Over the past two years, lawmakers have implemented two pieces of legislation intended to drastically decrease the population in state prisons in the face of a growing overcrowding problem.
In 2013, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 371, the Justice Reinvestment Act. Among a long list of provisions, the bill allowed the Division of Corrections to develop and implement a cognitive behavioral restructuring program for DOC inmates being housed at regional jails due to overcrowding in the state prisons.
The key to that bill, however, is offering all other programs in the Regional Jail system was optional, not mandatory. That is until 2014.
Senate Bill 457, which was passed in March, required those additional programs be made available. The bill requires the DOC to provide things like substance abuse treatment or a high school equivalency program at regional jails just like they do within their own facilities.
DOC inmates take many of these classes while they’re incarcerated to help them become parole eligible, but inmates who are housed at regional jails because of a lack of beds can’t take those classes and are staying locked up longer, costing the state more money.
“[The funding] for the positions for Senate Bill 457 is in next year’s fiscal budget,” DOC Commissioner Jim Rubenstein told members of the Legislative Oversight Committee on Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority Monday. “So, we’re preparing, but we won’t actually be able to hire until after July 8.”
The DOC was alotted funding for ten 10 new counselors under the bill, but hasn’t filled the positions yet. Rubenstein said they have been working to secure space and finalize schedules for the courses.
Cognitive programs will begin July 1, but those additional programs required under 457 aren’t expected to begin until October 1.
In the meantime, inmates are being assessed using what’s called a Level of Service Case Management Instrument, or LSCMI. The test determines which courses a particular inmate needs to be rehabilitated. It helps the inmate prepare for parole, but also helps the division.
“Really what this will do is, where before the inmate would request to go into every class because they wanted to look good in front of the parole board, this instrument will indicate what an individual needs and it will help us get inmates into the classes they need and cut down on waiting lists,” Rubenstein said.
As for the cost, last interim session Regional Jail Authority Director Joe DeLong reported to the committee that for a $600-700,000 investment putting DOC courses in the regional jails, the state could save upwards of $7-8 million from shortened prison sentences.
Rubenstein reported the division won’t be able to truly measure those cost savings for some time, but said he stands by those projections and believes the state is headed in the right direction.
It’s only been a little over a year since Governor Tomblin signed the Justice Reinvestment Act into law, but the state is already seeing results in the amount of people being held in state jails and prisons.
The legislation was passed in 2013 by the state legislature and was crafted in partnership with the Council of State Governments’ Justice Center. It suggested states look at corrections in a slightly different way, focusing on rehabilitation and integrating inmates back into society by giving them access to more classes while they’re in prison, assisting them in securing housing, and preparing them for parole and probation.
At a press conference with the CSG in Washington, D.C., Thursday, Tomblin presented the most recent prison population numbers for West Virginia.
He reported the state has decreased its prison population by about 5 percent for the first time in 16 years. In the regional jails, the overcrowding is down by more than 50 percent. Those numbers are significantly less that what estimates predicted.
He equated those decreased numbers to the success of the Justice Reinvestment Program, but says there is still work to be done helping inmates adjust to society when they are returned to their communities.
Editor’s Note: Previously reported numbers of the decrease in population were incorrect. This story now reflects the correct decrease in prison population.
An inmate who escaped from the Beckley Correctional Center is back behind bars. The Division of Corrections tells media outlets that 31-year-old Thomas C.…
An inmate who escaped from the Beckley Correctional Center is back behind bars.
The Division of Corrections tells media outlets that 31-year-old Thomas C. Means is facing a felony escape charge.
The division didn’t provide details about Means’ escape or capture. He was discovered missing Friday morning during a head count.
Means was serving a one- to 15-year sentence for a burglary by breaking and entering conviction in Kanawha County.
During the Division of Corrections budget hearing, Commissioner Jim Rubenstein said the governor’s proposed budget for the division includes additional funding for provisions of Senate Bill 371, the governor’s prison reform bill. It includes increases for the transition of the Salem Industrial Home for Youth to the Salem Correctional Center.
“The Salem Correctional Center houses 388 male inmates and the funding that we received during the transfer from juvenile services was not sufficient to operate a 388 bed facility,” he said, “so, the governor has proposed the additional funding for us to operate that facility properly.”
Over the past few months, Rubenstein, the Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety and the governor’s office have been in talks with private, out-of-state prisons to help ease the state’s overcrowding issue.
Corrections Corporation of America, a Nashville based company, was the only organization to bid on housing the prisoners. Senator Bill Laird questioned if the Division’s budget included the cost of sending inmates to the Kentucky facility.
