Public Affairs
Incarceration Levels and Spending in West Virginia
A new report, Protecting the Future: Moderating West Virginia's Budget Crisis, finds that between 1994 and 2004 the number of inmates in the state's prisons rose from 2,392 to 5,032, a 110 percent increase, while the state's population and crime rate stayed about the same. In fact, state spending on prisons has increased five times faster than the state's spending on higher education. The report — which was sponsored by the Appalachian Institute at Wheeling Jesuit University, the West Virginia Council of Churches, and Grassroots Leadership, in Charlotte, North Carolina — offers a series of recommendations aimed at reforming sentencing and parole policies in the state and reducing the number of people in prison to 1994 levels.
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