmates’ complaints were reports of racial and physical abuse, medical neglect, inedible food and overuse of solitary confinement. Health and safety issues are neither isolated nor new — numerous prisons lacking air conditioning allegedly and regularly subject inmates to temperatures over 100 degrees, and Red Onion alone has faced human rights criticism for over 20 years.
Virginia’s jails have fared no better than its prisons. Since 2020, at least 18 inmates have died at Prince George County’s Riverside Regional Jail, an appalling statistic which can be attributed to alleged health and safety failures. This, too, is not an isolated circumstance. A 2023 death at the Richmond City Justice Center — the fifth death there in approximately one year — has been blamed on a lack of staffing and monitoring. And five deaths in Henrico County jails have also been pinned on the absence of adequate staff supervision necessary for inmate safety.
Some of this abuse is clearly the result of individual employees’ actions. But employee negligence is largely the result of deliberate government inaction which has prevented the conditions necessary for a humane correctional system. Specifically, the Department of Corrections has failed to address a staffing crisis afflicting many of Virginia’s prisons. Particularly affecting medical staff like nurses, this has caused inmates' emergency medical needs to be delayed or ignored entirely. Jail failures too have been commonly blamed on staffing issues, yet few steps have been taken to rectify unsustainable inmate-to-staff ratios.
Such a lack of staffing is directly at odds with government policy uninterested in reducing incarceration numbers — in January, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced plans to substantially diminish prison inmates’ ability to earn credits toward the shortening of their sentences. Additionally, thanks to high bail requirements, people simply awaiting trial now constitute 46 percent of jailed Virginians. The result personnifies the fundamental conflict between Virginia’s desire to maintain high incarceration numbers and its refusal to supply prisons with staffing that can meet inmates’ basic needs.
The combination of poor staffing and high incarceration rates is no coincidence — incarceration in Virginia is a profit-driven business. Virginia still allows forced labor in prisons at near-zero wages, utilizing a loophole in the 13th Amendment prohibiting slavery. With more than half of Virginia’s prisoners being Black, this policy allows Virginia’s unshakeable legacy of slavery and racism to endure. Ending forced prison labor is another problem entirely, but it is important to recognize that the immediate challenge of carceral health failures fits within a much broader trend of systemic racial mistreatment and economic exploitation.
To put it simply, government action is necessary to address these problems. And the changes required are no mystery — lowering bail requirements would reduce jail occupancy, while allowing prison inmates to earn more sentence-shortening credits would reduce prison populations. To address healthcare failures, state and local governments need only to invest more in their facilities’ healthcare staffing. The public also has an important role to play — the current absence of public outcry, even amid fairly significant media publicity, sends a message to lawmakers that Virginia’s abusive correctional system can carry on unchanged.
All of us — especially as members of the University community — are in some ways complicit in the abuses taking place. For example, the University benefits from the exploitative prison labor system, with contractual obligations to buy from companies selling cheap products made by Virginia state prison inmates. Admittedly, the University has little legal choice in this matter. But this does not absolve the University of its obligation to push for an end to its role in this exploitative system, or at the very least to advocate for immediate improvements to prison conditions.
Incarceration, though often necessary and always devastating for its subjects, does not render them subhuman — such an idea is antithetical to the very concept of a correctional system. A society is obligated to treat those it incarcerates with basic dignity and respect, and Virginia’s prisons and jails are far from meeting this baseline. To enact change, individuals must get involved locally. The University must reckon with its involvement in this system. And, lawmakers must take the necessary steps to instill humanity in Virginia’s prisons and jails.
Nathaniel Carter is a senior associate opinion editor who writes about health, technology and environment for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at opinion@cavalierdaily.com.
The opinions represented in this column are not necessarily those of The Cavalier Daily. Columns represent the views of the authors alone.
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