Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 6, 1990 TAG: 9006060089
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
"We're all on the floor and everything," one woman said as she waved toward the cots placed almost side by side in the cell and covering virtually the entire floor.
Another inmate pointed to a mattress, sheets and a pillow rolled up against a wall. "Look at my bed," she told Wilder.
The governor, greeted with cheers and applause as well as plenty of complaints during his 45-minute tour, promised afterward to ease overcrowding in the state's jails by seeking alternatives to incarceration.
Overcrowding "is about what I thought it would be," he told reporters. "Yet it's more graphic when you see people up under tables and to see them as cramped as they are for space and to see them literally protecting the turf of their bed space."
The tour was the first of what Wilder promises will be a continuing series of unannounced visits to jails, prisons, halfway houses and low-income neighborhoods as part of his campaign against drugs.
When Wilder walked into the jail's female section, inmates crowded against the bars and scrambled onto tables. They stuck their hands through the bars to shake his hand.
"If I could, I would kiss him," said inmate Frances Jones.
Wilder met briefly with seven inmates - four men and three women - working on Project Outreach, a program in which inmates visit schools and churches to warn about the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse.
Benjamin Murray, an inmate who said he had been convicted of drug charges, said the program had given him self-confidence.
"If I knew then what I know now, I would not have involved myself" with drugs, he told Wilder.
"You and I are on the same team," Wilder responded.
The governor said he began his visits at the Richmond jail because it is the state's largest. The jail is designed for 629 inmates. Tuesday, it had about 1,060.
by CNB