All Episodes

July 24, 2025 21 mins
In this one, Randy speaks his mind, raw and unfiltered, about the Virginia Parole Board. After decades behind bars, watching the system grind people down, he’s got a few things to say,and he’s not holding back. If you’ve ever wondered why so many deserving people get denied parole, or why the whole process feels rigged, Randy’s about to break it down for you from the inside. This ain’t no feel-good episode. It’s truth-telling time.

The Red Onion Randy Podcast, Featuring the life and times of Randall Via, currently serving 1,214 years in Virginia for capital murder and armed robbery.

💥 Get More on Patreon:
Don’t forget to visit our Patreon for exclusive content! You’ll get:
An extended conversation about this episode between Randy and his producer
All 155 episodes of the podcast, 100% commercial-free
An early copy of Randy’s upcoming cookbook, “Ya Gonna Eat That?”, launching soon on Amazon

🎙️ Credits:
Founded by Michael Garbutt and Randall Via
Field & Development Producer: Paulie Doyle
Sound and Video Editing by Prison Audio
Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello, this is a prebate call from and if the
present Department of Correction read an in state prison to
accept this call, crass zero.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
This is Randall bob Aka read on you, Randy. I'm
currently serving one thousand, two hundred and fourteen years for
capital murder and arm robbery now and finally at a
level three fucking Air Correctional Center sowa's throw from where

(00:37):
I grew up. If you have any questions or comments
and want to leave a message or whatever, I've got
a voicemail line. That number is one eight eight eight
five Zuit four one nine three suit. You can also
visit my website which is new and improved and got
different features and whatnot at deput deft red on your

(01:01):
Randy dot com. I hope you do. Let's get started
with the podcast. Oo key so here in Virginia, and
I've spoken on this a little bit briefly here and

(01:21):
that I'm going to go into a little bit more
detail today because I received something just some guys in
here wire passing out and it really uh well, I'm
just gonna simply read it to you and then just
going into what I say. So the hitting of it

(01:43):
is only one parole release in January, none, in February none.
In March, the Parole Board Chair Patricia West, in a
recent visit to Lawrenceville Correctional Center, made it clear she
will never ever agreed to grant parole in cases where

(02:05):
individuals have committed serious violent crimes period, This in spite
of its mission to do so for those whose release
is compatible with public safety. This could lead one to
believe that the Virginia Department of Corrections is incapable of
correcting the individuals in its charge, and that the Virginia

(02:29):
doc is primarily a department of punishment. So there's an
inmate there and a friend of his named Jonathan White
at Lawrenceville to a proposing legislation that will require the
board to base their decisions on clearly defined criteria, as

(02:49):
outlined in a fourteen point inmate parole criteria scoresheet. This
following is just a little section of it. I don't
have the whole thing. I'm just simply going to read
what I have in front of it. In Virginia, parole
has always been recognized as a societal good by all

(03:11):
political parties for prisoners who have demonstrated rehabilitation and pro social,
positive behavior. The parole system is a reflection of the
penal system, functioning as an institution of reform and transformation
of individuals. However, the current board's decision making has resulted
in the lowest parole grant in the history of Virginia,

(03:33):
not a mark of distinction. For the year twenty twenty four,
the grant rate was a scant zero zero point five percent,
a mere sixteen of the approximately three thousand, two hundred
incarcerated women and men who are parole eligible under existing law. Note,

(03:57):
with parole having been abolished in nineteen ninety five, most
of the twenty four thousand men and women in the
Virginia doc and institutions are not parole eligible. The main
reason for the abysmal parole rate, contrary to most people's beliefs,
is that the board has no standard criteria for paroles.

(04:18):
Each member has their own voting concepts, so for the
five members, there are five unknown criteria each prison has
to meet. So how can the General Assembly fix the
current parole voting system and ensure public safety? The answer
is to release individuals who have demonstrated rehabilitation, transform their lives,

(04:41):
and have proven they will be successful returning citizens. We
need elected officials to radically change the Board's decision making
process by passing a law that establishes a viable voting criteria.
The board must adhere to one that establishes justice with
FAI fairness. The current board's modest operende was established in

(05:04):
the nineteen forties as in it and is akin to
boilerplate language, not grant seriousness of crime, et cetera. All
crimes are serious, but these continuous decisions undermine the idea
of true criminal justice, reform, rehabilitation, and fairness. The common

(05:25):
sense attached Amendment CoV fifty three point one Dash one
three four point two establishes a compulsory parole criteria of
the board must follow. And that's basically all it really says. Now,

