COMMENTARY

Fires of desperation at Red Onion are a call for dignity and justice

STEVEN MANGUAL
FEBRUARY 26, 2025 5:10 AM

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A crowd rallies outside of the bell tower at Virginia’s Capitol on Jan. 8, 2025 to protest allegations of mistreatment of people imprisoned at Red Onion State Prison and Wallens Ridge State Prison, and the prolonged use of solitary confinement at those institutions. (Photo by Charlotte Rene Woods/Virginia Mercury)

At Red Onion State Prison, one of two supermax prisons in Virginia, at least six 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.

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