Don’t sell out Virginia’s jails

By The Daily Progress Staff

Published: June 21, 2008

The mandate of the Virginia Department of Corrections is to serve Virginia.

That fundamental principle is violated by a plan to rent Virginia’s prison space to other states for their inmates. The department can make money by renting out cells, and does so — even when that means it will not fulfill its statutory obligation to incarcerate Virginia prisoners.

Damage has been done, but at least now the damage will be limited.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has ordered the department to sign no more out-of-state contracts.

By law, state prisoners — those sentenced to more than a year behind bars — must be transferred to state prisons within 60 days of sentencing. But if there is no room for them there because the corrections department has rented cells to other states?

The prisoners stay in local jails that were never designed to house them. The jails then become crowded, creating unsanitary conditions, health problems, aggravated tensions and discipline troubles.

Now, you might think: If the state makes money housing out-of-state prisoners, maybe the localities make money housing state prisoners.

That’s not the way it works. The state makes money precisely because it pays local and regional jails a mere pittance to cover prisoner costs. Virginia charges other states $75 a day for each inmate it takes in, but it pays local and regional jails only $14.

At the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail, it costs $43 a day to house an inmate. At the Central Virginia Regional Jail in Orange, the cost is $45.

Virginia Beach spends about $60 daily, but even that pales in comparison to the high price in Fairfax County: $125 per day.

So the corrections department can make a profit by refusing space to inmates from local and regional jails and using that space for out-of-state prisoners. It had hoped to reduce a $38.4 million budget shortfall by leasing 1,000 beds over the next two years.

Trouble is, that strategy risks creating a budget shortfall for the local jails. Fourteen dollars from the state to cover a $45 expense? You do the math — and see the red at the bottom line.

The good news: Protest works. The sheriff of Virginia Beach recently filed suit against the state over its failure to meet its requirement to house state prisoners. Other jurisdictions threatened to do likewise. News outlets exposed the problem in stories and editorials — including The Daily Progress.

And so Gov. Kaine ordered the corrections department to stop taking out-of-state contracts. The department of course must honor agreements already reached, but at least now the damage may be limited: Fewer prison beds will be leased out, more will be available for state prisoners.

That’s heading in the right direction.

Virginia prisons should be for Virginia prisoners.

And local and regional jails should not be forced to do a job that is legally the state’s.

Most especially, they should not be financially penalized for doing the state’s job.