By a unanimous vote during a special meeting on May 12, the Chesterfield supervisors directed staff to write to Secretary of Public Safety Brian Moran and Gov. Ralph Northam (D) to remedy the situation at Riverside Regional Jail.
After hearing testimony from nine speakers, including Sheriff Karl Leonard, Commonwealth’s Attorney Stacey Davenport, defense attorney Sangeeta Darji and others, board member Jim Ingle (R-Bermuda) said, “At this point, we don’t have any other choice but to pull our [resident inmates]and relocate them somewhere else.”
About 61 percent of Chesterfield’s inmates have been housed at the Riverside jail, which a state board recently decertified and slated for closure. The rest are housed at the 350-inmate Chesterfield jail, which Leonard said was opened in 1997 to replace the 1962 jail.
County administrator Joe Casey said Riverside was placed on probation in June 2019 because of inmate deaths. Since then, five additional inmate deaths occurred, including three that were “jail-responsible deaths.”
Casey said the State Board of Local and Regional Jails (SBLRJ) was supposed to meet May 19, but he heard that the meeting was postponed to June.
Dr. G. Montovanni Guy, the Chesterfield jail’s physician, reported about a lack of communication with the contracted medical providers at Riverside and other issues, such as toilets not working, plumbing backed up that resulted in 1 inch of water in the cell block for days, illegal drugs being easily accessible and a diabetic patient not getting proper medical treatment.
“I have many stories, all similar,” he said during the nearly 2-hour meeting.
Darji noted unsanitary conditions, including insects, debris lodged in carpet and hard surfaces and a section of fencing not being secured.
Darji said her focus was on “constitutional rights being violated and the inability to provide adequate counsel.” She said attorneys sometimes have to wait over an hour to see clients and then still don’t get to see them. “I’ve been told multiple times: ‘There’s not enough staff to bring down your client.’ Once or twice a month, the internet is down [at the facility],” she said, noting that video conferences then can’t be held.
Darji noted that many of the inmates at Riverside are pre-trial and not convicted.
She asked the supervisors to turn Chesterfield’s Riverside inmates over to Leonard.
“He needs resources, staff and a new up-to-date facility,” Darji said.
Davenport said her office has had a problem getting inmates served at Riverside with direct indictments from a grand jury, noting that charges from police sometimes need to be updated to the correct charge or to give additional charges. This causes court continuances, she said.
Davenport noted that one inmate pleaded guilty to two counts of forcible sodomy to two children under age 13 on Jan. 27, 2020, and had his sentencing date delayed due to Covid-19. The convict was released by a jail staffer at Riverside on July 16, 2020, she said. “He is currently believed to be in Guatemala. The federal government is attempting to help locate him to return to the U.S.”
Ed Robbins, chief of the Chesterfield/Colonial Heights Circuit Court, said he and other judges have visited the Riverside jail. “We’ve met with each of the six (jail) superintendents at least quarterly since October 2017. We’ve been continually exasperated to find similar issues happen repeatedly.”
Robbins said Riverside “is severely fiscally stressed” and budgets are balanced on officer vacancies, deferred capital maintenance projects and rainy day funds.
There were 75 correctional officer vacancies at Riverside a year ago, he said, adding that turnover is a problem.
Robbins — who said he presided over the case of the man who fled to Guatemala — noted that he was told by the jail superintendent that the correctional officer who released him “was swamped due to a lot of releases that day.”
Crystal Snodderly said she was an inmate at Riverside and was having withdrawal from Xanax and heroin. She was given a mat and laid on the floor of a cell that she shared with three other women. Snodderly said she was out of it a lot of the time over the next seven days and was defecating and urinating on herself. The three women were her only advocates, and they were panicking more than she was, Snodderly said, adding that she went seven days without seeing a doctor and was only given Imodium on the fifth day.
Snodderly said she heard a correctional officer say, “She did it to herself. She shouldn’t have done drugs.”