“There’s a line item that’s only payments to Regional Jails and that line item now lifted that restriction,” Rubenstein said. “It’s basically an operational funding line to not only make the payments to the Regional Jails, but to allow us in other operational type areas.”
Rubenstein said it’s that line item change that would allow the Division to pay an out-of-state facility to house inmates.
CCA said in a bid they would charge West Virginia $59.80 per inmate per day, a number slightly below Rubenstein’s initial estimate. He told the committee he thought the daily rate would be in the mid-60s.
“Through the secretary’s office that figure is in the governor’s office and we don’t have word back yet whether there’s a green light to proceed or what that outcome will be,” he said.
After reports of a lockdown at the Lee Adjustment Center, the facility CCA bid to place West Virginia inmates in, Rubenstein said in a statement:
I am aware that a portion of the Lee Adjustment Center is on lock down due to alleged fights or assaults among the Vermont inmate population which is currently housed at this facility. The W.Va. Division of Corrections is looking into the specifics of what has occurred, why a lock down was initiated, what type of problems are they experiencing and how they are handling the investigations. It is critical to the WVDOC to examine the particulars of this current situation involving the Vermont inmates housed at the Lee Adjustment Center. No decision has been reached on whether W.Va. will move forward on the voluntary out of state placement of inmates, but we want to be assured all aspects and operations of this facility are in order before any type of movement would occur.
With the opening of an envelope and the reading of a few numbers, the state Purchasing Office completed a bid opening Thursday for the Division of Corrections.
The request for proposals, known as an RFP in government jargon, asked national companies or state corrections departments to bid on sending West Virginia inmates to their out-of-state facilities in the hopes of curbing the state over crowding problem.
“At one point we had over 1,800 inmates who had been sentenced to the Division of Corrections awaiting bed space in one of the 10 regional jails,” DOC Commissioner Jim Rubenstein said.
The Corrections Corporation of America was one of two companies to attend a mandatory pre-bid conference in October, but is the only bidder on the proposal.
The national organization houses nearly 80,000 offenders at 64 facilities in 20 states. They’re proposing West Virginia send its inmates to their Beattyville, Ky., facility the Lee Adjustment Center.
Lee, a three hour drive from Charleston, has a total of 816 beds and currently houses 450 men from Vermont. The DOC requires West Virginia’s population to be separated from any other out-of-state prisoners at the facility, which CCA said is possible at the Lee Center.
According to their bid, CCA could immediately take 350 inmates from West Virginia with the possibility of expanding to fit up to 400, which Rubenstein calls a temporary solution for the state’s overcrowding problem.
“When I say temporary, I wish I could put more of a time frame on it than that, which I can’t, but by no means is this an out-of-sight, out-of-mind banishment of any sort,” he said Thursday.
“This is purely getting those offenders engaged immediately in the programming, the treatment, the work, everything they need to be involved in being prepared to see the parole board upon their first appearance.”
Classes, counseling and treatment these offenders currently do not have access to in regional jails.
In the RFP, companies were asked to detail how they would meet 68 mandatory items set forth by the DOC. Those included the types of rehabilitative and educational programming available to inmates, a facility that meets the American Correctional Association’s standards and access to medical and mental health services, just to name a few.
“We wanted to match up as close as possible to the operation of our facilities and to meet the needs of what the parole board wanted to see the inmate to achieve when appearing in front of them,” Rubenstein said. “ So, a lot of those manadatories are standards that we consider very critical that allows us to effectively and professionally run our own facilities.”
An evaluation committee will meet Monday to go through all 68 responses, but the bid details one program in particular the company will have to create at the Lee Center in order to meet West Virginia’s requirements- a rehabilitation program for sex offenders.
CCA expects 20 percent of the inmates received from West Virginia to be sex offenders and says they will implement a three phase program that includes pschyo-educational activities, cognitive restructuring and relapse and reentry prevention. The course will allow 15 inmates to attend one 2 hour session per week.
Still, Rubenstein stressed this is just an option for the state.
After the committee review, an oral on-site interview will take place at the Lee Center in the coming weeks, and if all 68 criteria can be met, then the state will open the envelopes containing CCA’s daily rate for housing prisoners.
Rubenstein said they may not know how much it will cost until early January.
From there, he said it becomes the governor’s decision if it is fiscally responsible to give inmates the option to go out-of-state to be housed and receive treatment, or if there are other temporary options the state can pursue to deal with the overpopulation quickly.
A law signed by Governor Tomblin in April is already having its intended effect of decreasing the state’s prison population. Legislators meeting this week in Charleston got an update on how Senate Bill 371, the governor’s prison reform bill, is doing.
State lawmakers are presented with projections all the time. The projected annual revenue, for example, is constantly talked about within the corridors of the Capitol because in recent years, those projections have shown major declines in funds.
