By Steven Allen Adams, The Parkersburg News and Sentinel
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Despite settling one federal class action lawsuit regarding conditions at a regional jail and an ongoing federal lawsuit over conditions in West Virginia’s entire correctional system, state officials told lawmakers Tuesday that things are getting better.
Officials with the Department of Homeland Security and the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation gave a report Tuesday afternoon to members of the Legislative Oversight Committee on Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority as lawmakers wrapped up the final day of December interim meetings at the Capitol.
Mark Sorsaia, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security which oversees DCR, told the committee that despite allegations raised in the two federal class action lawsuits, conditions in the state’s system of 11 prisons, 10 regional jails, 10 juvenile centers and three work-release sites were never better.
“We’ve had some public episodes I guess with corrections…in the last five months, we’ve had some problems. We had some bad publicity, some bad lawsuits, some allegations,” Sorsaia said. “I can tell you the problems that we had to deal with from a structural argument, the jail wasn’t fit and was overcrowded and dirty and people weren’t fed and all of that, those problems do not, I believe, exist today.”
The state is settling a federal class action lawsuit over conditions at the Southern Regional Jail near Beckley after two inmates filed a lawsuit in 2022 alleging inhuman living conditions and overcrowding.
