WDTV – A class-action lawsuit focuses on conditions in West Virginia prisons, namely an overcrowding issue that has been increasing since 2000.
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The lawsuit claims 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.
Former Commissioner of the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Betsy Jividen, and the former interim corrections commissioner and recently executive officer for the jails system, Brad Douglas, both testified that “the overcrowding has been at least a decade in the making,” and former WVDHS Secretary Jeff Sandy testified that understaffing has been an issue for decades.
