🔵 By David Annarelli. Photo by lauragrafie.
No one is coming to help me. I am wrongfully convicted and have proven as much with the state’s own documents. I have also shown the Virginia Dep. of Corrections to be a massive scam. For these and other reasons I have been sent to Green Rock Correction Center, for the explicit purpose of being tortured and abused. Hyperbole and exaggeration, you say?
I, having survived police brutality, prosecutorial misconduct, and fraud, targeted brutality and abusive harassment from VADOC staff, and an ongoing deliberate denial of proper medical and mental-health services, so I beg to differ. I am certainly in a better position to discern truth from illusion, and I document everything.
Yesterday, I suffered yet another severe psychological crisis, the direct result of years of abusive trauma at the hands of VADOC staff. Sitting alone on a concrete floor in the Shared Allied Management Pod at GROC, plainly on camera, the aggressive response by all but one staff member is clear. While one guard, Ms. Waller, showed genuine concern, the other three staff members, Unit Manger Wilkens, Sgt. Day, and Resource Officer Martin came swooping in like vultures on a corpse. The general behaviors and mismanagement of the mental-health pod by these three played a part in the crisis.
Three people with no background in psychology and who create dangerous levels of anxiety and strive for the mental-health community. This includes allowing other security, under their command, to behave in antagonistic and abusive ways. Whether it’s banging clipboards and yelling or other acts of behavior that agitate and damage the calm, the bedside manner, so to speak, is beyond just lacking. If you are one of the 46% of VADOC captives with mental-health issues, the GROC SAM Pod—or any VADOC facility for that matter—is just shy of being caught in a death trap … and it will be a slow drag of a death, at the hands of truly cruel people. Be assured, no one here is being helped.
The SAM unit claims to provide “a safe environment for the delivery of intensive services to the three offender populations … security, mental health, and/or medical.” This is the opening paragraph describing the SAM unit. Nothing could be further from the truth, and, as one reads the 10-11 pages of SAM pod description and mandates, it is impossible to avoid the obvious. I can tell you, from the trenches, not a single item provided for by the SAM mandates is being met. Well, perhaps one is, as we will see.
An immediate giveaway is the claim of “an integrated model based on COMPAS Criminogenic Risk/Need Assessment findings … ” The COMPAS assessment used by the VADOC is some 40 years out of date. So much so that, along with the CORIS system, it was lambasted by current head of the VADOC, Chadwick Dotson, when he was still head of Virginia’s defunct Parole Board (The Dotson Report, 2022). Since his elevation to VADOC Director, things have become notably worse.
Even though we see all manner of mental-health emphasis spoken of: “EBP Cognitive-Behavioral Therapies, skills training, individual psychotherapy and group therapy,” not a single aspect of those things is actually occurring. In fact, getting access to mental-health care, at least for me, has been just shy of impossible. When a “Quality Mental Health Professional” (QMPH) finally showed up to help me yesterday, he acknowledged that the two requests I had sent in over the past 3 weeks to speak with someone had never arrived. I have a lifetime—40 years—of documented mental-health issues, and I survived a near-fatal traumatic brain injury. I shouldn’t be required to file paperwork; they should be checking on me weekly as a matter of course and professional standards.
As I noted before, building staff have no background in psychology. The rare guard may have completed the Corrections Crisis Intervention Training (CCIT), but that is as far as it goes. This is telling and again on page 1 of the “VADOC SAM Pod” mandates, under “Purposes,” we see specifically only those who “cycle in and out of Restrictive Housing Units” (RHY, aka solitary confinement) “and/or licensed mental health pods for disruptive behavior related to their mental health diagnosis and symptoms” (emphasis mine, here and later). Clearly, helping to stabilize the mentally ill is not the driving concern. In fact, that is explicitly stated, again on page 1 under the heading “GOALS,” quote: “The overall intent of the SAM Pod is to provide safety and stability within the institution while avoiding the unnecessary use of the Restrictive Housing (RHU), or an unnecessarily high demand on security, mental health, and/or medical staff.”
No mention of the health and/or well-being of those being held captive.in the next paragraph of the same section, “GOALS,” there are some vague claims, but they are readily disproven, exposing of the truth, or both. The obvious warehousing nature of the SAM Pod is evident: “these high demand offenders will be gathered in a single housing unit …” Very little says “warehouse” any louder than that, and I have twice now laid to rest the idea of “specialized staff” or “efficiently deliver services.” It is also especially revealing where the goal is to: “ … improve the offender’s conditions of confinement …” as opposed to improving the offender’s condition. The follow-ups such as “transfer to a lower security facility with appropriate services” is both another red flag and evidence of the scam. I am a level-1 security with no disruptions on my record other than a history of writing and pushing my guaranteed rights as a citizen, and as a human being. I was sent to GROC, two levels higher as a punishment, but also because there are no services at lower levels. Actually, the VADOC has no mental-health services at all by modern standards, and most are cursory, pretending to look good on paper.
