Each year, tens of thousands of people will enter a West Virginia jail or prison. Each day, these facilities make decisions that shape the lives of each person incarcerated. A facility will decide when and how to provide medical care. Whether to approve a wife for visitation. Whether a person will be able to attend a parent’s funeral (albeit, in handcuffs and under guard).
These decisions shape the well-being of people in custody, as well as the vast community of loved ones who also find themselves at the mercy of correctional rules.
Like most government agencies, the West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR) has the authority to create their own policies and procedures. This administrative law covers every facet of an agency’s operations.
And yet, until recently, none of DCR’s 200+ policies and procedures appeared on its website – or any other government website. Instead, a curious citizen had to make a public records request for a specific policy to DCR’s commissioner (and wait five or more business days for a response). Or, if a citizen was lucky enough to be near Charleston, they could ask to view paper copies of the policies and procedures in the Secretary of State’s office.
This was not acceptable for any institution in the digital age – let alone one with so much power over people’s lives.
In April 2024, as part of its effort to bring transparency to the criminal system, the WVCBP published DCR policies and procedures on its own website and called on DCR to make these rules publicly available.
In June 2024, DCR published the policies on its own website for the first time in its history.
This was a step in the right direction. But DCR must do more.
People confined in DCR’s facilities cannot freely browse the internet and are therefore unable to access DCR’s policies webpage.
Fortunately, there is an easy fix. Every adult and child incarcerated in West Virginia is supposed to receive a tablet. These tablets are a lifeline to the outside: they allow people to message and video chat with their loved ones (at a steep cost); they contain books and education materials; and they provide access to a virtual law library of cases.
But the tablets do not have a copy of DCR’s policies.
Rules should not be hidden from the people to whom they are applied. We hope DCR does what is necessary and makes these policies and procedures available – for free – on tablets, with paper copies available to those residents without tablet access.
If you believe that people who are incarcerated should have easy access to the policies and procedures governing their lives, DCR Commissioner William Marshall can be reached at william.k.marshall@wv.gov.
Finally, because DCR could change course at any moment and remove its policies from its website, the WVCBP will continue to monitor and update DCR policies.
