‘Addicted to incarceration’: Advocates say correctional understaffing focus misses bigger overpopulation picture | Politics

Seconds later, Douglas told the committee his agency had eight facilities with officer vacancy rates exceeding 40%. Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation Commissioner William K. Marshall III showed lawmakers what he said was a roster board for Huttonsville Correctional Center and Jail in Randolph County. The sheet of paper prominently featured large red bars in a graphic.

“All the red are vacancies,” Marshall said.

But there was little focus on an issue that has worsened in recent years and exacerbated the state’s staffing shortages: overcrowded jails and prisons.

There was even less focus on two items Marshall and Douglas were supposed to provide updates on: their agency’s grievance process and litigation against the agency.

Scrutiny of the state’s correctional system has intensified in recent months, driven by an escalating number of inmate deaths. The West Virginia Poor People’s Campaign has called for an independent civil rights investigation into West Virginia jail conditions.

A state Department of Homeland Security investigation released last year concluded allegations of water deprivation, failure to provide toilet paper, and inmates having to sleep on hard floors without a mattress at Southern Regional Jail and Correctional Facility, in Raleigh County, were false.

“It’s just a big political game, and West Virginians are tired of the games,” Pam Garrison, tri-chair of the West Virginia Poor People’s Campaign, said in a phone interview. “We’re dying because of the games.”

The average sentenced inmate population of 5,630 across West Virginia’s prisons and jails in fiscal year 2021 is 43% higher than it was 20 years earlier, according to Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation data. The state’s average inmate prison and jail population was just 2,138 in calendar year 1992.

The numbers swell further when accounting for inmates awaiting trial. Including pretrial inmates, the average daily inmate population in the state’s regional jails rose by a third from fiscal years 2010 to 2022.

West Virginia’s jails are housing more inmates than they were designed to contain.

Of the state’s 10 regional jails, seven had adult inmate populations exceeding capacity as of May 1, according to state data. North Central Regional Jail in Doddridge County had 750 inmates — 33% above its capacity of 564.

The frequency of deaths in the state’s regional jails has increased sharply in recent months.

Nearly one out of every five of the 177 inmate deaths in those jails since 2009 occurred in 2022 or 2023.

West Virginia’s regional jails generally have served pretrial defendants and individuals sentenced to terms of one year or less.

“West Virginia will begin to fix our overcrowded and deadly jails when our policymakers realize they cannot address every social ill with locking people up in cages,” American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia Advocacy Director Eli Baumwell said in an email.

Lockups in West Virginia have increased despite a long-term decrease in violent and property crimes.

The state’s violent crime rate per 100,000 residents fell 10% from 1999 to 2019, according to FBI data. The state’s property crime rate per 100,000 residents declined 33% over the same span.

“West Virginia is addicted to incarceration,” Sara Whitaker, criminal legal policy analyst for the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, a progressive think tank, said in an email.

Douglas told the Joint Standing Government Organization Committee at its May 8 meeting his agency had done an “outstanding job” of moving inmates from jails to prisons to “lighten the load” in the state’s jail system. The state’s jails have had to contend with most of the state’s officer vacancies.

“We still have a lot of inmates, but our total population is down,” Douglas told the committee.

From January 2022 to May 2023, that total population had fallen 2%, according to data Douglas presented to legislators.

But the state’s jail population was still 4% over capacity as of May 1.

Douglas and Marshall dwelled little on litigation against the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation or the agency’s grievance process despite those topics’ placement on the agenda.

Douglas acknowledged the committee had asked for data on lawsuits and settlements, but said the agency had just received data from the state Board of Risk and Insurance Management and couldn’t prepare a presentation in time for the meeting.

The Board of Risk and Insurance Management provides casualty insurance coverage for state agencies, including protection from lawsuits and other liability claims stemming from incidents caused by employment practices as well as general and other liabilities.

Lawsuits alleging unsanitary, inhumane living conditions at state jails have piled up.

In September, two men who had been incarcerated at Southern Regional Jail filed a federal lawsuit against state Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation and jail leadership, alleging pervasive overcrowding, faulty plumbing resulting in a lack of running water and limited or no access to drinking water, black mold in inmate cells and showers and rodent and insect infestations.

The lawsuit cited a 2020 Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation annual report that indicated an average 12-month daily population of 640 in the facility with a designed capacity of 468. The jail’s average daily population for fiscal year 2021 was even greater at 717.

