§ 8.01-690.Applicability provisions.

Before any of Chapter 27’s fee rules, venue rules, or discovery limits kick in, a case has to clear this gate. Two things have to be true: the prisoner must be representing himself, without a lawyer, and the case must be one of the four kinds listed here — a claim for money damages under Virginia law, or a request for an injunction, a declaratory judgment, or a writ of mandamus.

The word “prisoner” reaches anyone incarcerated in a state or local correctional facility, and the section says explicitly that this includes facilities run under the Corrections Private Services Act. A 2025 amendment updated the section, and the current text makes clear that contracting out a facility’s day-to-day operation to a private company does not exempt suits arising there from the Act’s coverage.

Because the section names only pro se cases, a prisoner who retains or is appointed a lawyer for a civil suit falls outside this chapter’s special rules. And because it lists only four kinds of relief, an action seeking something else — a habeas corpus petition challenging confinement itself, for instance — follows its own separate procedural track rather than Chapter 27’s.