Prison deal could bring $20 million to Virginia

Up to 1,000 Pennsylvania convicts may soon arrive at the Green Rock Correctional Center to lend Virginia a substantial—if, perhaps, reluctant—hand with its budget problems.

Larry Traylor, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections, said the general terms of contract reached but not yet signed with Pennsylvania call for a payment of $62 per day per inmate to stay at the 1,000-inmate prison near Chatham.

Gordon Hickey, spokesman for Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, said the contract could bring in $20.4 million annually, of which the Department of Corrections would keep $10.5 million for operating expenses and the remaining $9.9 million would go to the general fund.

Susan McNaughton, spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, said it hopes 2,000 of the system’s 51,000 inmates can be sent to other states to relieve overcrowding. Only inmates without serious physical or mental-health problems and who have at least three years left on their sentences will be sent to Virginia, she said.

Virginia now hosts 269 inmates from Wyoming, 38 from the Virgin Islands and two from Hawaii, Traylor said.

After parole was abolished in 1995, the state picked up the pace of prison construction. But the prison population did not rise as fast as expected. As a result, the state was renting out 3,300 prison beds and grossing $78 million in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2001.

Virginia stopped importing large number of inmates as the state’s population of felons caught up with construction.

Recently, however, Virginia’s prison and jail population growth have slowed and even declined. Hickey said there is room to bring inmates in from other states again.
Contact Frank Green at (804) 649-6340 or .