West Virginia News - The West Virginia Senate on Friday passed a bill increasing criminal penalties and extending parole eligibility timelines for some of the state’s most serious violent crimes, including second-degree murder and voluntary manslaughter. Read the full article. Senate Bill 137 passed on a 30-2 vote, with one member absent and not voting.…
Criminal Legal System
WCHS - County jail bills continue to skyrocket, but revenues can't seem to keep up. Read the full article. It's an issue commissioners have brought to lawmakers for years. Kanawha County Commissioner Lance Wheeler said they're expecting a $1 million increase at minimum this year for their jail bill. "I don't believe those revenues are…
For Immediate Release: January 8, 2026 Contact: Kenny Matthews, (304)-545-3953 CHARLESTON, WV — The West Virginia Criminal Law Reform Coalition is holding a press conference in the Little Rotunda East (off the California Street side of West Virginia State Capitol) at 10am on Monday, January 12 to underscore the ongoing crisis in our jails, the ineffectiveness of enhanced penalties, and the solutions…
2026 may be the year that policymakers focus not on who pays the jail bills, but on how to use the jails less. This year, counties can expect to pay $8.4 million more on their jail bills – even if they don’t use the jail more than they did last year. That’s because after…
Parkersburg News and Sentinel, Marietta Times - The Wood County Commission is again looking at jail costs as those continue to increase for housing prisoners within the regional jail system. Read the full article. Sara Whitaker, senior criminal legal policy analyst with the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, talked to the commission this…
Over the Labor Day weekend, West Virginia’s Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR) quietly implemented a new plan for feeding the thousands of people under its control. On Saturdays and Sundays, DCR would no longer serve three meals per day – as it has done for more than a decade. Instead, the more than 9,500…
WVVA - The 2022 death of a man inside Southern Regional Jail due to assault from corrections workers has spurred a new data reporting system in West Virginia. Read the full article. The Quantez Burks Report was recently launched by the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. Burks was secreted away, restrained and brutally beaten…
WOAY - In West Virginia, the name Quantez Burks has become a symbol of a more profound crisis within the state’s jail and prison system. Read the full article. Burks died in 2022 after being assaulted while handcuffed by state employees at Southern Regional Jail. Though the state initially claimed he died of natural causes, a…
In March 2022, a group of state employees beat Quantez Burks to death inside Southern Regional Jail. Three years later, eight former correctional officers have been sentenced to a combined 105 years behind bars for their roles in his death. They will serve these 105 years in a federal prison system that–like the state system…
At the end of 2024, Kanawha County Circuit Court Judge Maryclaire Akers made a notable request to local lawyers. In a message circulated by the West Virginia State Bar, Judge Akers described a “crisis” brewing in Kanawha County courtrooms: there were not enough lawyers willing to accept court appointments. In tens of thousands of cases…