One official from Red Onion State Prison suggested charging the inmates for their hospitalization, while another suggested prosecuting them for setting fires in their cells.

Summary

Inmates at Virginia’s Red Onion State Prison set themselves on fire in 2024 to protest alleged abuse, solitary confinement, and lack of medical care.

Emails reveal prison staff discussed charging the inmates for their medical treatment and prosecuting them for arson.

Advocacy groups and former inmates have long criticized the prison for excessive solitary confinement, abuse, and retaliation.

The Virginia Department of Corrections denies wrongdoing but faces lawsuits and a pending ombudsman investigation into prison conditions.

    • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.mlEnglish
      3·
      10 hours ago

      I am saying this because she is a politician with law experience who can do something about the American incarceral system which is known for its cruelty and excess. Instead she decided to shove low income parents in it because their kids weren’t going school. As if that would solve the problem. Instead she made it her sole purpose to lock people up. You think she doesn’t know what these prisons are like?

        • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.mlEnglish
          3·
          10 hours ago

          a truancy law that then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris had personally championed in the state legislature. The law, enacted in January 2011, made it a criminal misdemeanor for parents to allow kids in kindergarten through eighth grade to miss more than 10 percent of school days without a valid excuse

          The law was the capstone of Harris’ yearslong campaign to get “tough” on truancy

          Harris filed charges against a handful of San Francisco parents whose elementary school-aged children were consistently missing school. A few years later, she persuaded the state legislature to adopt harsher penalties for truancy. Under the new law, the parent or guardian of a young, truant child could face a fine of $2,500 or more — or one year in jail.

          source

          Article is long but these are key points. The people prosecuted were poor and sometimes had medical issues they or their kid were struggling with. This did not help.

          • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
            2·
            9 hours ago

            this again is very disingenuous. You put enough general things about it to convey a theoretical situation but what you have up above mentions without a valid excuse. Medical issues therefore should not be an issue, the parent just has to bring it up as the reason.

            • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.mlEnglish
              3·
              9 hours ago

              You might be missing the forest for the trees. What I mean to say is that this is a normal thing for her to pass. More so, to champion. She pushed hard for this and was proud of it. Would you?

              She still prosecuted them, even if they did not go to jail. She pulled sick and impoverished people into court instead of helping them.

              • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
                2·
                9 hours ago

                I think you miss I see nothing particularly egregious with this law. It allows for plenty of interventions from the school before it gets to legal penalties and in addition allows for special circumstances.