This blog post was authored by Teri Castle, the 2023 Criminal Legal Reform Summer Research Fellow for the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. Seventeen years ago, I was being held in Western Regional Jail, waiting to be transferred to Lakin Correctional Center. I had just been convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to…
Criminal Justice
West Virginia Public Broadcasting - West Virginia’s state prisons and jails are overcrowded and understaffed. Listen to the full segment. Just over half of those who are incarcerated have not yet been found guilty of a crime, they’re in a cell because they can’t make their bail. Many of those people are poor and a…
Public News Service, Clay County Free Press, Mountain Messenger - A new West Virginia law requires magistrates and judges to set a hearing within five days for people who've been arrested for not showing up to a court hearing, not paying fines on time, or not following civil-court rulings. Read the full article. The reform comes…
Huntington Herald-Dispatch - A law taking effect June 9 aims to help tackle the increasing number of capias arrests and reduce the state’s jail population. Read the full article. Passed in the 2023 legislative session, Senate Bill 633 establishes a uniform standard for addressing and streamlining capias arrests, also known as bench warrants, which have significantly increased…
Throughout the 2023 legislative session, lawmakers spoke often about the ongoing state of emergency in West Virginia jails. To them, the crisis was the record-high staff vacancies within the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR). But people behind bars have been living in a state of emergency for years. In the last decade, West Virginia…
Charleston Gazette-Mail, Huntington Herald-Dispatch - West Virginia corrections officials were eager to call attention to severe staffing shortages throughout their facilities in a state legislative committee meeting in which other items were on the agenda. Read the full article. “We didn’t want to be in front of you guys with an opportunity to speak without…
During the 2023 regular legislative session, West Virginia lawmakers introduced more than 300 bills related to the criminal legal system. Nearly half of those bills created new criminal offenses or increased penalties for existing crimes. To a Hammer, Every Problem is a Nail One trend that emerged was lawmakers’ penchant for believing that the criminal…
On Tuesday, the Senate passed Senate Bill 547, a radical reimagining of the Controlled Substances Act that doubles down on decades of failed drug policies. West Virginia has been called ground zero of the drug overdose crisis. For the last decade, West Virginia has had the highest fatal overdose rate in the country–more than twice…
Mountain State Spotlight, My Buckhannon - Yesterday was Crossover Day, a key legislative deadline. This is the day when the full universe of bills introduced during the session — 2,316, to be exact — is whittled down. For the most part, bills that didn’t clear their chamber of origin (the House or the Senate) by…
Mountain State Spotlight, Fayette Tribune - As Katonya Hart stood outside of the House of Delegates chamber at the West Virginia Capitol, a sparkly tiara fastened to her multicolored twists, the energy around her was undeniable. Read the full article. A floor below, the women of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. moved about in coordinated…