The First Amendment Clinic at the University of Virginia School of Law has helped expose how prisons across the country use attack-trained dogs on incarcerated people, leading to a new law in Virginia to curb the practice.
The clinic’s work in pursuing public records in Virginia fueled a three-part, award-winning exposé and accompanying documentary published by Business Insider in 2023, which detailed how the commonwealth used attack-trained dogs much more frequently than any of the 12 states that authorize the practice. The investigation is ongoing, and the clinic is still working to obtain additional records.
Hannah Beckler, a senior editor on Business Insider’s investigations team, said the students’ work was critical to her reporting, which found hundreds of instances in which patrol dogs either bit or mauled inmates inside state prisons.
“If I hadn’t had access to the legal resources [of the clinic], my reporting would have stopped in the first month when my initial request for records was denied,” Beckler said.
According to her reporting, patrol dogs used in prisons, typically bred in Europe, have been used “to attack and intimidate” inmates for decades. Beckler found that recollections of the attacks can have profound and long-lasting effects on those subjected to them. The violence impacts the dogs as well — some become so agitated that they attempt to bite their own tails off. Nearly half do not survive their service, with many being euthanized.
The obtained public records showed that the Virginia Department of Corrections deployed dogs in 271 recorded incidents from 2017 to 2022. By contrast, Arizona, the state with the second-highest number of incidents, logged only 15 attacks during the same period.
Last March, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed into law a bill that considerably limits the use of attack dogs and mandates expanded transparency when they are used, such as requiring the Virginia Department of Corrections to publish all reports of canine use of force on their website. The bill went to Youngkin’s desk after being overwhelmingly approved in the House of Delegates and unanimously supported in the Senate, following publication of the Business Insider investigation.
Clinic instructor and UVA Law lecturer Lin Weeks said it was “gratifying to see the hard work that the students did on the case pay off.”
“The released records played a significant role in Beckler’s ability to draw conclusions about the use of these dogs in Virginia,” said Weeks, who co-teaches the course with Ian Kalish and Gabe Rottman.
Records Denied
Beckler first filed a Virginia Freedom of Information Act with the Corrections Department in 2022 requesting access to reports of prison dogs’ attacks on inmates. The department denied the request, so Beckler sought assistance from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, where Weeks, Kalish and Rottman also serve as attorneys. The Reporters Committee then referred the matter to the clinic.
“Before I got involved with the clinic, almost all of the records that I was able to obtain were from the Public Access to Court Electronic Records website,” Beckler explained. Most were exhibits that had been submitted as part of civil rights cases.
“One of them basically had the allegation that dog attacks were a routine use of force in prisons. I remember bringing that up to Weeks, like, ‘I want to know how frequently this is happening,’” she said.
In the spring of 2022, clinic attorneys and students wrote a letter asking the Department of Corrections to release the records, explaining why exemptions under VFOIA did not permit withholding them. In July, the request was denied again.
When the next group of clinic students took on the case in the fall of 2022, they drafted a complaint seeking relief from the department’s violation of VFOIA in the circuit court of Charlottesville. Essentially, they were threatening to sue.
It worked. Nearly 150 bite reports were released to Beckler, revealing the frequency and types of incidents in which the dogs were deployed.
“One of the things I was the most shocked by was that these incident reports would sometimes also document the dogs’ use against men who were in leg shackles and handcuffs,” Beckler said.
She also cited videos the clinic uncovered from earlier civil rights cases as “incredibly valuable.”
“We obtained and utilized a few of the videos in our documentary, which was a very critical piece of the project. Video is so humanizing.”
Beckler’s reporting won the 2024 Hillman Prize for Newspaper Journalism and a 2024 National Magazine award.
The Investigation Continues
Not all reporters have access to these kinds of legal resources, but they can make a world of difference, Beckler said.
“The clinic being willing to take on a case like this pro bono is so vital to the reporting landscape across the country,” she said.
Litigation of a public records case can benefit the students involved, as well, Weeks said.
“Students become familiar with how a government agency operates,” Weeks said. “The students learned how [prisons] stored their records, the different forms they can take and the statues that govern their release. It’s interesting to see how public records-based reporting can effect change in the state legislature. This drives home the point of laws like VFOIA, which allow the public to see what’s happening within the government, sometimes leading to changes in policy.”
The relinquished bite reports were enough for Business Insider to move forward with publication in July 2023. But still, Beckler wanted more records. She was particularly interested in surveillance footage of bite incidents in Red Onion State Prison, Virginia’s super-maximum security prison, where more bites were recorded than in any other prison she had studied.
The Department of Corrections again refused to release the footage, and the clinic moved to sue the department. In early 2024, Jack Jiranek ’24 argued on behalf of Beckler and Business Insider in the Charlottesville trial court.
“It was my first experience representing a client in court,” said Jiranek, who is now clerking for a judge on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. “So it was a little nerve-wracking.”
He credited clinic instructors and fellow students such as his partner, Jack Parker ’25, with helping to moot and workshop his arguments. Ultimately, Jiranek said, he gained practical experience in how to construct a record in a case that might be appealed.
“In my current work as a clerk, this has given me a better understanding of how certain decisions at the trial court level have dramatic impacts on the case once it is appealed,” he said. “Some decisions are made in a split second at trial, and if the advocate is not cognizant of how it is impacting the record on appeal, it can have dire implications for their client.”
Jiranek presented argument again in April, at a hearing involving motions the clinic had made in response to the Corrections Department’s filings in the case.
“In the second hearing, the judge indicated that he was likely to grant our petition, and in fact he did,” Weeks said.
In the fall of 2024, the Charlottesville trial court ordered the release of the records. The Department of Corrections appealed the decision, which will delay the release while the case is pending.
“We’ve been working on this case for quite a while, but I think we’re getting closer to a final result,” Weeks said.
Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers in Virginia credited the news outlet’s investigation with bringing the issue to their attention, according to Business Insider.
Jiranek noted that due to the costs of litigation, journalists’ investigations can be “stymied” by the refusal of a public records request.
“Law students’ representation of journalists in these situations ensures that the records are released,” Jiranek said. “This is what VFOIA was designed to do, and law students can play a pivotal role in this process.”
Beckler added, “We wouldn’t have been able to do it without them.”
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