With a relatively short 60-day legislative session, the bills that get considered—and the ones that don’t—tell us a lot about our lawmakers’ priorities. Now that we are exactly halfway through the 2023 session, the WVCBP team lends insight into what we’ve seen prioritized so far and what we would like to see prioritized during the…
Criminal Justice
For Father’s Day this year, Terrick found himself having to choose between his children. Incarcerated at Mount Olive Correctional Complex in Fayette County, it had been three years since he last spent a Father’s Day in the presence of his children. Two years earlier in March 2020, Governor Jim Justice declared a state of emergency…
Public News Service - West Virginia's prison population has ballooned, and formerly incarcerated people face numerous obstacles when they are released. A Charleston-based program pairs them with mentors for one year, to help them successfully adjust and reorient their lives. Read the full article. Amber Blankenship, peer-entry program coordinator with the REACH Initiative, said most people…
“I pay taxes, I follow all the rules. The law affects my life way more than the average person. There are a lot more stipulations that govern my life and I have no say.”[1] Taylor works at a West Virginia nonprofit and is serving a multi-year probation sentence. Under West Virginia law, she and others…
For Immediate Release: November 15, 2022 Contact: Renee Alves, 559-916-5939 Charleston, WV – West Virginia is experiencing an imprisonment crisis, with an incarceration rate higher than that of any country in the world. Thousands of West Virginians are released from prison every year, and these returning citizens face hundreds of collateral consequences — that is, punishments that last even…
Overview “I don’t know how much time each of you has served, but if you served one day in a correctional facility, you have something to say, and somebody ought to hear it.” Darrin Lester addressed a group of formerly incarcerated people in Logan County, West Virginia this past summer, part of a session called “Be…
For Immediate Release: August 24, 2022 Contact: Renee Alves, 559-916-5939 Charleston, WV – Despite West Virginia’s crime rate and total population declining in recent decades, the state jail population has increased over that period, and at the end of Fiscal Year 2022, state jails were nearly 1,000 people above capacity. One contributing factor driving this counterintuitive trend is West…
Introduction Read the full policy brief. To anyone raised on American television, it may come as a surprise that a person could appear at a court hearing without a lawyer. But every day in West Virginia, people who are arrested face their first hearings alone. This has significant consequences. At the first appearance hearing the…
When Anthony[1] was arrested in 2020, he sat at the police station for hours before a man came over the station telephone and told him, “We’re going to set your bond at $25,000 cash.” The man on the phone was a magistrate conducting Anthony’s “first appearance” hearing. At this hearing, a magistrate explains the criminal…
West Virginia Public Broadcasting - About 95 percent of people who leave prison or jail return home without the resources they need to transition back into society, according to the West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy. Some of the barriers they face include housing and supervision restrictions or problems getting a job with a…