West Virginia Blue
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Today saw a major development in the debate over what to do about West Virginia's prison overcrowding problem. The Gazette's Phil Kabler reports:
With overcrowding in state prisons and regional jails reaching critical levels, the West Virginia Supreme Court has appointed a seven-member panel to come up with ways to alleviate the problem, the court's administrative director said Wednesday.
"Our hope is to work with the Legislature and the executive branch to do the best we can to resolve a growing problem," Steve Canterbury said of the Sams v. Kirby Compliance Commission.
The Sams v. Kirby case involved a state inmate whom the court ruled was being denied access to Division of Corrections training and rehabilitation programs while being housed in a regional jail because of overcrowding in state prisons. The court told state officials to come up with a solution.
We have been following the chatter in the statewide MSM that insinuates building a new prison is the only thing that can be done to remedy our very serious prison overcrowding issue.
To be sure, if the state only built a new prison, it wouldn't do anything at all to remedy the problem. What WV needs is a comprehensive approach. We need to demand answers to some very serious questions.
First and foremost, why does a state with zero population growth have such an exploding prison population?
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