(05:49):
this lady who is the head of the Parole Board
went to Lawrenceville, the incentive prison that I came up
with years ago when I was still a red onion.
The Lawrenceville I never got sent to, even though it's

(06:10):
been open for over a year, even though I've been
nineteen and a half years. Stargery and so on and
so forth is what it is. But this lady went
to the Virginia Doc's incentive prison and told the guys there,
the guys that are busting their ass, to stay there,

(06:33):
to rehabilitate themselves, to change, to transform who they are,
to change the way they think, to change the way
they feel, to change the way they were. You know,
they react into you know, responding. They're going to schools,
they're taking college courses, they're taking trades, they're doing all

(06:54):
of these things. Literally, it is literally Lawrenceville is probably
the most positive prison, if not the single only positive
prison in America. Like, I've never heard of any other
facility in any other state, from any other interstate compact

(07:16):
inmate or so on and so forth, where they talk
about their state has an actual incentive prison. This is
kind of groundbreaking. And the lady who's making the decision
on whether they go home or not says, look, if
you got locked up for stealing a piece of bubblegum,

(07:37):
I might, I might let you go. But if you
did something when you were young and stupid like I did, well,
fuck you, buddy. I don't care what you do. I
don't care how you change, I don't care how you've
grown up and matured. I don't care what trades you get,

(07:58):
what kind of education you get in it is any
irrelevant to me if you have anything considering slightly violenced,
you're not getting out. She's not going to release you,
and ask the head of the parole board. Well, let's
face it, the other four members are going to do

(08:21):
what she says, because if they don't, she's simply going
to pick the phone up and call the governor. Hey,
we got to get rid of them. They're way, way
to progressive. They're they want to let somebody out who
actually got into a bar fight, hit somebody over the
head with a beer bottle, split their scalp open, they
had to get four stitches and was charged with a

(08:43):
malicious wounding, and they're just saying, no, I will not
let them go home. How a thane is this? How
is the state of Virginia? We come to prison some

(09:04):
of us, not all of us. Let's listen. Let me
make that distinctly clear, you know, and it's not even
a very very large portion of the population. You know,
have actually rehabilitated themselves, turning their lives around, and you
know they're actually model citizens. But even those that have

(09:30):
done that, they've literally done everything you've asked them to do,
You're still not going to release them. You're still not
going to give them a shot. And then the governor
wants to go on social media, he wants to go
in front of actual media. Well, spinish my time in office,
we have the lowest recidivism rate in the country. That's

(09:53):
really easy to have when you're not letting anybody out
of prison. This is the problem with the parole board,
not just in this state, but in other states. And

(10:15):
I'm actually quite familiar with the parole board system and
other states through my editor Michael, because he watches a
lot of those videos. He posts them online on prison audio.
You have people in other states that have submitted the

(10:39):
exact same crimes I have. They've done fifteen years and
got out of prison. I'm done twenty seven, and yeah,
no parole for me, even if I was eligible work,

(11:00):
even if the laws changed. When Abigail Spamburger becomes the
next governor of Virginia, barring some unforeseen miracle, you know,
I mean, if she puts her foot in her mouth
like Terry mccaulus dead against Gleanny Young Kenning, you know,
I could see win some serious winning. But as of
right now. I just I do not see Wain some

(11:21):
serious winning at all. What is she going to do?
That's the topic of conversation every single day I hit
that yard. I'm working, now, I'm running, I'm doing the

(11:42):
things I need to do to keep my mental health
and then check, you know, keep the frustration up off me,
stay healthy, stay strong, stay ready, you know, so on
and so forth. And I hear guys constantly, constantly talking
about this over and over and over again from every

(12:02):
single angle you can possibly think of. I heard a
story about a guy. Now, whether it's true or not,
I don't know. I'm just simply going to repeat the
story as I heard it, and I advise you to
simply take it with a grain of salt. But I
was talking to somebody and they told me that they

(12:23):
had a buddy. And this was like last year. Sometime
he went up for parole. He never once spoke to
any member on the actual parole board. He spoke to
some assistance and the assistant they took him over to
a room an the administration building and they put him

(12:47):
on a computer and he did a little face to
face zoom meeting, and the assistant was standing there or
sitting there and he had his cell phone in his hand,
and he was sitting there looking at what was on
a cell phone, and he was like, oh yeah, so
what about this? And he just asked him questions that

(13:10):
this guy had on his social media page. You know
that he has his family do for him, like a
lot of prisoners do nowadays, you know, with us trying
to stay in touch with the world and everything. Every
single question this guy asked came from this guy's social media.

