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Virginia

Political repression plays out state by state — shaped by local institutions, prosecutors, and movements for defense. These are the documented political prisoners and cases the census holds for Virginia.

105Documented
2In custody
93Released
2Awaiting trial

Eras of repression in Virginia

Where Virginia’s entries fall across the census’s historical eras.

1800s 30 1910s 12 2000s 11 1970s 10 2020s 9 2010s 9

Documented cases

105 entries in the census — every one stays in the record, whether the case is open or closed.

David Annarelli
In Custody
David Annarelli is known both for his writing and advocacy from prison and for the violent incident that led t...
Kevin Rashid Johnson
In Custody
Kevin Rashid Johnson is best known for organizing and writing from prison, framing incarceration as a politica...
Abdelhaleem Ashqar
Released
Dr. Abdelhaleem Ashqar was a Howard University Professor and Palestinian activist who fled to the United State...
Julian Assange
Awaiting Trial
Julian Assange was the editor of WikiLeaks, a website which publishes government documents sent to them by whi...
Michael Billington
Released
Billington became prominent as a political organizer and fundraiser aligned with Lyndon LaRouche and the LaRou...
John Minor Botts
Released
John Minor Botts was a Virginia politician, lawyer, and former U.S. Congressman who became one of the most pro...
Amin Chaoui
Released
Amin Chaoui is an activist from Richmond, Virginia who was arrested on March 5, 2023 at the Atlanta Public Saf...
Charles James Faulkner
Released
Charles James Faulkner was a former U.S. congressman from Virginia and U.S. minister to France. On returning f...
Stephan Graham
Released
Stephan Graham, a local secretary of the International Labor Defense, was arrested at Portsmouth, Virginia in...
Leonard Grimes
Released
Leonard Andrew Grimes was a free-born African American Underground Railroad activist in Washington, DC. He ser...
Daniel Hale
Released
Daniel Hale is a former U.S. Air Force intelligence analyst and former contractor at the National Geospatial-I...
Eric Hancock
Released
Eric Hancock is an antifascist prisoner serving a year’s sentence for unlawful wounding after a confrontation...
John Kiriakou
Released
John Kiriakou was a CIA case officer, and senior counterterrorism investigator for the Senate Foreign Relation...
John Letcher
Released
John Letcher was a Virginia lawyer, newspaper editor, congressman, and the state’s governor during the first t...
Corey Long
Used an improvised aerosol flamethrower at the Aug 2017 Unite the Right rally, Charlottesville; disorderly con...
James Murray Mason
Released
James Murray Mason was a Virginia politician who served in the U.S. House and Senate — where he authored the F...
Judith Miller
Released
Judith Miller was a New York Times reporter jailed for eighty-five days in 2005 for refusing to identify a con...
Alejandra Pablos
Released
Alejandra Pablos is an immigration and reproductive justice activist who was brought to the United States as a...
Thomas Pauken II
Awaiting Trial
Thomas Pauken II is an American journalist and political commentator who spent more than a decade living in Ch...
Edward A. Pollard
Released
Edward A. Pollard was the editor of the Richmond Examiner and a prominent Confederate journalist, later author...
Asa Rogers
Released
Asa Rogers, of Loudoun County, Virginia, was an aged militia officer seized without warning and held as a host...
Sharon Scranage
Released
Sharon Scranage was a clerk with the Central Intelligence Agency whose case became one of the best-known espio...
Elmina Slenker
Released
Elmina Slenker was a freethought writer, atheist and birth control advocate, in Snowville, Virginia. Postal in...
Michael Soussoudis
Released
Michael Soussoudis was a Ghanaian intelligence officer whose relationship with Sharon Scranage was treated by...

Institutions in Virginia

Prisons, jails, and detention centers in Virginia that appear in the census’s case files.

Occoquan Workhouse
15 cases
FCI PetersburgHopewell, Virginia
11 cases
Occoquan Workhouse / DC JailLorton, Virginia
11 cases
Virginia State PenitentiaryRichmond, Virginia
8 cases
Charles Town Jail (Jefferson County)Charles Town, Virginia
7 cases
Castle GodwinRichmond, Virginia
3 cases
Federal Reformatory, PetersburgPetersburg, Virginia
3 cases
Norfolk Naval Station (USS Iowa) — Nuclear Navy Plowshares
2 cases