How Rich Counties are Threatening the Budgets of Clay and Other Counties With Growing Jail Bills

When lawmakers make sentences longer, West Virginians pay twice – first, at the local level through higher jail bills paid by the county, then again at the state level through increased prison costs.

If a person is convicted and sentenced to prison, each additional year in prison costs the state $35,452 per person.

But higher penalties also affect local county budgets on the front-end of the criminal process. Because the potential sentence is a factor in setting a bond, higher penalties mean higher bonds. The higher the bond, the more likely a person will be sent to jail to await their trial.

When a person is incarcerated pretrial, counties pay the state a “per diem” rate for each day the person remains in jail. These county jail bills ($177.1 million over the last four years ) have been the subject of state Supreme Court cases, county commission meetings, and countless legislative committees.

Nonetheless, lawmakers have proposed more than 200 bills that would either create a new criminal offense or add more time to existing criminal penalties.

A look at penalty-enhancing legislation that has advanced beyond committee reveals that these bills tend to come from lawmakers representing counties that are least-affected by jail bills.[1]

The Breakdown

• 18 bills have passed out of a judiciary committee and can lead to higher jail and prison costs.
• 15 of those bills have passed a chamber (two of the 15 have been signed by the governor).
• 14 of those bills came from a lawmaker representing a county that got a discount on their jail bills last year (because they used fewer than 80 percent of the pro rata share of jail days).
• Only 1 of those 18 bills had a fiscal note or finance reference (death penalty bill); that means that more than 90 percent of these bills are proceeding without even a baseline accounting of how they will impact state or county budgets.

There would be plenty of counties who feel the financial impact. But none more so than the 20 counties whose jail bills equal at least five percent of their total budgets. In Webster, Nicholas, Lincoln, Mingo, McDowell, and Marion counties, jail bills account for at least 10 percent of their budgets.

Perhaps most likely to be harmed is Clay, the county with the smallest budget in the state ($1.7 million). Last year, Clay County used a whopping 286.3 percent of its allotted jail days, resulting in a jail bill that was equal to 39.9 percent of the county’s total budget. Today, Clay County faces a jail bill debt that is roughly twice the value of its annual budget.

It is not just the costs that are being ignored.

It is the years of evidence that extra penalties do not deter crime. Plus, research has shown that jailing people pretrial and long prison terms for drug offenses actually increase the likelihood of future arrest.

West Virginia lawmakers keeping turning to costly jails and prisons for problems those places cannot solve, but may make worse.

And this year, they aren’t even willing to ask for the bill. 

[1] Sources for Tables: WVCBP analysis of WV State Auditor – Local Government Services Division, County Budgets 2023-2024, https://www.wvsao.gov/localgovernment/; WV Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Invoices by County Summary July 2023 through June 2024, https://wvpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Jail-Bills-FY-2024.pdf.