There are no shortages of red flags that expose the truth when seen in plain black & white. The “OPERATING GUIDELINES” beginning on page two spell it out, rather plainly. Take a good look at the makeup of the SAM Committee members as listed in paragraph 1. How many of those listed would you think have a background in psychology? I’ll wager that you’d be surprised to find that the GROC SAM committee has no more than two. Worse is the idea that those with a background in psychology are willfully and knowingly participating in a program that is, blatantly, causing harm here and across the state. Note that, should a disagreement occur—perhaps one of the members with a psychology background develops a conscience and also remembers all of their studies about trauma, for example—the decision falls on the Chief of Housing and Programs (CHAP) and will only be reviewed by the Assistant Warden and/or Warden. These people are administrators, unlikely to have a background in psychology, with a mind only for security and smooth institutional operations. In other words, not the people who should be deciding the fates of people with mental-health needs.
Currently, the programs being forced upon the mental-health community have nothing to do with mental health. Instead, VADOC programs—all decades out of date and evidenced as failed programs—such as “Criminal Thinking” and other poorly designed programs, have been wedged into place. They are also randomly applied. This is a part of the VADOC’s padding-of-numbers routine. A certain segment of its captives are forced to take non-Court-ordered and irrelevant programs to make the numbers look good, i.e., non-addicts forced to take “substance abuse.” The most well-known and often-cited example of this “bait-and-switch” scam is the VADOC’s recidivism rate. Virginia takes only its “A+” students, so to speak, tests only those students and produces its results. So, the Virginia recidivism rate of 68% can be falsely reported as 23%. This is similar to falsely screaming about repeat violent offenders, who have only a 4% recidivism rate. See: “Explaining Recidivism Rates in Virginia, why the conversation around them is limited,” by Jeff Schwaner, The News Leader, April 1, 2019. Every VADOC statistic you see is handled the same way, especially regarding programs and education.
Further into the “OPERATING GUIDELINES,” the 4th paragraph on page 2, they mention mental-health diagnoses. The VADOC does not perform diagnosis or psychological evaluations, and I have never received one and don’t know a single captive who has ever had one beyond a cursory screen. The screening process is, literally, “Do you have a mental-health history?” And it ends there. No one is put through any kind of legitimate evaluation. Having a history of mental-health issues, which has included special education and hospitals, I have been through my fair share of evaluations, the most recent in 2019 (from an UVA neuropsychologist not associated with the VADOC). Q & A, personality tests, cognitive tests, visual acuity, various tests of perception, and a look through the DSM-5, etc. None of that is happening in the VADOC, and further I can personally attest—and provide evidence to the fact—that all attempts at having your legitimate psychological (or medical) records entered into the VADOC record so that proper attention can be given, is stopped at every level of the VADOC … The VADOC does not want any true reality to be listed because they do not want to provide help or care. Also, not a bit of “individual” anything—except targeted harassment—is being provided. One size fits no one.
This applies to “Privilege Programs” of which there are none and therefore cannot be earned. Again, my record, security level, etc., have earned me a laundry list of privileges, stand alone. Nothing, and most of the time the SAM Pod is lucky to get outside recreation on time. The SAM Pod is a daily focus of staff disdain and abuse, ignored schedules and needs, and worse, such as using the fire alarms, almost daily and multiple times a day, for weeks without end, as a deliberate means of abusive torture.
SAM members are expected to have priority for pod jobs. This is not the case at all. Instead, non-SAM-eligible captives are being brought in—as legitimate members are being routinely targeted for removal—and they are given the jobs. They are also given every level of special privileges, many of which eat up resources that are meant for those struggling with mental health. Single-cell status is a great example. There are about a dozen captives, not eligible for SAM status, filling space and granted single cells. I have three specific points that demand my being granted single-cell status, and I know several other SAM members who should be granted single cells and would benefit from it. None of us are given what standards require, while others receive obviously preferential treatment. Wasted and misapplied resources.
