A reporter for Business Insider is crediting the University of Virginia School of Law’s First Amendment Clinic for helping her obtain public records that fueled the newspaper’s investigation into the use of attack dogs in US prisons against inmates — reporting that recently won awards and caused great importance. legislative reforms in Virginia.
In 2023, Business Insider published a three-part series and accompanying documentary cataloging hundreds of incidents in which patrol dogs have bitten or injured inmates inside US prisons, including in Virginia, where the state Department of Corrections has placed 18 dogs times more often than any other country.
Using public records, court documents, medical records and interviews, Hannah Beckler, a senior investigative editor for Business Insider, took readers from facilities in Europe where patrol dogs are raised, brutalized and trained for violence, to the cells of prisons in the United States. States, where, according to Beckler’s report, they are used “to assault and intimidate” prisoners. Her reporting found that memories of attacks can torment people for years after the bite wounds heal.
A former Virginia inmate, a black man, told Beckler that he was brutally assaulted after prison officers tried to break up a fight. A dog tore at the skin and muscles of his calf while his handler yelled racial slurs, he said. Beckler reported that he now has permanent nerve damage as a result and terrible memories of the incident.
The investigative series was made possible after Beckler and Business Insider fought for the release of hundreds of Virginia Department of Corrections records about the use of trained attack dogs with free legal support from the UVA First Amendment Clinic, which is run by attorneys for Reporters. Commission for Freedom of the Press.
Beckler’s investigation prompted Virginia lawmakers to introduce legislation aimed at banning or restricting the use of trained attack dogs inside state prisons. Last March, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed into law a bill that dramatically limits the use of trained attack dogs and imposes transparency requirements regarding their use, including requiring VADOC to release all reports of the use of force by the dog on its website.
Beckler’s reporting later won two prestigious awards: the 2024 Hillman Award for Newspaper Journalism and a 2024 National Magazine Award, which recognized the documentary.
“This is an important and monumental series — one that forces us to look at a world we work so hard not to,” said Hillman writer and judge Ta-Nehisi Coates as he presented Beckler with the award. “And [it] he actually succeeded in forcing other people who did not want to see him to act on him.”
Legal battle over prison records
Beckler began reporting on the series in 2022. As part of her reporting, she filed a Virginia Freedom of Information Act request with VADOC seeking access to bite reports chronicling incidents where prison dogs attacked inmates. After the department denied the request, Beckler and Business Insider contacted the UVA First Amendment Clinic for help challenging the denial.
“There’s very little public oversight of how prisons operate, so the documents are really one of our few avenues to understand what’s going on in the prison in the way that is documented by the staff,” Beckler said. “That was really the key for me.”
Lin Weeks, co-director of the UVA First Amendment Clinic and a senior staff attorney at the Reporters Committee, said Clinic students wrote a letter on Beckler’s behalf asking VADOC to release the records, but she still refused. delivered them. That’s when students and Clinic attorneys representing Beckler and Business Insider told VADOC they would sue over the records.
VADOC relented, issuing nearly 150 bite reports for Beckler. Those documents not only revealed the frequency and types of incidents in which guards deployed attack dogs, Beckler said they also showed that, at times, the dogs were used on people who were in handcuffs.
Beckler combined those recordings with the rest of her extensive reporting to publish the investigative series in July 2023. And a few months later, Business Insider produced the documentary.
But Beckler wanted more records: specifically, surveillance footage of bite incidents at Virginia’s super-maximum security Red Onion State Prison, which recorded the most bites of any prison in her investigation.
“It’s one thing to have documents; It’s another thing to have video,” Beckler said. “The video is very, very humanizing.”
After VADOC refused to release the surveillance footage, Beckler and Business Insider, represented by the UVA First Amendment Clinic, sued the department to compel the release of that footage. A third-year student argued on behalf of the petitioners in the Charlottesville court.
“The main goal of the clinic is for students to have experience both drafting legal cases and appearing in court when they can,” Weeks said. “Virginia FOIA cases are convenient because they move fairly quickly—you can get into court quickly in a VFOIA hearing compared to other cases—and the impact of the cases is significant.”
Last fall, the Charlottesville court ordered the release of the records, subject to some modifications. VADOC has appealed the decision, delaying receipt of these notes from the petitioners while the case is still pending.
Beckler said she enjoyed working with the First Amendment Clinic students and reporters’ committee attorneys who helped make the series possible.
“I think it’s just such an incredible resource to have a First Amendment Clinic and be able to interact with future attorneys who are excited about the First Amendment,” Beckler said. “I’m very grateful for their work and their efforts on this, and we really couldn’t have done it without them.”
