A recent article in the Charlottesville, Virginia, weekly C-Ville exposes conditions at the nearby Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women. The report is based in part on statements from representatives of the Virginia Insitutionalized Persons Project of the Legal Aid Justice Center. Project director Helen Trainor and long-time volunteer Cynthia Neff have talked to inmates and read hundreds of letters complaining about conditions at the Fluvanna, which “began to resemble the conditions at Virginia’s strictest prisons, as opposed to a Class 3 prison that it is,” Trainor told C-Ville.

“The letters described discrimination and segregation…“We were hearing from a number of people that they were discriminated against because they looked butch, aggressive-looking women,” [Neff] says. In fact, the Associated Press reported in June that gay inmates were segregated, with lesbian inmates with short hair and baggy clothes kept apart in the “butch-wing.”

Trainor says that things began to change about a year ago when Michael Frame became the new major, or head of security, at Fluvanna. The previous major was convicted for having sex with female inmates, says Trainor. Neff says Frame proceeded to “toughen the place up.”

According to Trainor, women were forced to walk in single file to prevent inmates from talking to each other. Touching other inmates was also prohibited.

Trainor, who for matters of privacy can’t identify inmates or quote directly from the letters, has paraphrased their content. In one instance, an inmate questions whether the new no-touching rule is conducive to her rehabilitation.  “Where does this rule come from? I tried to find them in the IOP’s (internal operating procedures) but I couldn’t.”

In another, a woman writes that a mentally ill inmate was kept in solitary confinement for months. “When it’s time for her to take her shower, she is lead, shackled and naked, down the hall, with a dog leash attached to her shackles, by a male guard.”

The AP story about the prison’s “butch wing” is worth reading in full. The practice of segregating inmates based on appearance–which has in the past been ruled unconstitutional–was reportedly discontinued shortly after the AP story came out.

Other complaints against the prison, according to another AP report from November, include denying the women access to reading materials and religious services, withholding food as punishment, and placing inmates “on a waiting list to use the restroom at night, early morning or during long lockdowns because their cells do not have toilets. Many say the wait can be up to an hour or longer, and that if an inmate relieves herself in her cell she is sent to segregation.”

A local state senator asked the Virginia Department of Corrections to launch an investigation, the results of which are still pending. But in December, Fluvanna’s Warden Barbara Wheeler, who had called the butch wing “a figment of the inmates’ imagination,” announced that she would retire–apparently, somewhat earlier than expected.

Thanks to Dan Moshenberg, whose emails and posts on the blog Women in and Beyond the Global have alerted us to several important stories, including this one.