Gov. Abigail Spanberger announced on Wednesday that the Virginia Department of Corrections successfully launched an intensive reentry program for inmates at Red Onion State Prison — among the first of its kind in the nation at a super maximum prison, her office said.
The reentry program is in place at 14 other facilities — including work centers, minimum and medium security facilities — across the commonwealth. Red Onion, located in Wise County, is the first super maximum facility in Virginia to adopt the program.
The reentry program focuses on preparing an inmate to return to society. Those preparations include workforce readiness and connections to community resources.
“Reentry programming should not stop at the doors of our maximum-security facilities,” Spanberger said in a statement Wednesday. “Expanding the Intensive Reentry Program to Red Onion State Prison reflects our firm belief that long-term public safety requires preparing individuals for a successful, lawful return to their communities, regardless of where they serve their sentence. Through this program, we are preparing participants with the skills needed to break the cycle of incarceration and build safer communities.”
There are currently 20 incarcerated individuals participating in the program, Kyle Gibson, DOC spokesperson said.
Inmates who score moderate or high risk on the General Recidivism Scale of the Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions Assessment and were within 7 to 20 months of release were selected for participation in the pilot program, Gibson said. He added that, in the future, inmates will need to have 12 to 18 months left on their sentence to participate.
“The expansion of the Intensive Reentry Program to Red Onion State Prison is a direct continuation of the comprehensive reforms we’ve launched over the past six months,” said Stanley Meador, Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security, in a statement.
Virginia Department of Corrections Director Joseph Walters said in a statement that successful reentry is central to the VADOC’s public safety mission and called it an important component of the agency’s ability to provide long-term and lasting public safety for all Virginians.
Through the program, the DOC aims to help inmates develop problem-solving and healthy decision making skills through what the DOC called “cognitive restructuring.” Participants live in the same housing area and inmates work both in groups and individually to learn problem solving skills and practice pro-social interactions. The inmates practice new behaviors and receive feedback from others which, Gibson said, allows for observable changes to behavior. He said that the program’s success is measured by an inmate’s engagement, self-regulation and other positive behaviors.
The governor’s office said that the launch of the program at Red Onion is the culmination of months of work across the commonwealth’s Department of Corrections, that included staff members at Red Onion and reentry employees.
Corrections team members visited Coffeewood Correctional Center, in Mitchells, to observe the Intensive Reentry Program at that facility ahead of bringing the program to Red Onion. Coffeewood Correctional Center is a medium security facility.
Medium level facilities differ from maximum security facilities like Red Onion.
At Red Onion, all inmate movements are tightly regulated, and inmates are typically held in single-occupancy cells. Maximum security facilities generally house individuals with serious offenses and significant time to serve. Incarcerated individuals with lesser offenses or shorter sentences could also be placed in a maximum security facility if their behavior at a lower security facility demonstrated that they could not be safely or effectively managed there.
Red Onion State Prison made headlines in 2024 after reports of inmates setting themselves on fire, or burning themselves with modified electronic devices, in order to get transferred out gave way to concern for the well-being of the people housed at the facility.
State Sen. Mike Jones, D-Richmond, visited the prison in December 2024 following reports of self-immolation and mistreatment of inmates. After his tour, Jones identified four areas where he saw an immediate need for improvement: the quality of inmates’ food, better access to educational resources, better and more prompt medical care, and prison leadership putting a stop to racist behavior toward Black inmates.
The Department of Corrections ombudsman conducted an investigation into allegations of mistreatment. Most of those allegations were found to be “unsubstantiated” by the Office of the State Inspector General’s Corrections Ombudsman team, according to a report by the Virginia Mercury. Claims of racism and retaliation against inmates were deemed “inconclusive.”
