Justice ends emergency declaration for West Virginia’s jails and prisons

Gov. Jim Justice presents the proclamation to end the state of emergency during his Friday news briefing. (Screenshot from Gov. Jim Justice’s briefing)

Gov. Jim Justice on Friday signed a proclamation to end the emergency declaration put in place two years ago for the state’s overcrowded and understaffed prisons and jails.

The end of the declaration means that moving forward, and for the first time since August 2022, members of the West Virginia National Guard will no longer be staffing the state’s correctional facilities.

Since he made the declaration — his second for the state’s jails and prisons since he was elected in 2016 — Justice said during his weekly news briefing Friday that 731 National Guard members rotated through shifts at 17 of the state’s correctional facilities.

“Today is a huge day in West Virginia from the standpoint of our contribution from the National Guard,” Justice said during the briefing. “In the face of real adversity in corrections, 731 members of the National Guard stepped up and gave us, without any hesitation, tireless effort.”

Bill Crane, adjutant general for the West Virginia National Guard, said the highest number of Guardsmen in the facilities at one time was 432.

The emergency declaration came in August 2022 amid severe staffing shortages at the state’s overcrowded jails and prisons. Several lawsuits have been filed against the state by both current and former inmates alleging inhumane conditions and abuse from staff.

Justice said Friday that — following a pay raise approved by the Legislature during last year’s special session for correctional officers and other state employees — staffing conditions in the state’s jails are improving.

Since January, Justice said, 238 people have graduated from the state’s corrections academy with plans to work full time in the jails and prisons. Among those, Crane said, are 38 members of the National Guard who have or will transition to correctional jobs.

“This is proof [of] how we get the job done: we pull the rope together,” Justice said. “There have been recruitment efforts, there’s been pay raises and at the end of the day, we’ve made real progress.”

Jail officials have said that part of the challenge with recruiting and retaining workers in corrections is due to surrounding states offering higher pay for the same work. Justice said Friday that the state must ensure to compensate its employees enough for them to keep working within the state of West Virginia.

While lawmakers last year approved increasing the pay scale for uniformed workers, a bill that would have done the same for non-uniformed staff died in committee during this year’s regular session.

During interim meetings earlier this week, state Corrections Commissioner William Marshall told lawmakers that the vacancy rate for uniformed workers in the state’s prisons and jails has dropped to 12%. The rate for non-uniformed employees, however, still sits at about 20%.

“I think it has a lot to do with obviously the pay to retain, but also with the ability to have the … difference in training, where they don’t have the obligation to be at the academy like they once were,” Marshall said.

Justice was clear on Friday that while improvements have been made, the work wasn’t done.

“We’ve made plenty of progress, we need to celebrate what we’ve done but we don’t need to sit on our laurels and think everything is just going to work out because at the end of the day, this is an obligation we have,” Justice said. “These people work in surely a tough environment and everything and we want to be able to compensate them to where, goodness gracious, we’re just not training for other states.”

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