VA Gets Millions For WY Inmates

By: AP | WSLS 10
Published: March 30, 2008

Wyoming inmates are due to be transferred
within weeks to two Virginia prisons in the southwest corner of the
state.
The transfer, part of a contract that could pay Virginia $18.5
million, could bring up to 300 Wyoming prisoners to the state over
the next two years.
The Wyoming inmates will be held at the high-security Wallens
Ridge State Prison in Wise County and the state's new
medium-security Pocahontas State Correctional Center in Tazewell
County.
The contract runs to June 30, 2010, and is intended to ease
chronic crowding at Wyoming's state prisons, Melinda Brazil,
spokeswoman for the Wyoming Department of Corrections, told the
Richmond Times-Dispatch.
The Wyoming system has 1,823 inmates. About 350 are being housed
in Oklahoma.
Virginia, too, has felt the strain of a crowded corrections
system.
Last year, for instance, officials warned that the number of
state prisoners projected to be added to the 33,300-inmate system
would require the construction of one new 1,000-bed prison a year
for the next six years.
Larry Traylor, spokesman for the Virginia Department of
Corrections, said that forecast has not changed "and bed space is
at a premium."
"However, this is hopefully a short-term solution to meet
current needs of the DOC and the state," he said.
The alternative to contracting for out-of-state prisoners could
be closing prisons and laying off employees, he said.
Inmates sent to Virginia could include those classified as
high-security. Virginia has the final say on whom it accepts,
Brazil said.
Virginia built too much prison space after parole was ended in
1995, and inmate population predictions proved too high.
By 2001, approximately 10 percent of the state's prison
population - 3,299 inmates - were from elsewhere. They came from as
nearby as the District of Columbia and from as far away as Hawaii.
In the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2001, the state grossed
about $78 million for housing the out-of-state inmates.

VA Gets Millions For WY Inmates

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