Virginia’s Office of the State Inspector General looked into nine allegations from multiple people at two separate Virginia prisons during fiscal year 2025 and concluded a single account could be "substantiated."
Corrections ombudsman Andrea Sapone said her office would prioritize an investigation into Red Onion State Prison — where people had self-harmed and participated in hunger strikes — after beginning her tenure in September 2024. The findings around the Southwest Virginia facility were completed in December and obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request; the reports are not posted publicly.
Seven complaints related to events that were said to have occurred between Jan. 1, 2024, and June 1, 2025, were investigated. OSIG staff deemed allegations around racism, rights violations and retaliatory behavior by VADOC staff “inconclusive,” indicating that ample evidence to support or disprove the claims was not identified.
Five other complaints — ranging from medical neglect and extended solitary confinement to individuals being served unsanitary food, and subjected to inhumane conditions, and physical and sexual abuse — were “unsubstantiated,” according to the report.
Talib Peek served two stints at Red Onion and identified a range of issues, including staff manipulating his access to food.
“They should be talking about actual deaths, actual beatings,” Peek said while discussing the Red Onion investigation. The corrections department reported 102 deaths in custody across the state during fiscal year 2025 — down from 106 the previous year. “Racism, I think, it's kind of built into the fabric of Red Onion, Wallens Ridge.”
Among OSIG’s findings was a determination that "the majority of [video] footage did not show evidence of physical and/or sexual abuse of inmates" — indicating that at least some problematic behavior was identified. When asked what issues had been pinpointed, OSIG spokesperson Maggie Sotos said the office doesn’t comment on investigations.
She also declined to identify who conducted the Red Onion investigation and said that because ombudsman staff are salaried, there’s no way to “provide you a number of hours staff took in preparing the report.”
The investigation concluded with a pair of nonbinding recommendations; the office, which has a $1.4 million biennial budget, functions as an oversight body and doesn’t make policy. Neither recommendation was related to the alleged physical abuses. Instead, they focused on documenting health-related issues and providing incarcerated people with information about obtaining medical assistance and filing grievances — a process advocates have claimed is inefficient and doesn’t broadly allow for anonymity.
The corrections department agreed with the suggestions in a Jan. 4 letter, the signatory of which was redacted. VADOC spokesperson Kyle Gibson did not respond to an email requesting comment on the Red Onion findings.
“[Red Onion staff] take pride in the idea that when you come here, ‘This is our shit, this is our house. We run this shit.’ And you got to hope you make it out alive,” said Peek — who runs a housing nonprofit in Norfolk that aims to help formerly incarcerated people reacclimate following their sentences. “There is no way that you can protect yourself.”
Following OSIG releasing its Red Onion investigation, the ACLU of Virginia issued a 17-page document detailing “a wealth of information” on alleged abuses, restrictive housing — or “solitary confinement,” a term the department doesn’t use — and the general conditions of the facility. The civil rights group also recently alleged VADOC has regularly mistabulated earned sentence credits, resulting in the agency “over-detaining a significant number of people.”
Will Pelfrey, a criminal justice professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, said the Red Onion investigation leaves a number of unanswered questions, though he added that the redactions make it difficult to ascertain the depth or quality of the report.
“The vast majority of complaints filed by prisoners are not supported by the evidence,” said Pelfrey, who previously provided mental health services to people incarcerated at the Bland Correctional Center. “It's not surprising that the overwhelming number of written complaints and grievances that the prisoners provided were unsubstantiated or inconclusive. But clearly, there is something at Red Onion that demands further review — if not by the [OSIG] or DOC then some other element within the commonwealth of Virginia.”
Sapone’s office also conducted an investigation into a pair of complaints at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, which resulted in the only “substantiated” finding across the two facilities.
A court-ordered agreement required that an incarcerated individual receive a certain number of “snack bags” per day, though OSIG determined facility staff had not fulfilled its obligations on two occasions between August 2023 and September 2025.