We see on page 3 some of what should be available to SAM members. We have no pod tutor. My mental health—specifically a traumatic brain injury, its symptoms, PTSD, and severe anxiety make me eligible for a service dog (companion animal). No such thing is in existence in the VADOC; in fact, dogs are used as a means of increasing anxiety and causing harm (271 maimed captives in the VADOC 2017-2023, highest in the U.S. Arizona’s DOC was the second highest, with 15.) The idea of “behavioral standards” is laughable and really a bad joke in poor taste. Currently, the GROC SAM Pod is 60-65% gangsters, many of whom openly move drugs for staff. We have a “Peer Mentor”—a SAM-member-specific job—who is not a SAM member and is openly bragging all over the compound about how he “runs the retard pod.” He is a gang member, but also a well-known snitch who brags about “running the game on both sides of the fence.” This “Peer Mentor,” is nobody’s peer, a terrible mentor, who sets such great examples as openly laughing at and ridiculing mental-health captives in crisis. He currently has three pod jobs, including the peer-mentor job, a single cell at the quiet end of the top tier, and regularly fraternizes with the staff in questionable ways. SAM members receive “privileges;” I simply cannot see it.
As mentioned before, the long-outdated COMPAS testing is being applied. You will notice a lack of legitimate, well-known mental-health issues, though later they make a play at it, poorly. Instead, we find the repeated cite of those who cause problems for the institution. It is a well-known problem in the U.S., and as previously noted especially bad in VA (46%), the warehousing of mentally ill. Virginia could easily be cited for a eugenics program, harsh as it may sound. On page 4 is a very short list of “mental health admission criteria,” which is vague and misleading at best. I would also dare to call it insulting. Please note that “recently released from Marion Correctional Treatment Center (MCTC)” is listed on that short list.
MCTC is under investigation by the FBI. One case involves guards—Virginia State Employees—who beat to death a mentally ill/intellectually disabled man. Those guards have a long history of similar activities all over the Western Region, VADOC. The other case at MCTC is captives getting hypothermia, inside their cells, due to deliberate acts by the VADOC staff. This is in 21st century America.
Also of note is the use of the dangerously vague term “vulnerable.” This is the term most often listed, often regardless of—or in spite of—mental-health cites as a referral. This euphemism serves two purposes: 1) to avoid having to acknowledge and provide care for the mental-health needs cited on a captive’s SAM referral, and 2) it allows the staff to weaponize SAM membership. Staff can use removal from the SAM Committee as a threat, arbitrarily revoking SAM status. The latter of these issues I have personally witnessed on several occasions. The former, I am personally a victim of and fighting as I write this.
As we read on, it becomes increasingly disturbing just how very little is being done to support the mental-health community. In fact, the majority of the SAM descriptions are spent on punishments, not on stabilization, progress, and care. There is also a lot of focus on how to remove people from the SAM Pod. It is not until page 6 that the actual “programs” are even listed, and, as I have pointed out, not a single person is being diagnosed using American Psychological Association standards and practices. Not a single standard or practice of neuroscience is being followed even though that field is having a dramatic effect on the understandings within the fields of psychology and psychiatry, although it is to be expected as our understanding expands about how the brain operates. We find instead more vaguery in the three generic “Pathways,” with no mention of known mental-health issues such as PTSD, schizophrenia, bipolar or anxiety issues, and no mention of TBIs.
It sounds good on paper to say things like “stress management” or “positive psychology.” In reality, when staff are using the fire alarm to cause agitation, or screaming like bratty children, or not properly responding to a person in crisis, all the quaint phrases mean nothing. There is, as we have seen, no attempt, in earnest, to hide the truth. “The purpose of the SAM Pod is support security, medical and mental-health staff, by managing offenders that are difficult to manage … ” Plain and obvious language, and an equally obvious cause of the severe decline in the mental-health community who is being hurt across the state.
At the end of the day, not one aspect is actually about the SAM Pod as a provider of help and support for captives. It is, as plainly stated, to benefit the prison staff and the prisons. They are not hiding this in the least. The truth of this stretches beyond those 46% of captives with moderate-to-severe mental-health issues (approximately 10,500 human captives). This is how the whole VADOC operates. Vague claims meant solely to benefit the VADOC, while consistently shown to harm those held captive, and, by easy extension, all of society.
It is long past the time where tolerance of such harm should end. Such dangerous behaviors from archaic institutions put to a stop. The VADOC, with its direct line to Jim Crow-era politics and policies and those same standards of its operations haven’t changed in the least. It is time now to, quite literally, tear down the walls and fences, to give real help and support to all captives, especially that underserved, preyed-upon community of those with mental-health struggles.
Care, not criminalization.