(13:33):
Not a single question had to do with how long
have you been charged for it? How many programs do
you have, have you gotten a trade, have you gotten
a ged, have you, you know, taken college courses for you?
What have you done to make me think you deserve

(13:55):
early release from prison? No, every single question this assistant
asked came from this cat social media. And when he
and when he got back, he was telling his buddy
like the kind of questions that the dude was asking him,
and like because he didn't even realize this at the time.

(14:17):
So let's face it. Sometimes, you know, guys in prison
get their hands on cell phones. So they went they
paid a guy that they knew had won, and he
rented it out. I'm not sure how much they gave him,
probably fifteen twenty bucks, but they literally went on a
guy's social media. Patron was actually looking at all this stuff,
and sure enough, every single question the parole board assistant asked,

(14:43):
was it? That was it? And of course the guy
got shot down. Never mind that this cat's been in
prison almost forty years for a crime he committed when
he was a juvenile. I think he was eighteen. I

(15:04):
could be wrong, but he committed to krim when he
was eighteen years old. To give or take, he's done
almost forty years in the system. He actually has his ged,
he actually has a couple of trades, He's taken a
whole bunch of programs, and he still was denied parole

(15:33):
because of people like this. Because the people who are
actually being hired for the Parole Board, every last one
of them, are former commonwealth attorneys, or they're former share
or what have you. They are always members of law enforcement.

(15:53):
Why can't you get a retired doctor, Why can't you
get a retired school teacher, a retired businessman or woman.
Why can't you get someone who's been an upstanding member
of society for forty fifty some years. But they've never

(16:14):
had nothing to do with law enforcement one way or
the other, for good or bad. They haven't worked for
them and they haven't been arrested bomb They've just they've
got a college degree. They you know, done what they
were supposed to do. They raised the family, they're raising grandchildren,
all of these things. Why can't you have members like

(16:36):
that on the parole board making the decisions whether a
guy actually deserves parole or not? And why is it
up to each individual? Why do they have their own
criteria that you have to meet. I actually like what
Jonathan White and his friend in Lawrenceville are doing. They

(16:59):
actually set down and I guess just wrote out, you know,
their own little version. And of course the General Assembly
can you know, add to it, change it, delete whatever
they want to do with the actually passed this law
and the governor sciences. There should be specific criteria in

(17:22):
order to get early released. In order to grant, you know,
be given parole, you have to have achieved for a
high school diploma. You have to have done this, done this,
and done that. Like. There should be actual rules and
if you if you check off every single one, then

(17:45):
you will automatically granted paroles if you miss two or three. So,
for example, I have been putting in for electrical trades
and any other trade I can think of, but I'll
always get denied because I have one two hundred and
fourteen years. Every time my name makes it to the

(18:06):
top of the list, I'll always get bumped right back
to the very bottom of it because they skip over
me to get the god behind me who goes home
in five years or fifteen years or twenty years. So
I'm actually not eligible for the four trade. I can't

(18:29):
take a trade here in the state of Virginia because
of that reason. So they need to make, you know,
put an actress beside having a trade, because I can't
get a trade if they won't let me in the class.
But yet, clam Yankin, you've got the lowest recidivism rate.

(18:49):
How is this? How do these people get away with these?
And it's because nobody cares. If you don't have an
inmate that is related to you, nine times out of ten,
you just you don't care. You have better things to do.

(19:12):
I mean, you know, you can get a lightsaber in
Fortnite you have one minute remaining. It's insane. It's just
insane that this lady would actually go to prison and

(19:35):
tell guys, I don't care what you do if you
have what I consider a violent crime, no matter what
you've done to rehabilitate yourself and turn your life around,
I'm not letting you go to you and your family.

(19:55):
I don't even know what else to say. I guess
us all the time we have for now. I appreciate
you listening to me more than you'll probably ever know.
I just want to let you know. You know, don't
forget to check out my website right on your Randy
dot com. And for those of you who want to

(20:18):
hear more, or you want to listen to the episodes
commercial free, or hear me and my editor discuss a
little bit further into the episodes, please go to Patreon
Join me, support me. You know, it's only five bucks
a month. And just a reminder, I have a cookbook

(20:40):
out you're going to eat that you can find it
on our website or Amazon Kindle or Amazon Print.

Speaker 1 (21:16):
Thank you for using GTL
Advertise With Us

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!

Dateline NBC

Dateline NBC

Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.

24/7 News: The Latest

24/7 News: The Latest

The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.