Former and current correctional officers recalled as many as 12 to 16 inmates placed in a single 120-square foot suicide cell at once and left there for days at Southern Regional Jail in testimony filed in the September class-action lawsuit.

Testifying as a current Southern Regional correctional officer and shift supervisor in written testimony in the class-action lawsuit filed in September, Troy Carter said he was aware of “numerous” incidents there in which an inmate was stabbed or beaten by another inmate because his cell door was broken or didn’t lock.

Miranda Smith filed a federal lawsuit in March against the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation alleging her father, Alvis Shrewsbury, 45, died in September following a 19-day incarceration at Southern Regional Jail marked by brutal acts of violence from other inmates, and correctional officer and health care staff indifference to his health and safety.

Smith is seeking all damages recoverable under the state’s wrongful death statute.

“I hope more than anything that this never happens again,” Smith, 29, of Wyoming County said in a phone interview. “I hope that it’s a lesson to them individually that this can’t just be swept under the rug just because you’re in a high-up position.”

Dana Stevenson filed a lawsuit against South Central Regional Jail officers in March 2022 alleging two other inmates stabbed him in his sleep 25 times in his face in December 2021. Stevenson has sought $1.5 million in monetary compensation and $5 million for pain and suffering, alleging an unidentified control tower officer unlocked his cell door and let the inmates in.

Per state code, inmates can’t bring civil action over general aspects of prison life — like health care and staff treatment — unless they have filed a grievance and received a final decision from the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation commissioner or the Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority executive director. State code also calls for a final decision from those leaders before inmates can bring civil or criminal action alleging violence, sexual assault or sexual abuse.

Douglas reported over 18,000 grievances filed since January 2022 — over 37 grievances a day. But Douglas said he didn’t know how many of 2,700 grievances appealed to the commissioner were resolved in an inmate’s favor or how many grievances were filed alleging sexual abuse or imminent violence when asked by Delegate Kayla Young, D-Kanawha. Douglas said the agency could provide that data.

The agency hasn’t yet provided records showing the final resolution of the over 18,000 grievances reported by Douglas in response to a Gazette-Mail Freedom of Information Act request.

Neither the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation nor its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, responded to requests for comment.

“We must reduce our reliance on jails and prisons because these are places that cause a great deal of harm,” Whitaker said.

Whitaker says state incarceration levels have escalated over time due to an increasing dependence on wealth-based detention, longer sentences and community supervision programs that are a path to prison.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights released a report last year finding a 433% increase in individuals detained pretrial between 1970 and 2015. The report observed over 60% of defendants are detained pretrial because they can’t afford to post bail.

Over half of West Virginia jail inmates were awaiting trial as of May 1.

More than three-quarters of inmates who died in state regional jails since 2009 were awaiting trial.

House Bill 2419 of 2020 was touted as a bail reform bill, but still allowed judges and magistrates to require cash bail.

Even with the state’s incarceration levels escalating, lawmakers have sought to increase sentences for drug offenses.

In 2020, the Legislature approved House Bill 4852, which increased penalties for methamphetamine distribution.

Whitaker noted that fatal overdoses involving methamphetamine increased following passage of HB 4852, according to West Virginia Office of Drug Control Policy data. Such overdoses increased 30% from 2020 to 2021.

Senate Bill 547, which passed the Senate before stalling in the House of Delegates in the 2023 regular legislative session, also would have increased penalties for intending to distribute drugs.

“Longer sentences do not make us safer, but they do increase the prison population over time,” Whitaker said.

Lawmakers have approved some measures aimed at reducing state incarceration. In 2021, the Legislature passed HB 3304, which included provisions to expand the state’s work release facilities. Also passed in 2021, HB 3078 allowed eligible inmates who hadn’t been able to finish required rehabilitative and educational programs while incarcerated to complete them while on parole.

But community supervision programs create what a recent report on punishment beyond prisons called “a tripwire to harsher punishments.”

The report published this month by the Prison Policy Initiative, a criminal justice reform nonprofit, found that 46% of people in West Virginia’s criminal legal system were on parole or probation.

The Prison Policy Initiative report found that community supervision too frequently sets people up to fail. Probation and parole put people at risk for going to jail or prison for being accused of a new crime for struggling to follow vague rules or not being able to pay monthly fees or restitution.

