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 they worked for–tolerates inhumane levels of medical neglect, unsafe food and facilities, and violence.
It is hard to find justice in individualized punishment when the West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR) remains insulated from scrutiny or accountability.
To date, DCR has yet to publicly reckon with this organized violence against Mr. Burks. The agency, which eats up half a billion state dollars each year, has not offered any plan for how it will prevent violence and other harms in its dozens of facilities around the state. After three years, its leaders have not apologized to Mr. Burks’s family.
We owe a debt to Mr. Burks’s mother, Kimberly Burks, who made certain that her family and all of us learned the truth about what happened to her son. She pushed for a second, independent autopsy. She showed up at a gubernatorial town hall meeting to demand answers from then-Governor Jim Justice. She joined other families who lost loved ones to West Virginia’s deadly regional jail system to demand a federal investigation. (Mr. Burks was the third of at least 11 people who died at Southern Regional Jail in 2022.)
And yet, there has been “no phone call, no apology from the State.” The only people at the jail concerned with Mr. Burks’s family were other incarcerated men who witnessed the beating and risked personal harm to reach out to his family on the day he died. No one at DCR has acknowledged the hours Ms. Burks spent on March 1, 2022, calling hospitals to find her son. Or that it took her a year and a half to look at the autopsy photos of his battered body.
Quantez Burks was not the only person to die under state control. Since 2020, at least 307 people have died in a West Virginia jail or prison.
There is no public list of these deaths. Instead, the public must use the Freedom of Information Act law to force DCR to provide it.
DCR may not tell you who died in their custody, but we will.
With his family’s permission, the WVCBP has created The Quantez Burks Report, a list of deaths in West Virginia jails and prisons, updated monthly.
Because this list relies on information provided by DCR, we know it will not always be accurate. For nearly two years, DCR continued to report the fiction that the 37-year-old Mr. Burks died a “natural” death caused by “heart disease” – in spite of the state medical examiner’s report of homicide within weeks of his death.
Earlier this year, we wrote about Marissa Crim, a 31-year-old woman who died in DCR custody in August 2024. DCR never reported Ms. Crim’s death. But a court filing plainly states, “Jail informed defendant died in custody.”
Reporting and information alone will not save lives and prevent harm behind bars. Which is why we call on DCR and state leaders to do what will: reduce the number of people in jail and prison.
The new DCR Commissioner, David Kelly, is a former lawmaker who once chaired jail oversight committees. After his appointment to lead DCR, Kelly acknowledged, “The elephant in the room is the overcrowding, and so we’ve got to work on that.” He can start by recommending seriously ill people for release. According to their annual reports, DCR has used medical respite only twice in the last 23 years.
The Commissioner can call on other leaders to do more, such as:
There is a role for every person who wants a West Virginia that sends fewer people to jail and prison.
With enough determination, you can start a court watch program to bear witness to the injustices that happen every day in empty court rooms. You can help a loved one prepare for an upcoming parole hearing. You can blow the whistle on violence and neglect behind bars. You can organize for changes inside a prison or start a support group in your county for families of incarcerated people.
You don’t have to do any of these things alone.
If you are ready to begin work on any of the above–or if you have information about a person who died in DCR custody who does not appear on this list–please reach out to Sara Whitaker, senior criminal legal policy analyst here.
Mr. Burks’s family showed us that accountability will only come when we demand it.
