Point Pleasant Register - The West Virginia Reentry Councils organization is now hosting meetings for the Mason County area to help support those coming out of incarceration and help them rejoin the community. Read the full article. West Virginia Reentry Councils is a group established by the West Virginia Council of Churches with the goal…
Criminal Justice
Charleston Gazette-Mail, Opera News - More people are currently incarcerated in West Virginia’s regional jails than there were in 2020, when the Legislature passed a bail reform law meant to decrease the state’s jail population. Read the full article. That includes 2,681 people who have not been convicted of a crime. All of the state’s regional jails…
West Virginia Public Broadcasting - States across the country have taken stabs at reforming how the money bail system operates. In West Virginia, the state legislature passed HB 2419, a law enacted in June 2020 that aimed to limit bail amounts, and by extension, shrink the exploding jail population. Read the full article. HB 2419 calls for judges…
Mountain State Spotlight - Geard Mitchell remembers the day he turned 17. He was wearing an orange jumpsuit, sitting inside a Boone County juvenile correctional facility. The staff of the Donald R. Kuhn Juvenile Center didn’t put on much of a celebration, he recalled. No family or friends called or visited. The only sign of…
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, criminal justice experts and advocates have focused on ensuring the safety of incarcerated people from the virus. But even before the pandemic, jails and prisons were unsafe places for the people incarcerated within them. According to the latest report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) on mortality…
West Virginia Public Broadcasting - In the first episode of this series, the focus was on the story of Lisa Hartline— a legal aid lawyer who found her calling while incarcerated and unable to make bail. Just like Lisa, Deborah Ujevich dated a man who got caught up in drugs. Listen to the full segment.…
West Virginia Public Broadcasting - Lisa Hartline grew up in Parkersburg. Today, she is an attorney at Legal Aid of Pennsylvania representing people who can’t afford a private attorney because she used to be one. Read the full article. “I think I’m more willing to make exceptions when maybe clients aren’t following the plan that…
This post was co-authored by Myya Helm, 2021 Summer Research Associate Last week, the Legislature provided a one-year relief to county governments by freezing the current regional jail per diem at $48.25, rather than allowing it to increase as scheduled to reflect the true daily cost of jail incarceration, nearly $55. In addition to the…
Mountain State Spotlight - The defendant appeared on a television screen at 1:30 p.m. Read the full article. The courtroom was still and quiet. There wasn’t anyone in the benches to watch — no crowd of press, no excess of legal aides. It was just two lawyers, a judge, a handful of courtroom staff and…
Charleston Gazette-Mail - This past weekend marked the end of West Virginia’s participation in federally enhanced unemployment programs, enacted to address joblessness in the wake of the pandemic, and, now, thousands of struggling West Virginians are losing crucial supports regardless of whether good-paying jobs are available to them. Read the full article. This short-sighted decision…