Published: November 17, 2008 10:07 pm      

Prison bed shortage keeps worsening

CHARLESTON — Push is nearly turning into shove inside West Virginia’s crowded prisons, and some lawmakers feel the time has come to replace talk with action.

As of Monday, there was a near 1,200-bed deficiency in the state’s penal facilities, with regional jails absorbing an overload of convicts awaiting transfers.

In a recent symposium at Stonewall Jackson Lake, noted Sen. Andy McKenzie, R-Ohio, many attendees were startled to learn of the prison crowding.

That, he pointed out, despite years of concerns voiced by the Legislative Oversight Committee on Regional Jail and Correctional Facility about the impending crunch, which was foretold by a research team at Georgetown University.

“It’s shocking there are still people in the state who don’t understand we have a problem,” he said.

Just how the state is going to approach the burden is anyone’s prediction.

There has been talk of building a new prison, and others prefer to revisit the sentencing structure so that non-violent offenders aren’t put away for long stretches.

Sen. Randy White, D-Webster, alluded to this in Monday’s interim session, saying he hoped the Legislature can get away from being “tough on crime” to a mindset of being “smart on crime.”

The symposium was held by the National Governors Association and the Pugh Foundation, and was attended by several legislators, and the chief justice of the state Supreme Court.

Corrections Commissioner Jim Rubenstein advised the panel that if projections hold up, and no more prison beds are added, the state will witness a jail backlog of 2,300 inmates by 2012.

Sen. Shirley Love, D-Fayette, a co-chairman of the committee, suggested the symposium merely rehashed what his panel has been preaching for more than a decade — that prisons cannot absorb the growing population of inmates.

“It’s just rolling it over a different rock, looking at another side,” Love said.

McKenzie said the state must accept the fact that unless some positive move is taken, bed space simply will be exhausted.

“We need to realize we have an overcrowding problem,” he said.

“It seems we’ve got to be under a court order, or an absolute emergency, before anything is done.”

Delegate Corey Palumbo, D-Kanawha, found the rising inmate population an enigma, given the “stagnant population” of West Virginia, and wondered if drug abuse is the main contributor.

Rubenstein promised to present a speaker at the December interims to analyze the prison situation and the causes of crowded institutions.

The commissioner indicated the Legislature needs to take a long, serious look at the matter, adding, “You can’t build your way out of these concerns.”

— E-mail:

mannix@register-herald.com