Western Virginia Regional Jail Opens
The new Western Virginia Regional Jail in Roanoke is now in business.
“Some of my inmates have been hearing about it and they’re ready to go,” Montgomery County Sheriff Tommy Whitt said last week. He and his staff will be happy to see them off, too. And the reason is no mystery. Whitt’s jail is packed to the bursting point — just like those serving Roanoke and Franklin counties and Salem, who all cooperated to build the new regional facility. The local jails will remain open to house inmates awaiting sentencing, community service inmates and weekenders. But over the next few weeks, while the final touches are put on the new jail, they’ll be shipping off a total of about 550 inmates to the regional facility.
Inmates
— male or female — who have been sleeping on the floor will have a bunk. It will be a metal panel covered by a plastic-coated mattress, but it will be an improvement … They’ll get a taste of the sun, even if they’re not directly in its glow, through the huge overhead skylights. And they won’t have someone bumping into them or stepping over them just to get from one side of the room to another …
The facility is a maze of 1,100 doors and locks, all computer controlled, and almost every square inch of space is visible to jail officers either directly or through one of 186 cameras. There will be few trips outside the jail. An in-house medical complex will be able to handle everything from colds to stitches, X-rays to isolation, dentistry to dialysis. Visitation with family and friends will be via video-conferencing — no more face-to-face through three-quarter-inch bulletproof glass …
Reducing overcrowding also is “a matter of stability for the facility,” Whitt said. His jail, originally rated for 60 inmates, now has an average daily population between 174 and 180. An additional 30 to 40 are housed in other jails. His staff is so overburdened “it’s hard to run programs, hard to get to the library, hard to get to recreation, hard going back and forth for medical care. They’re always moving people through people or over people to get anything done. “It’s not a good environment” …
[T]he new jail is designed so that it can operate with a smaller staff than traditionally designed lock-ups. Holt, who is also chairman of the authority that operates the regional jail, said a substantial savings in operating costs — as much as $30 million — is expected over the 30-year term of the bonds sold to finance it.
There is a great deal more information in the Roanoke Times.
Overcrowding, Prison and Jail Construction, VA Franklin County, VA Montgomery County, VA Roanoke County, VA Salem City, VA Western Regional Jail, Virginia
When the Western Virginia Regional Jail near Dixie Caverns opens Friday, local officials will be breathing a sigh of relief. Not only will the regional facility relieve overcrowding in the Franklin County jail, it will mean less man hours spent by deputies transporting prisoners, said Franklin County Sheriff Ewell Hunt.