Virginia prison system suspends accepting new inmates from local jails for 30 days

The Virginia Department of Corrections has suspended taking new inmates from local jails for 30 days as of Thursday’s declaration by Gov. Ralph Northam of a state of emergency.

As of Monday afternoon, there had been no confirmed cases of COVID-19 among the system’s 30,000 inmates or among the staff at its more than 40 facilities, officials said.

The department has also stopped movement of offenders between its prisons and has barred volunteers from coming to the prisons until further notice.

Offender medical transports will continue as scheduled unless an appointment is canceled by the affected provider, and contractors may still enter facilities.

Visitation by families was ended by the DOC last week.

The department’s statement said it is accustomed to managing communicable diseases: “We are carefully monitoring the COVID-19 situation, staying current with information and guidance provided by the Virginia Department of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

If an offender were to have a positive test, as with the flu, the department would report that case to the VDH and follow its guidance, and that facility would be locked down.

No figures were available from the department about the number of offenders it generally takes every 30 days from local and regional jails. People with misdemeanor sentences or relatively short felony terms generally serve their time at local jails, not prisons.

The Henrico County Sheriff’s Office, which houses on average 1,450 to 1,500 inmates in two jails, said that generally 10 to 15 are transferred to state prisons per week — when room is available — to complete their sentences, said Sheriff Alisa Gregory.

Offenders given sentences of less than 18 to 24 months usually are not transferred to prison, Gregory said.

“It may not be too bad for 30 days, if it’s only 30 days,” she said.

Chesterfield Sheriff Karl Leonard said the Chesterfield Jail and Riverside Regional Jail are already holding 130 inmates convicted of crimes in Chesterfield who have been sentenced to serve sentences in the state prison system but haven’t yet been transferred.

The jails often will hold those inmates for up to 90 days after the DOC receives an inmate’s sentencing order, “so there’s not like a fast-track to the prisons,” he said.

The DOC directive that it won’t take new inmates from local jails “won’t really affect us” that much, Leonard said. “We’re used to holding state inmates for some period. It’s nothing new.”

Leonard said the DOC usually calls once or twice a month to “let us know they are picking someone up and that is usually one to three inmates at the most.”

Lt. Charlene Jones, a spokeswoman for Riverside Regional Jail, said simply that any inmate scheduled for transfer to the DOC will remain in Riverside’s custody “until further instructed by the Department of Corrections.”

Jones did not say how many inmates on average are transferred weekly or monthly from Riverside to state prisons or whether keeping those inmates at Riverside will adversely affect operations.

Riverside has unused space available because of a decline in the number of inmates that are being housed there by the seven member jurisdictions.

Health officials caution that older adults and people with chronic medical conditions are most vulnerable to serious complications from the coronavirus.

According to a recent Virginia Department of Corrections study, while one in four adults over 65 in the general U.S. population has a chronic disease, a national study has shown that 82% of prisoners 65 and older have a chronic physical problem.

The corrections department study noted that while 50-year-olds are generally not considered “elderly” or “geriatric” in the general population, incarcerated people have been shown to age more rapidly, partly due to the psychological stressors of prison life and relatively poor mental and/or physical health prior to incarceration.

It is anticipated that medical care in the prisons — criticized at times by inmates, advocates for prisoners and at least one federal judge in recent years — will be further stressed by any coronavirus outbreak.

The ACLU of Virginia, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and other groups have been urging prisons to take special precautions.

The ACLU sent letters last week to DOC officials and others.

“People in prisons and jails are highly vulnerable to outbreaks of contagious illnesses,” the letters said. “Without the active engagement of the administration, they have little ability to inform themselves about preventive measures, or to take such measures if they do manage to learn of them.”

Prisoners at Virginia’s Deerfield Correctional Center, where many older and/or infirm inmates are held, may be particularly susceptible. Of that prison’s roughly 1,000 inmates, 31% are 60 or older, and two-thirds are between the ages of 40 and 59.

Deerfield, located about 20 miles east of Emporia, has a 57-bed Assisted Living Unit that is in high demand, the department said in a report on its aging inmate population late last year. That study also noted that 170 offenders at Deerfield are wheelchair-bound. Two of the dorms have nurses’ stations.

A prisoner there, Donald Herrington, 50, wrote in an email to the Richmond Times-Dispatch on Monday that the inmates have been told to keep 6 feet apart.

“But we are in a dorm and beds are less than three feet apart,” he said.

Officials did not immediately respond Monday to an inquiry about special precautions, if any, being taken at Deerfield.

A study by Virginia’s House Appropriations Committee last year noted that the department already had an inadequate number of infirmary beds, 153 at five prisons, and that 150 to 200 inmates are waiting for placement in an infirmary bed at any given time.

The House study also found that a shortage of long-term care beds at Deerfield’s assisted living unit has resulted in inmates occupying infirmary beds for long periods of time or being sent to more costly offsite beds.

The DOC announced last week that guidelines were being developed based on the agency’s existing Ebola guidelines/protocols and input from the Department of Health.

The corrections department also said it was analyzing its pharmaceutical supply chain and taking inventory of supplies of personal protective equipment like masks, face shields, gloves and gowns.

In addition, its Infrastructure & Environmental Management Unit has provided detailed guidance to correctional facilities and other work locations regarding approved hand-washing, sanitizing and disinfectant products, as well as instructions on the proper use of those products to guard against the coronavirus.