Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 17, 1995 TAG: 9502180043
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: Q1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Kenneth Conley, who is serving a six-year prison term for breaking into a Roanoke County self-storage building, had been hoping to pull his time somewhere close to home.
The prison in Botetourt County would have been nice, his mother says.
But when Conley was transferred from the Southampton Correctional Center near Richmond this week, he went more than 1,000 miles in the wrong direction - all the way to Newton Detention Center near the Texas-Louisiana border.
The transfer was a surprise to Conley and his mother, Shari Conley of Roanoke. "When he called last night, he was in Newton, Texas," Conley said Thursday.
Shari Conley and others say that moving 150 prisoners halfway across the country - the state's latest step to ease overcrowding in jails and prisons caused by low parole rates - puts an unfair burden on the inmates and their families.
"I'm not talking about being cushy for prisoners," Conley said. "I'm talking about the importance of keeping family contacts so when he comes out in two years, he hasn't lost all hope and the emotional support of the only family he's got."
"I think it's just atrocious," said Jean Auldridge, director of Virginia CURE, an Alexandria-based inmate advocacy group.
"It's an undisputed fact that family ties prevent recidivism, and a policy to ship offenders so far from home is a bad policy," Auldridge said.
But the number of inmates sent out of state is likely to grow as Virginia copes with a rapidly expanding prison population caused by the appointment of a tough-minded Parole Board, combined with last year's General Assembly vote to abolish parole, effective Jan. 1.
"Because of the unacceptably high number of state inmates being held in local jails, we have explored every option, including moving inmates out of state," said Ron Angelone, director of the Department of Corrections. "Housing inmates temporarily out of state is cost-effective and provides immediate relief to the local jails."
Under a contract approved by legislators this month, Virginia is paying a company that runs the Newton Detention Center about the same amount it would have cost to hold the inmates in a state prison. The annual cost for incarcerating a low-security inmate such as the ones transferred Wednesday is about $12,000.
The arrangement was the first of its kind of Virginia, putting the state in the company of only a few other governments, including those of Washington, D.C., and North Carolina, that have been forced to farm out their inmates.
Prisoners selected for the transfer had at least two years remaining in their sentences, no medical problems and recently been classified as minimum-security inmates. They are expected to spend the next two years in Texas and then be returned to Virginia.
Jim Jones, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections, said the state "fully understands" the burden that such an out-of-state arrangement places on inmates and their families.
"We're always concerned about that, but right now, our facilities are so overcrowded, that just had to override the concerns at this point," Jones said.
Abolishing parole is expected to double Virginia's inmate population of about 23,000 in the next 10 years. But a more immediate problem was created last year when the state's parole rate dropped drastically under the watch of a Parole Board appointed by Gov. George Allen.
As a result, local jails have become increasingly backlogged with state inmates, and at least seven Virginia sheriffs have filed lawsuits against the Department of Corrections.
The inmates that were transferred Wednesday came from state prisons in Southampton, Powhatan, Fairfax and Indian Creek.
Although the inmates knew they were to be transferred to another facility, prison officials waited until after they had boarded a chartered airplane in Richmond before telling them they were Texas-bound.
Department of Corrections officials say they do not announce transfers in advance for security reasons. But Auldridge said the inmates should have been informed that they would be sent so far from home.
"I don't think letting them say goodbye to the families before they were shipped off to Texas would have posed any great danger to society," Auldridge said.
by CNB