West Virginia MetroNews – West Virginia has long had a problem with overcrowding in its jails, and that problem hasn’t gone away.
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Overcrowding is a through-line in a class action lawsuit about conditions in the jails, a root with other problems branching out. The lawsuit underscores that between 2000 and 2009 West Virginia’s prison population more than doubled, the leading growth rate in the nation. And from 2018 to 2022 that got even worse.
“Overcrowding makes a facility less safe, secure, and humane than it could be,” the lawsuit states. “West Virginia’s facilities have always been overcrowded. Overcrowding results in having two to three inmates in a cell and inmates sleeping in the day room of the facility.”