Required interactions with and surprise visits from parole and probation officers frequently lead to low-level offenses or technical violations, like breaking a curfew, the Prison Policy Initiative found.

Over a quarter of 2,998 inmate commitments to West Virginia prisons in 2022 were due to technical parole or probation violations.

But lawmakers recently have focused more on state corrections understaffing than overcrowding, making fruitless attempts to pass legislation while Gov. Jim Justice refuses to call a special session to address the issue. Justice has said lawmakers must demonstrate agreement on the issue for him to call a special session.

Justice issued a State of Emergency to address critical staffing shortages in August after locality pay legislation failed last year.

The State of Emergency supplied the Department of Homeland Security with National Guard personnel to alleviate staffing shortages at adult and juvenile correctional and detention facilities at a cost Marshall has estimated to be $17 million for the fiscal year.

“Until they address the main issue of it, which is overincarceration, and until they start dealing with some of these core causes of the problems and quit trying to put these little Band-aids on them — yeah, you can hire some more guards, but that’s not going to solve all the mold growing in these old, old buildings,” Garrison said.

In his January State of the State address, Justice called on the Legislature to consider locality pay for correctional officers.

Senate Bill 464, which would have provided correctional officers locality pay of up to $10,000 annually for working at facilities designated by the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation as having critical staffing shortages, stalled in the Senate. House Bill 2879, which would have provided a $6,000 pay increase for corrections employees of three years or more and a $3,000 sign-on bonus for new corrections employees, stalled in the House.

But while he said locality pay would help for the facilities where it’s offered, Marshall said he was concerned by what would be a comparative lack of incentive for employees at facilities where locality pay wasn’t granted.

Douglas offered the committee that more money to attract officers doesn’t guarantee they’ll stick around. He told the Joint Standing Government Organization Committee 29 out of 182 officers given an $1,000 appointment incentive under a program started in October already had resigned as of last month.

Marshall told the committee addressing maintenance issues would encourage officer retention by making their jobs easier.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeff Sandy has reported $200 million in deferred maintenance costs for his agency, including $27 million in lock replacements.

Meanwhile, the Governor’s Office has sat on most of $28.3 million of federal coronavirus relief money unexpended at the Sept. 30, 2022, deadline to spend it after moving it to a governor-controlled discretionary account, claiming it as eligible coronavirus-related state Corrections expenses.

It had distributed just 1% of that sum (roughly $280,000) to the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation as of earlier this month, according to the Auditor’s Office.

Smith noted the millions the Governor’s Office has held onto in the Gifts, Grants and Donations Fund could be used to fix mold and plumbing issues.

The September class-action lawsuit against Douglas, Marshall and other state corrections leadership asserts inmate cells have gone weeks to months without running water, citing affidavits from former correctional officers.

“If they can just get that plumbing issue [addressed], people could better fend for themselves,” Smith said.

The ACLU of West Virginia has called for a pardon covering certain drug possession offenses to slash West Virginia’s number of incarcerated people.

The Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation has reported zero full pardons issued since Justice became governor in 2017. The governor has pardon authority.

The Governor’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.

Kimberly Burks, 56, of Beckley doesn’t think more funding for correctional officers will make a positive difference if it doesn’t result in better officer training. Burks said she believes her son was killed by correctional officers at Southern Regional Jail.

Quantez Burks, 37, died at the state-run Southern Regional Jail and Correctional Facility, in Beaver, on March 1, 2022, a day after he was incarcerated there.

The Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation lists Burks as one of 18 inmates to die of heart disease in one of West Virginia’s 10 regional jails since the start of 2020, according to agency data obtained by the Gazette-Mail through a state Freedom of Information Act request.

Burks has said an autopsy report conducted by a Pittsburgh pathologist contradicts the state’s determination that he died of natural causes, instead finding that Quantez had a heart attack due to stress brought on by blunt force trauma.

When asked for comment on Burks’ belief that Southern Regional correctional officers beat her son to death and the class-action lawsuit filed in September alleging unsanitary living conditions and pervasive overcrowding, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Andy Malinoski said this month the matters were under federal investigation.

“The whole system needs to go in the trash until they can come up with a system that’s going to work for the inmates, for the inmates, for the COs [correctional officers], for any of them,” Burks said.

“Jail and prison are inherently cruel,” Whitaker said. “Their conditions are made worse from years of overcrowding. The only real way to improve the conditions in West Virginia jails is to house fewer people in them.”