Keep Bailing

The City of Richmond has broken ground on the new $134.6 million jail facility, which will replace the old facility that has been in use since it opened in the 1960s. The plans were approved in December by the Virginia Board of Corrections. The new facility is rated to house 1,032 inmates and is scheduled to open its doors in 2014. It is being constructed next to the existing Richmond jail.

The current jail is only rated to house 880 inmates, but that number has been stretched between 1,300 and 1,500 inmates total, at times. This has caused some concern that the new jail will reach capacity quickly. Mayor Dwight C. Jones has promised, however, that the new facility is not going to be “a bigger jail to warehouse more prisoners.” He hopes to move the city forward in different alternatives to incarceration, such as ankle monitors.

Council Vice President Ellen F. Robertson is supportive of these types of actions and asked that the public hold the city leaders accountable for these types of changes.

Robertson said, “I’m glad that today, by choice, we are saying no more than 1,032 in the city of Richmond. By choice today we are making a decision to end the mass incarceration.” She has also been critical of the governor’s public-safety agenda, which calls for stricter punishments for repeat drug offenders instead of using funds to help drug users and prevent the drugs from entering the state and cities in the first place.

With the harsh conditions of the old jail, Sheriff C.T. Woody Jr. called the construction of the new jail a “historic moment.”