But when legislators were presented another projection not meeting its mark, Deputy General Counsel for the governor Joseph Garcia said this was one to celebrate.
“So, at the end of this year, it was projected that we were going to have 7,531 inmates,” Garcia said.
But instead of following that trend, Garcia said the actual number of inmates is down by more than 250 since April.
And what about the inmate population being held in regional jails because of prison overcrowding? Garcia said that number is shrinking too.
“There has been a reduction of 554 people in the Regional Jail system,” he said.
Garcia attributes that reduction to the opening of a new Division of Corrections adult facility on the campus of the former Salem Industrial Home for Youth and to the governor’s prison reform bill.
It focused on two areas: dealing quickly with the state prison overpopulation and reducing the rate former inmates reoffend and go back to prison, known as recidivism.
Garcia said we’re now seeing the short term fixes of the bill—changes at the state Parole Board among others—kicking in. In a few years, he believes the numbers will be even stronger when programs like mandatory supervision take effect.
Credit Ashton Marra
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Deputy General Counsel for the governor Joseph Garcia shared state prison population statistics with the Legislative Oversight Committee on Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority.
“We’ve made some substantial progress with respect to these numbers,” Garcia said. “We weren’t expecting to get these kinds of results this early and so it shows we’re going in the right direction.”
But state lawmakers want to make sure the trend continues and many believe it can be done with more access to programming.
At state prisons, inmates have access to rehabilitation classes to prepare them to reenter society, things like anger management or parenting courses, but state prisons are so crowded that the overflow of inmates—more than 1,100 of them—are being held in regional jails where they don’t have access to these programs.
“Why can’t we look at providing those services in the Regional Jails?” Senator Donald Cookman, a former circuit judge, asked during a Legislative Oversight Committee on Regional Jails and Correctional Facility Authority. “It seems to me that it can be done and be a great savings to the taxpayers and, in addition to that, a great help for society.”
Garcia said the option is something the governor’s office would consider in the future.
Dennis Foreman, Chairman of the state Parole Board, said it’s an idea he supports.
While completing these programs aren’t required to be seen by the parole board—Foreman said they help.
Having a psychological assessment, a post release housing plan and reviewing an inmate’s crime and behavior while incarcerated are the major considerations–he added those who have taken classes are more likely to actually receive parole, getting them out of the overcrowded system more quickly.
“Anybody that goes through the treatment and does everything that they’re supposed to do basically to rehabilitate, once they’re rehabilitated then we’re ready to blow them out the door if they’re not a danger to society,” Foreman said. “When you don’t have the treatment, if you have to sit and wait an extra 6 months and we’re not able to see them, they’re just sitting there not getting anything accomplished.”
“They’ve got them in the regional jails, if they can get the treatment in the regional jails, the classes, it would be so much better for everybody concerned and the rates would definitely improve.”
However, the governor’s office and the state Division of Corrections are currently looking at the option of providing these services by transferring inmates to out of state private prisons.
Constitutionally, inmates would have to volunteer for a transfer and those private facilities would have to offer the same courses as West Virginia until room becomes available for the inmate at an in state facility.
But Joe DeLong, Acting Director of the Regional Jail Authority, told the committee providing the classes now at his facilities can be done. In fact, he proposed the idea to the legislature two years ago.
“We felt at that time by making the investment to offer those programs, if we could get those people the programs they needed and if the parole board kept paroling at the same rate they were, we could reduce the future incarceration cost of about $8 million a year,” he said.
Credit Ashton Marra
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Senator Bill Laird questions Joseph Garcia, deputy general counsel for the governor, during a legislative interim meeting.
DeLong said in order to offer classes his agency would need one additional counselor at all ten facilities and more equipment like desks or computers. He estimated it would cost about $750,000 a year to provide the same level of programming in the regional jails as in the state prisons.
The catch- regional jails are mainly funded by a daily rate charged to the counties to house their prisoners and DeLong said he doesn’t feel comfortable charging the counties for a service given to inmates that should be in state funded prisons.
“I could do it now. I probably have that authority to pull it off and reshuffle the deck that I have to do it now,” he said. “I’ve just always taken the position that I wasn’t willing to share that cost across the board with the counties because I didn’t think it was fair for that operational expense to be spread into all of per diem and for the counties to be footing the bill for a state sentenced inmates programs.”
DeLong added if the legislature choose to appropriate him that money, he would make the programming available.
Garcia said the governor’s office is still in the exploratory phases of sending inmates to out of state prisons for access to programming. He said they are unsure of the cost as of yet and how doing so would compare to offering the programming instead at the regional jail level.
