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| Va. Jail Officials Hope to Curb Inmate Violence |
| By The Winchester, Va., Star |
| Published: 03/15/2004 |
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Crowded conditions at the Regional Jail caused the number of inmate fights to spike this year, prompting jail officials to look for an in-house investigator to try and calm the flare-ups. Since January, inmates have committed 45 assaults inside the Regional Jail - 50 percent more than the total number of violent incidents in all of 2003. The majority are inmate-against-inmate. And the majority do not lead to serious injuries, Superintendent Fred Hildebrand said Thursday. "They're usually stopped pretty quickly," he said. But assaults are noticeably up, mainly because of a swollen inmate population, Hildebrand said. On Thursday, 441 inmates were in the Regional Jail, about 66 percent more than the 265 the jail was originally built to house. To alleviate the crowding, jail officials plan to build a new facility for the work-release program. Ground breaking is scheduled for July. Once that building is complete, the current work-release building could be used as a dormitory for medium- and minimum-security inmates. The Regional Jail Board on Thursday also agreed to ask for state funding for a 96-bed addition to the jail. Officials hope the new pod would be ready by July 2007 In the meantime, the jail is holding 176 more inmates than there is room for, and tempers are starting to rise. Jail officials hope to hire an internal investigator by April to crack down on inmate assaults, Hildebrand said. Though investigating violent incidents in the jail would be just a small portion of the investigator's job, the individual will be responsible for finding out what causes inmate fights, Hildebrand said. Most inmate fights happen in the main jail, not in the work-release center or during transfers to court appearances, Hildebrand said. But as long as the jail is crowded, the violence will continue, Millholland said. |
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