Big changes are already underway at the Virginia Department of Corrections. A new director has taken the helm just as Virginia lawmakers have passed a budget that includes funding for an ombudsman’s office that will provide independent oversight of the VADOC for the first time.

“We think that there should be some accountability and transparency to that agency, and it had been fought very hard,” said ACLU of Virginia policy strategist Shawn Weneta, who was among those pushing for the oversight office and who believes the near simultaneous change in leadership and creation of the oversight office are connected.

“It’s hard not to draw sort of a straight line from some of the things that have been going on in the Department of Corrections in recent months to a change in leadership, to a change in posture in their approach to the Ombudsman’s office,” Weneta said, citing incidents including unnatural deaths, escapes and dog attacks as examples of why independent oversight is needed.

The new budget includes $250,000 funding to create the office. The first step, according to Weneta, is to establish a 13-member committee comprising formerly incarcerated people, correctional officers, physicians and mental health professionals. Once formed, that committee will select an ombudsman, who will have investigatory authority over DOC.

“They can go in and inspect the facilities and records, and they can also be a bit of a clearing house for complaints, not only from people that are incarcerated, but also for staff,” Weneta explained.

Currently, VADOC employs 11,000 people and is responsible for the approximately 25,000 people who are incarcerated or otherwise supervised by VADOC. It commands a $1.5 billion dollar budget, and that, according to Weneta, is one reason the office of oversight received bipartisan support.

“Some people wanted to protect staff, other people wanted to protect people that were incarcerated,” Weneta said. “Other people were fiscally concerned about what’s going on with all the money that’s being spent on the agency.”

Under previous VADOC Director Harold Clark, the department was opposed to the oversight office, but new Director Chadwick Dotson has taken a different public stance.

“The Virginia Department of Corrections welcomes the opportunity to work with the newly formed Office of the Department of Corrections Ombudsman,” he said in an official statement earlier this month.

Dotson is a UVA grad and former judge who most recently headed up Virginia’s Parole Board. Weneta said he’s encouraged by Dotson’s selection and what he hopes will be a greater openness to reform.

“I’ve had the opportunity to work with him on parole reform and changing the parole process reforms,” Weneta said. “He was excellent to work with and wanted to make that agency a very transparent agency, and he took a lot of steps towards doing that in his tenure at the parole board. We’re certainly hopeful that he will continue to have that posture moving into the Department of Corrections.”

Through a spokesperson, Dotson declined WINA’s request for an interview.

Weneta said the establishment of the office in this year’s budget is just a start.

“It gives us a toehold, and then we’re going to come back in the next general assembly session and really make sure that it has the proper authority and is really funded in the manner that it needs to be funded to be effective,” he said.

Listen to the entire interview with ACLU of Virginia’s Shawn Weneta here.