CHARLESTON — Violent crime is on the decline in West Virginia, but the overall inmate population is rising to the level a new prison might become unavoidable, lawmakers were told Sunday.

By the year 2012, Military Affairs and Public Safety James Spears told a legislative panel, the number of inmates in state prisons could swell to 8,530.

West Virginia has space for only 5,300 prisoners, and currently, the 10-unit regional jail system is housing 1,200 convicts since there is no room for them.

A new prison would cost in the neighborhood of $200 million, Spears told the Joint Standing Committee on Government Organization.

“Are you basically recommending that we break ground today?” asked one panelist, Sen. Evan Jenkins, D-Cabell.

“I think that is something to be seriously considered and considered soon,” Spears replied.

Sen. Ed Bowman, D-Hancock, and others agreed that sentencing laws need to be revisited as a means of keeping some inmates out of prison and detoured into alternate means of paying a debt to society.

At the same time, for the safety of the public, he added, “I want to keep the bad guys in prison.”

Spears said he preferred to use the term “overpopulation” rather than “overcrowding” and said West Virginia isn’t unique in facing a growing issue.

California, for example, is wrestling with an excess of 70,000 inmates, while Kentucky is trying to deal with 2,000 more inmates beyond its capacity.

“Even though we have a problem here, our problem is within the national perspective,” Spears said.

So far, he pointed out, research has shown that projected inmate numbers in West Virginia have been almost dead on target. For instance, the estimated population for last year was 6,000, and the state wound up with 6,077 inmates.

Spears pointed to a special study task force Gov. Joe Manchin named late last year to examine the causes of the growing population and how to resolve it.

Yet, he cautioned, “There is no cookie cutter approach to solving the problem.”

Spears applauded the recent move toward drug courts, which allow for rehabilitation as an alternative to prison sentencing. He pointed out that while 30 percent of all crimes directly involve drug activity, upward of 85 percent are linked to substance abuse, such as breaking and entering.

“Protecting the public safety is of the utmost importance when we look at overpopulation,” the MAPS secretary said.

It costs about $27,000 a year to maintain an inmate in the West Virginia penal system, he said.

“There is not a person in this room who does not know someone, or has a relative, or a neighbor, who has not had a negative association with drugs,” Spears said. “Fifteen years ago, you couldn’t have said that.”

Spears agreed with Bowman that recent efforts by the Legislature to crack down on crime by imposing harsher sentences should be given a fresh look, since that attitude has contributed to the excess of inmates.

“We need to examine some of the laws that we use to imprison people,” Bowman said.

— E-mail:

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