A crowd rallies outside of the bell tower at Virginia’s Capitol on Jan. 8, 2025 to protest allegations of mistreatment of inmates and prolonged use of solitary confinement at Red Onion State Prison and Wallens Ridge State Prison. (Photo by Charlotte Rene Woods/Virginia Mercury)
At Red Onion State Prison, one of two supermax prisons in Virginia, at least 12 Black men last year set their own bodies on fire in horrifying and desperate acts of protest against inhumane conditions, including prolonged solitary confinement.
I can understand the anguish that led these men to light themselves on fire. The stretches I spent isolated and alone in solitary confinement over my own 14 years of incarceration in New York left me with PTSD and severe insomnia. The trauma I experienced still impacts me every day over a decade after my release, and I’m still processing it in therapy.
A 2020 United Nations report declared prolonged solitary confinement a form of psychological torture and sounded the alarm on the excessive use of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons. Yet even now, on any given day over 80,000 human beings — including children — are in solitary confinement in jails and prisons across the country. And just as Black men are more likely to be targeted by the carceral system, they are also more likely to be put in solitary confinement once imprisoned.
Solitary confinement is meant to break you. It isolates you not just physically but mentally, stripping you of your sense of humanity and connection to other human beings. In my time in solitary, the lack of communication, support, and tools to express my pain left me feeling invisible—much like the men at Red Onion must feel today.
These acts of self-immolation at Red Onion are not random. They are a response to conditions that render people trapped, voiceless, and forgotten. People incarcerated at Red Onion report relentless racial, physical, and psychological abuse, medical neglect including the withholding of medicine, inedible food contaminated by maggots and human saliva, and violent dog attacks.
Many individuals at Red Onion have been placed in solitary for protracted periods, including one report of 600 consecutive days. Without meaningful avenues to raise their grievances or seek support, these men expressed themselves using the only tool they had left — their own bodies. It is a tragic indictment of a system that denies basic humanity to those it incarcerates.
Red Onion has a long and sordid history of abusing incarcerated people. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International both released reports about abhorrent conditions in the prison back in 1999 and 2001. As of 2011, more than 500 of the 750 men locked up at Red Onion were in solitary confinement. Virginia later enacted a “step-down” program supposedly intended to reduce the use of solitary confinement but eight years after the program was enacted, the Virginia chapter of the ACLU sued the state because abuse of solitary confinement continued at Red Onion.
The organization where I work, LatinoJustice PRLDEF, has been organizing alongside the Interfaith Action for Human Rights (IAHR), and the Virginia Coalition on Solitary, with the national support of Unlock the Box and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT), to expose these abuses and demand systemic change.
Together with solitary survivors, families, formerly incarcerated individuals, and advocates, our coalition is calling for independent investigations into the conditions at Red Onion, transparency from the Virginia Department of Corrections, and an immediate end to the use of solitary confinement. The conditions at Red Onion do not exist there alone, so our efforts aim to make changes that prioritize rehabilitation and dignity over punishment and isolation.
To see change, we need action. Virginia’s legislators and state officials must establish independent humane oversight of prison conditions and support legislation that limits or abolishes the use of solitary confinement. Two matching bills are now headed to Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s desk that would take us a huge leap in the right direction by restricting and regulating solitary confinement in all Virginia state prisons.
We must also amplify the voices of incarcerated individuals and their families, ensuring their experiences are central to reform efforts. Transformation will only come when we, as a society, demand that our systems treat every person with dignity and respect.
As I reflect on these events, I ask: How can we ensure that no one feels compelled to commit desperate acts of self-harm to be heard? The answer lies in building sustainable community support and systems of accountability, fostering open communication, and committing to true justice that values healing and humanity.
The men at Red Onion deserve to be seen, to be heard, and to be treated as human beings. Let us honor their cries for help by fighting for a future where no one feels the need to set themselves on fire to demand dignity.