Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 8, 1995 TAG: 9504110045
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV12 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Medium
Assistant Radford City Manager Bob Lloyd, chairman of the regional jail authority, said Friday that the state is requiring Community Criminal Justice Plans to be drawn up. Because the city of Radford and the counties of Giles, Grayson and Pulaski will be building a regional jail in the next few years, the state sees them as a single unit in the plan.
The judicial district also includes the counties of Bland, Carroll, Floyd, Montgomery and Wythe. Those localities can join the regional jail localities in the planning process, or they can act individually.
"They have an option. We have none," Lloyd told other members of the regional jail authority. "They can write their own plan.... Whatever plan we develop would not be applicable to them."
But he said it makes more sense to have a single plan for the judicial district, with the regional jail localities as a single player. The district's chief magistrate, Iris Tucker, agreed. "All I can tell you is that I think it's very important that we all be together," she said.
The plan would involve gathering information needed by judges throughout the district about defendants appearing before them. Some of the new techniques for doing this could involve electronic communications between the regional jail and its localities, and possibly in the whole district.
Lloyd said there are some different options on the handling of local prisoners, although not state prisoners who happen to be in local jails. "We have to write a plan stating how we intend to do that."
The jail authority issued a request for proposals this month from engineers and architects for phased development of the jail. Proposals are due in Lloyd's office by 2 p.m. April 21.
The authority met in closed session to consider the appointment of a committee to recommend a site for the jail and to work out interim funding for authority operations until state money begins coming in on the project. The jail is one of the last in the state to be eligible for 50 percent state funding.
The Pulaski County Corporate Center was listed as the site on the application for state funding, but that was mainly to get the application in by the deadline. The authority will be seeking a site in Pulaski County within a five-mile radius of the intersection of Interstate 81 and Virginia 100.
In a letter signed as being from "a group of concerned citizens," the authority was urged to put the jail at the corporate center since it is publicly-owned land. That would save public money, allow inmates to maintain the grounds of the industrial park to help pay their expenses, and perhaps lead to some companies in the park offering job training at the site, the letter said.
by CNB