Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 22, 1990 TAG: 9004220201
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MATTHEW BOWERS LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: MONTROSS LENGTH: Long
Tell those 14 to occupy two rooms, stuffed with six two-man bunk beds against the walls, carpeted with sleeping pallets on the floor.
Then tell them to stay there 24 hours a day.
Welcome to the "minimum security section" - once the jail keepers' living quarters - of the Westmoreland County Jail. It's just off the sharp curve on Virginia Route 3 that takes you through this county seat surrounded by rolling farmland and lumber mills.
It's a small-town jail just 90 miles from Washington, D.C. One of Virginia's smallest jails, it has a state-recognized capacity of just eight prisoners. But it usually houses three times that many.
"Cramped up," is how Thomas E. "Eddie" Wayland, 24, described it earlier this month as he was finishing up a 20-day sentence for driving under the influence of alcohol.
"Excessive" was the word Sheriff C.W. Jackson used.
Jackson, a former state police trooper elected sheriff in 1976, can remember the days when no more than six or seven prisoners occupied his jail at a time. At times, there was just one.
Last month, his jail averaged 21 prisoners per day.
"I would call the Department [of Corrections] once a day and leave a one-word message: `Help!' " said Sgt. David C. Standbridge, the jail's chief correctional officer.
In a state and nation running chronically short of beds behind bars for convicted and accused criminals, the 38-year-old Westmoreland County Jail could be a poster child for crowded correctional facilities.
It's a mirror of jail crowding, but on a scale you can understand without an abacus.
For instance, late last month, Roanoke had 352 in a jail meant for 216, Norfolk had 1,054 prisoners in a jail with a rated capacity of 435; Virginia Beach put 515 inmates in a space meant for 179. Chesapeake had 352 in a jail meant for 192.
Portsmouth had 497 in a facility meant for 193. Suffolk had 181 in an 81-person jail. Newport News had 234 in a jail meant for 198, Hampton had 262 in a jail for 122, and Richmond had 1,114 in a jail meant for 782.
Sheriff Jackson doesn't see any let-up for Westmoreland County. A grand jury in October handed down 415 indictments naming 54 people, many for drug offenses.
"We see teletypes all the time from all over the state from sheriffs asking if anybody has room for just one prisoner," Jackson said.
He's one of those sheriffs doing the asking.
Jackson has crammed 28 prisoners into the bed and floor space in the two rooms, the eight-cell maximum-security block and even the hallways, and still had to farm out as many as 16 other prisoners to area jails that had spare beds - or floor space.
His charges in the minimum-security section spend their days and nights sitting or lying on their bunks. A snowy picture glows from small black-and-white television sets. There's board games - Monopoly and Sorry - set up on cardboard boxes.
They read books donated by the local Junior Women's League shelved in a jailhouse "library" that doubles as an attorney conference room.
They can receive visitors once a week in a room that doubles as a closet for the vacuum cleaner.
They take box lunches three times a day, catered by the Montross Inn next door, most using their laps for tables.
Nights, they must negotiate around inmates sleeping on the floor.
"You just walk around him," said Banks G. Prevatt, a 20-year-old serving a year for cocaine possession. From his perch on a top bunk, he pointed out the path inmates follow through the narrow entry space in front of the doorway.
"We leave the light in the bathroom on so we can see."
Sometimes, though, sleeping prisoners get stepped on. Jackson said there have been fights, and he fears the county could be liable for injuries suffered in a fracas because of crowded conditions.
Some days, things get tense, said Greg L. Gaines, 21. He is a jail trusty serving eight months for convictions for cocaine possession and conspiracy.
"Just little things irk" the inmates, he said.
"You walk from that side to this side" - he indicates the open space in the room of about 4 feet - "you still see the same people."
In the maximum-security cells, overflow prisoners also sleep on pallets on the day-room floors or the adjacent halls.
Jeffrey F. Hunter, 24, is less bothered by the crowding than by the food.
He sat smoking a cigarette on a day-room sink in a sleeveless undershirt, his nickname "Red" tatooed on his right bicep. Socks hung drying from a rope tied between cell bars that served as makeshift shelves holding folded magazines, toothbrushes and cigarettes.
"It's so-so," the convicted cocaine distributor said of the setup at Westmoreland.
Hunter's older brother, William, 43, was sitting on a bedsheet hammock in another cellblock. Like a dozen of the jail's prisoners, he was waiting for an open bed in a state prison, where he is to serve a 40-year sentence for murder.
One man awaiting trial for attempted murder, 52-year-old George Johnson, said he benefited from the crowding. Sleeping a few nights on the floor provided needed support for his bad back, he said.
The others laughed.
A separate cell used for violent drunks makes do as an isolation cell - another state requirement - for troublesome inmates.
But, as Standbridge said, "There is no isolation at this jail."
"There's no way to do everything the federal regulations mandate, but you do what you can," Sheriff Jackson said. "I think it imposes upon them when you have them lying on the floor . . . but I don't have other alternatives."
Jackson, 47, is a lanky man in brown cowboy boots with a firm handshake and a ready smile. A stuffed fox sits on the floor in front of his desk, and an office door carries a small sign reading, "Please Unload Your Gun and Remove Your Ski Mask Before Entering."
His jail does not have the facilities to hold women or juveniles. They are shipped to whatever jail will agree to take them. It has no in-house substance abuse or other counseling services.
Although an emergency approval of three additional deputies recently increased his jail staff to 10, there still are not enough guards to allow inmates outside to use the dirt basketball court more than once a week.
He met at the end of March with sheriffs and county officials from Westmoreland, Richmond and King George's counties to discuss banding together to build a jail, which would cost less under the state's policy of paying up to half the costs of regional jails. Either on their own or with their neighbors, it could be three years before Westmoreland County sees a new jail.
by CNB