Leonard thanked Snodderly for speaking. “We can all be dismissive if we want, but when you hear it from dozens and dozens of people, you have to start giving credence to it,” he said.
He added that a woman in the Chesterfield jail’s Helping Addicts Recover Progressively, (HARP) program told him that she was at Riverside while on her menstrual cycle and had an unworking toilet. The woman was allegedly told to “use a sock” and left to lay in her own urine and blood for days.
Leonard noted that the Riverside jail opened in 1997 on land donated by the state due to overcrowding at Chesterfield’s jail, which was overcapacity by 100 percent.
As of May 12, Riverside had 1,153 inmates and 546, or 47 percent, came from Chesterfield. An additional 111 were from Colonial Heights and 194 from Petersburg. The city of Hopewell (152) and Prince George (120), Surry (16) and Charles City (14) counties made up the rest.
Leonard said the Chesterfield jail processes 13,500 inmates a year and inmates are only sent to Riverside when Chesterfield’s jail is at capacity. He said there have been eight deaths in the Chesterfield jail over the past 10 years, but none were jail-responsible deaths. “Deaths happen in all jails,” he said. “Many (inmates) haven’t had proper medical care most of their lives. What should not happen is jail-responsible deaths.”
As of May 12, Leonard said there were 200 inmates who were supposed to be housed in the Virginia Department of Corrections. “We’re paying $46 a day for them,” he said.
Leonard said he wrote to state Director of Public Safety Brian J. Moran and Director of Corrections Harold W. Clarke on April 30 and begged them to get their inmates. “I have yet to receive a response,” he said.
Leonard said Chesterfield is paying $3.35 million a year to house state inmates, calling it a funding issue and a safety issue.
In January 2020, Leonard said he was given additional staffing to add 100 more inmates at the Chesterfield jail, but that was not implemented because Covid-19 hit three days before it was supposed to begin.
He said that Riverside is currently down 100 correctional officers, including 82 that were frozen. Even if that funding was restored, he said it would take them “probably a year” to get up to staff.
“Last week, we began shifting inmates to our jail … and other facilities,” Leonard said, noting Chesterfield now has agreements to house inmates at other facilities.
“All of that testimony taken together is extremely powerful,” board member Chris Winslow (R-Clover Hill) said.
Winslow noted that supervisors get emails about conditions at Riverside too. “There’s a lot of smoke around the guards and accusations” that guards are accepting pay for protection, drugs and medical care. “You can’t pay people $30,000 a year … and expect that some are not going to come in and immediately supplement their income,” he said.
“I commend Sheriff Leonard for coming up with a plan because we cannot continue down this path,” board member Leslie Haley (R-Midlothian) said.
“It’s hard to recruit anybody to work in public safety because of the conversation that’s taking place all across the country,” board member Kevin Carroll (R-Matoaca) said. “We have a facility (Riverside) with such a bad reputation that people don’t even want to apply to work there because of the conditions. We need to continue to push the state to go with the direction they made to close the facility.”
Ingle asked Leonard about the veracity of a section of fence missing and a window being broken through which drugs are thrown.
“We’ve been hearing it for a long time now,” Leonard said. “Yes, it’s true.” He noted that Riverside’s superintendent, Col. Larry J. Leabough, verified that it was true during a meeting in January. “The fence is still not in place” as of last week, Leonard said.
In response to a question from Ingle, Casey said that if the state would take its inmates, the $3.35 million in annual savings would reduce the property tax rate 1 cent.
“Regional jails by design are set up to be almost pseudo-businessesque,” Casey said. “There’s no incentive for them to get them out” because they’re being paid $58 a day, including $46 by Chesterfield and $12 by the state.
Leonard said he’s been asking the state to take its inmates every other month for the past three years.
“The conditions described today are deplorable,” board chair Jim Holland (D-Dale) said. “This board will not tolerate that.”
“This is a 360-degree response to what I would call a ‘Shawshank-light’ situation at Riverside,” Winslow said.
The supervisors’ next meeting is May 26.
