This story was originally published by Mountain State Spotlight. Get stories like this delivered to your email inbox once a week; sign up for the free newsletter at mountainstatespotlight.org/newsletter
For 60 days, lawmakers had every opportunity to pass legislation to alleviate overcrowding and safety problems in West Virginia’s prisons and jails. Instead, they passed laws to lengthen prison sentences and incarcerate more.
And as of April 21, the latest numbers from Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation show the entire system is just a few people shy from its 9,570 capacity. In the last budget year, the total system – from food for incarcerated people to salaries for correctional officers – cost $312 million.
In the budget just signed by the governor, that cost had risen to $354 million.
During the session, Kenny Matthews, a criminal justice advocate for the American Friends Service Committee, urged lawmakers to make reforms. At the House Judiciary Committee, he told delegates that stricter penalties really don’t work.
“As someone who spent years of their life dealing with substance use and the drug trade, we don’t pay attention to the laws you all pass,” he said.
Matthews, who was formerly incarcerated, told them the laws they were contemplating would keep people like him locked away for longer. But he couldn’t get reforms – like voting rights expansion, automatic expungements and restoration of firearm rights – far at all.
“Pretty much all of them just kind of fell to the wayside,” Matthews said, noting lawmakers were more concerned about bills to end Diversity Equity and Inclusion policies and gender affirming care for minors.
The GOP supermajority emphasized punishment, though a few Republicans signed onto rehabilitative bills.
“When you have the legislature as they are right now, they’re going to put forward what they’re going to put forward, and they’re going to push through what they want to push through,” Matthews said.
Lawmakers pushed through bills that resulted in longer sentences for drug dealing, homicide and fleeing from police. With people serving longer sentences, the turnover in the prison system will slow down, leading to higher costs and more overcrowding.
But House Judiciary Chair JB Akers, R-Kanawha, noted that while penalties were raised on crimes, his committee dialed back some harsher sentences.
For example, Lauren’s Law, an overhaul to the state’s drug trafficking laws originally would’ve resulted in typical drug users serving mandatory prison sentences for holding small amounts of fentanyl.
The committee reworked the bill, instead applying mandatory minimum prison sentences to transporting large amounts of drugs into the state, selling a fatal dose of narcotics or engaging in a conspiracy to sell a large quantity of drugs. A “kingpin” statute was also added, which would target financiers of drug conspiracies.
For the most part, small-time players would still have the option of probation, treatment or home confinement. Gov. Patrick Morrisey signed the bill into law last week.
Akers said the cost of incarceration – $35,000 per year for state prisoners – is not lost on him or voters.
“They generally tell us they want us to be tougher on crime,” Akers said. “If we are going to create enhanced penalties, people are going to decide if they want to pay more to cover the cost of that.”
One bill would’ve made third-offense fleeing on foot from an officer a felony.
Del. Bryan Ward, a retired police officer with 28 years experience, successfully argued for an amendment that reduced it back to a misdemeanor.
“I never seen anyone get hurt, other than a skun knee, running from the law,” Ward said. “Are we afraid of these people or are we just mad at them? Usually, the felony punishments are for those we’re afraid of.”
But, though the penalties in the original bills were decreased, lawmakers passed them both. So more people will serve longer sentences.
Reach reporter Henry Culvyhouse at henry@mountainstatespotlight.org
