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…
Criminal Justice
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…
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…
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…