By Lacie Pierson, Charleston Gazette-Mail
More than half of the roughly 7,000 people in West Virginia’s regional jails are incarcerated without being convicted of a crime, lawmakers learned Monday.
Each of West Virginia’s 10 regional jails is “bursting at the seams,” Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation Commissioner Betsy Jividen told the Legislative Joint Judiciary Committee Monday. Officials said the jails are operating about 25 percent over the capacity they were built to maintain.
Delegate John Shott, R-Mercer, the committee’s co-chairman, said the state’s overcrowded jails and prisons would be a focus for legislators next year.
On Monday, lawmakers discussed potential policies, including changing laws affecting bail for people charged with crimes; improving accessibility to resources when people are released from prison; and creating more systemic substance abuse treatment and recovery options, both as an alternative to prison and as part of rehabilitation in prison….
