West Virginia officials who oversee the corrections system told lawmakers that they believe improvements are taking place.
“You all know, painfully, we’ve had some public episodes with corrections,” state Homeland Security Secretary Mark Sorsaia told the Legislature’s Oversight Committee on Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority.
Referring to the months since he came on the job, Sorsaia continued, “We’ve had some bad publicity, some lawsuits, some allegations.”
Also: federal prosecutions because of a beating death.
Last month, five guards and a lieutenant at the South Central Regional Jail were charged in the beating death of a pre-trial defendant at the Southern Regional Jail in Raleigh County.
The central allegation is that after 37-year-old Quantez Burks tried to push past a corrections officer and leave the jail’s C-pod, officers restrained him in handcuffs and beat him in an interview room. The officers then repeatedly struck and assaulted Burks, the indictment alleges, before forcibly walking him to another location known as the A-pod and he collapsed on the floor.
After Burks was at first reported to have died of natural causes, his family pushed for their own autopsy that revealed a heart attack brought on by blunt force trauma.
Trial has been set for 9 a.m. Jan. 23 in that case, with U.S. District Judge Frank Volk presiding. Pretrial motions are due by Jan. 4.
When the indictment of the six officers was made public, Sorsaia noted that the corrections officers are entitled to a presumption of innocence. But Sorsaia also said at that time that the state does not tolerate the kinds of actions they’re accused of committing.
“We have no tolerance for abuse of any kind to be inflicted on inmates that are housed in our state facilities and we are committed to the safety, quality of life, and to the well-being of those in the care of the legal system in our state,” he said in a Nov. 30 statement.
The Burks case has been a major aspect of ongoing concern about conditions at the jail. Thirteen deaths were reported over a year’s time at Southern Regional Jail in Beaver, Raleigh County. A class action lawsuit was filed last fall over conditions at the jail and then settled earlier this month for $4 million.
The leader of the criminal justice committee for the West Virginia chapter of the NAACP, this week said the jails situation requires urgent attention.
Robert Graf, chairman of the committee, stated that “the system needs attention by our governor, legislators and the public. Those involved know, or should know, the problems of their areas, but the overall justice system is producing too much collateral damage, and not enough public safety.”
Sorsaia told members of the jails oversight committee that the system is making progress.
He said descriptions of some of the problems, including in federal lawsuits, have been overblown.
“I can tell you, the problems that we had to deal with, from a structural argument that, you know, the jail wasn’t fit and was overcrowded and dirty and people weren’t fed and all that, those problems do not — I believe — do not exist today,” Sorsaia told lawmakers.
“We’ve done a great job. Quite frankly, I’m kind of amazed how we turned those alleged problems around. When I say ‘alleged,’ to exactly give you a definition of the extent of the problem, is difficult. And I will concede we had problems.”
Sorsaia said he visited Southern Regional Jail weeks ago and “I haven’t seen a jail in better shape.” His visits to other facilities around the state led him to say, “I couldn’t find any problems. I couldn’t find a problem to write down. I’d have to look for one.
“I talked to the inmates. I saw how the facility was being run. They were clean. I saw the food. I talked to inmates. I talked to the supervisors of the institutions.”
Corrections Commissioner Billy Marshall also addressed the committee and answered a series of questions from Sen. Jason Barrett, R-Berkeley, the co-chairman.
“There have been a few investigations of different allegations in facilities. Can you comment on how those investigations were conducted?” Barrett asked.
Marshall acknowledged internal investigations of conditions in the jails system, saying a significant amount of time has now passed.
A state Homeland Security investigation that concluded earlier this year that allegations of water deprivation, failure to provide toilet paper, and inmates having to sleep on hard floors without a mattress are false.
“I feel like there was misinformation that was provided from the people that were being looked into as far as the investigation goes,” Marshall said Tuesday.
“I think there were some things that probably could have been done better, that weren’t, and that comes from the facility all the way down and all the way up, so I think just being more accountable to each other, having the right lines of communication.”
But he concluded, “I’m not sure the investigations were as helpful as they could have been.”
