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Clarke houses close to 30 prisoners on the weekends, according to Card ner.
To add to the population problem, local jails are holding prisoners waiting to be admitted to the state penetentaries which are suffering from the same clogged system.
In Loudoun County where the bed capacity is 63, there are an average of 20 state prisoners, said Sheriff John Isom. The state will not accept any prisoners in Northern Virginia with a sentence of less than six years, according to Isom.
“We have no idea how long they’ll be there,” said Gardner, who has four state prisoners from Clarke. “I guess its as soon as the beds become empty.”
Rappahannock County’s jail is one of the few Virginia jails that is not spilling over with inmates, but rather is benefiting from the crammed prison system.
“My jail is large enough to handle Rappahannock County right now,” said Woodward. With a 14-bed capacity, Rappahannock has only been full of its own prisoners once in the past year, yet the county’s jail has become an orphanage for other county’s inmates.
“Yesterday, I got a call from Pittsylvania County — wherever that is — asking me to hold two females,” related Woodward.
Aside from aiding other localities, housing inmates raises revenue for Rappahannock, explained Woodward. However, the numerous counties that he (assists — Madison, Greene, Fauquier, Orange, Loudoun, and others — exemplify the extent of the state’s prison crisis.
Statistics provided by Virginia’s legislative services reveal that based on American Correctional Association standards, Virginia’s jails are 122 percent over capacity. The state’s department of corrections is 123 percent over capacity.
Among the reasons listed for the tremendous growth in the incarcerated population is the increased law enforcement efforts. An increase in arrests has strained the court system, resulting in a backlog of inmates awaiting trial in local jails, according to the state Department of Public Safety. The average number of persons awaiting trial in local jails in January was 4,797, approximately 50 percent of the jail population. Also, felons are receiving longer sentences. The average sentence length for confined felons increased 24 percent from FY 1980 to FY 1988. The number of drug offenders committed to the DOC increased by 135 percent from FY 1985 to FY 1988 and are expected to exceed 1,100 in FY 1989. The 1989 General Assemby established a commission to study prison and jail crowding and recommend legislation for 1990. After meeting numerous times over the summer months, the committee compiled a list of 23 initial recommendations for the assembly’s
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