A U.S. Justice Department investigation into excessive-force complaints at Red Onion State Prison, a supermax facility built to hold Virginia's most violent and dangerous inmates, appears to have stalled from the start.

Federal officials recently declined to comment on the probe. But Justice Department correspondence obtained under the federal open records law suggests that little action has been taken over the past five years.

In September 2000, an assistant U.S. attorney general notified then-Gov. Jim Gilmore that the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division had begun an investigation into conditions at Red Onion. Inmates complained that guards unnecessarily peppered them with shotguns that fire rubber pellets, shocked them with stun guns, and held them in five-point restraints for days at a time.

The allegations arose shortly after the prison opened in 1998 and continue today, although at a lesser rate.

Red Onion was part of a prison-building boom in far Southwest Virginia that offered much-needed jobs lost to the declining coal industry. But critics say putting the prisons in remote locales breeds tension between minority inmates and the predominantly white work force.

In September 2003, federal authorities denied a Freedom of Information Act request made by The Roanoke Times for correspondence related to the Red Onion probe. The government said releasing documents related to an ongoing investigation "could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings."

But after the newspaper made the same request two years later, the Justice Department recently released five letters from its lawyers to Virginia officials.

The first letter informs Gilmore of an investigation "to determine whether conditions at Red Onion violate the federal constitutional rights of the inmates confined there." The four letters that follow attempt to set up an investigatory tour of the Wise County prison.

The last letter, which notes that federal attorneys had yet to hear back from the state regarding the tour, is dated Dec. 6, 2001.

Little appears to have happened since then. But the Red Onion investigation is not mentioned in annual reports to Congress that list completed Justice Department investigations of prisons and jails.

Eric Holland, a spokesman for the Justice Department, declined to comment on the investigation.

While Virginia officials have received no official word from the Justice Department, "insofar as we know, the investigation is inactive," said David Clementson, a spokesman for the state Attorney General's Office.

"We are not presently aware of any continuing interest DOJ has in investigating anything about operations at Red Onion," Clementson said, "and we think that the DOC [Department of Corrections] has addressed the issues that generated concern when the prison first opened, to the point that the concerns are no longer of significance."

Among those issues is the use of stun guns.

The Department of Corrections suspended use of the devices in 2000, following the death of an inmate who was shocked repeatedly with a stun gun during a struggle with guards at Wallens Ridge State Prison, a second supermax prison identical to Red Onion at the time. The state later paid $350,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by the inmate's family.

Prison officials have also revised regulations on the use of five-point restraints, which had been used to strap unruly inmates to a bed by hand, foot and chest for as long as two days. The new regulations resulted in "a significant decrease in the use of four- and five-point restraints," Clementson said.

The state has also downgraded Wallens Ridge from a supermax prison to a maximum-security prison. Before the change, Wallens Ridge and Red Onion had provided a total of 2,400 supermax beds, which critics said was far more than the state needed.

Although inmate complaints have dropped off in recent years, the National Prison Project, a Washington, D.C.-based group affiliated with the American Civil Liberties Union, still hears allegations of excessive force from Red Onion, staff attorney David Fathi said.

Some inmate advocates say the reason for the investigation's slow pace could be the change in presidential administrations -- and with it a decreased emphasis on civil rights probes. The Red Onion investigation began in the last months of the Clinton administration.

"It's very clear that the Civil Rights Division under Bush has done very, very little with regard to prisons," said Jamie Fellner, a Human Rights Watch attorney who investigated conditions at Red Onion. Human Rights Watch is a New York-based organization involved in humanitarian issues worldwide.

In November, The Washington Post reported that dozens of veteran lawyers had left the Civil Rights Division out of frustration over a policy shift that had them focusing more on deportation and immigration issues and less on discrimination and mistreatment cases.

Holland, the Justice Department spokesman, disputed those claims when asked about them earlier this month.

"We have a very proud record of civil rights enforcement and we vigorously enforce the law and will continue to do so," he said.

Meanwhile, a Roanoke man said he is still waiting for answers to his questions about Red Onion.

Shaheed Omar said his son was beaten by guards at the prison last year. Luqman Omar, who is serving 19 years for robbery and malicious wounding, has since been transferred to another prison.

Shaheed Omar said he has been corresponding since last year with a Justice Department official about the alleged mistreatment of his son and other inmates at Red Onion. The official has assured him the complaints are being looked into.

"But all I know," Omar said, "is that nothing is happening."