Tag: Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail

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Just say ‘yes’

The Albemarle County Board of Supervisors voted to remove Cyndra Van Clief from the jail board on April 20. Photo: Eze Amos.

The proposed reconfiguration of Buford Middle School was the subject of headlines and hand-wringing for much of the past year, until Charlottesville City Council arrived at a less expensive solution to allow that project to proceed. Now, another long-overdue renovation of a public facility—the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail—is on the table, and questions about the cost and speed of the planning process have led to the ouster of a long-standing jail board member.

“I was doing my job in wanting to remind the board that we need to take the time to be mindful and deliberate,” says now former jail board member, attorney Cyndra Van Clief. 

Van Clief says her removal was prompted by her vote at a March 10 meeting, when she was the only jail board member to come out against a resolution to notify the state that the jail would request reimbursement for 25 percent of a $49 million project estimate. 

“I had talked to several board members and they, too, were very concerned about this ballooning cost,” says Van Clief, a Republican and self-described fiscal conservative who was concerned that the cost of the proposed renovation had soared and that taxpayers hadn’t had enough opportunity to give input on the project during pandemic Zoom meetings. 

“We were moving too fast for 50-some million dollars which would set the future of our jail for the next 50 years, two generations,” says Van Clief, who raised the alarm after hearing figures like $50,000 to repaint floors. She wanted to hear more from the public about desired alternatives to incarceration including restorative justice.

“I knew the resolution would pass,” Van Clief says, describing her “no” vote as simply a suggestion to slow the process down and not an objection to improving conditions at the jail. 

She says Albemarle Board of Supervisors Chair Donna Price asked for her resignation in early April, citing Van Clief’s opposition to the resolution, and the supervisors, all Democrats, voted unanimously for her removal at a closed session on April 20. A letter to Van Clief confirming her removal cites her “failure to act in the County’s best interest as determined by the Board of Supervisors.”

Both Price and Albemarle County Supervisor Diantha McKeel, chair of the ACRJ board, declined to comment on Van Clief’s removal. McKeel, however, addressed some of the questions Van Clief raised.

In an emailed statement, McKeel denies the process has been rushed. The pace, she writes, is determined by the state’s Community Based Corrections Plan timeline and the General Assembly budget. The process must be initiated by a January deadline or the jurisdiction has to wait until the following year. 

McKeel says that the $49 million “is only an estimated cost” that’s been discussed at four jail board meetings, each with opportunity for public comment, as well as at presentations to each of the jail’s three member jurisdictions (Charlottesville, Albemarle, and Nelson) during March and April. A final cost will be presented to the board and the public this summer or fall. The proposed plan does not expand beds at the jail but instead improves conditions and adds space for classrooms and mental health treatment.

C-VILLE Weekly reached out to other ACRJ board members with questions about the renovation and Van Clief’s removal over her vote. None would comment on Van Clief, but City Councilor Sena Magill says she believes the estimated cost is reasonable.

“Having just passed $68 million for a school revamp, for one school, $50 million for a jail does not seem that far-fetched,” Magill says. “Not if we want a place that’s actually climate controlled.”

Albemarle County Sheriff Chan Bryant agreed with Van Clief that the resolution to notify the state was moved on with “lightning speed” to avoid missing the state deadline. Both she and Charlottesville Sheriff James Brown voted in favor of the resolution but want more public input on the plans before they’re finalized. 

“We want to make sure we’re using taxpayer’s dollars wisely,” says Brown.

Van Clief shares her former fellow board members’ assessment that a jail renovation is badly needed. In fact, she says she’s the one who brought deplorable conditions in the women’s quarters to the board’s attention. “It was exposed metal, sharp, that you would get tetanus [from] or be cut,” she says, describing filthy conditions and a lack of natural light or fresh air.

Her concerns, she insists, stemmed from her desire to inform the public about the project before so much money is committed.

“We don’t want to put all of our resources right into just housing people,” she says. “We were about to make some decisions that would affect the future for the next 50 years, that could affect generations of people as to what the criminal justice system and our facilities and our whole entire approach as a community would be like.”  

Jail tour reveals harsh conditions

The Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail was built in 1974, with an addition in the 1980s and an early 2000s renovation. The poor conditions don’t just impact people who are incarcerated there, says ACRJ Superintendent Martin Kumer; they are also a problem for staff and visitors.

  • A
  • B
  • C
  • D
According to ACRJ Superintendent Martin Kumer, some conditions at the regional jail are “shameful.” Staff photos.

[A] “This is the most shameful part,” says Kumer on a recent tour of the jail. It’s the “administrative segregation” unit on the jail’s lower level, used primarily as a last resort punishment for violent infractions. Several small cells line one side of a hall not much wider than a human body. The space is illuminated by harsh fluorescent lights, and plexiglass covers the bars on the cell doors, a response, Kumer explains, to correctional officers being grabbed as they patrolled the area. The temperature is controlled by a chiller unit, which forces moist cold air directly into the cells making the term “temperature control” a misnomer.

[B] A high-walled brick courtyard covered by a fiberglass roof is the only outdoor area available to those housed at the ACRJ. “You could be here for a year and never feel sunlight on your skin,” says Kumer. The jail renovation would add an outdoor recreation area on a rooftop.

[C] A lack of ventilation is among the biggest concerns for Kumer and jail board members. There are no fresh-air intake ducts in much of the jail, which means the indoor air is recirculated. That makes preventing the spread of illness including COVID difficult or impossible. 

[D] The 1974 wing of the jail will be demolished as part of the renovation. Kumer says new construction will be “trauma informed,” adding sound baffling and using calming colors to improve conditions for inmates and staff. There will be expanded space for classrooms and mental health treatment.—Courteney Stuart

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‘This is a nightmare’

Inmates at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail say conditions at the facility are unhealthy, with complaints ranging from poor hygiene to unacceptable COVID containment procedures. Photo: Skyclad Aerial

“This is very unhealthy in here for all,” reads one letter. “No one deserves this kind of punishment.” 

In dozens of letters written over a period of months, people incarcerated at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail reported that shoddy COVID containment procedures, poor general hygiene, and strict visitation policies have plagued the facility.

These complaints are not new. Since last year, the Charlottesville chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America has been corresponding by mail with more than a dozen people in the ACRJ. In January, C-VILLE published a story detailing the unhygienic conditions and other issues at the facility. 

According to recent interviews with C-VILLE—and additional letters collected by DSA—very little has changed at the jail.

Poor COVID management

In recent months, the ACRJ has failed to properly treat COVID cases and keep the deadly virus from spreading, according to multiple sources from within the facility. 

Over the summer, Terrence Winston says that his entire cell block contracted coronavirus, even though most of the men were fully vaccinated.

“One person had to go to medical, and we quarantined, but they never came and COVID tested us,” explains Winston, who has been incarcerated at ACRJ since 2019. “The only thing they did was check our blood pressure, check our temperature, and gave us this cough and cold medicine.”

“Some people just had the sniffles, but others had the cough, sore throat, congested head cold, lost sense of smell and taste, body aches,” he adds. “I still really don’t have my full sense of taste and smell back.”

According to ACRJ Superintendent Martin Kumer, there are currently three active COVID cases at the jail. Around 47 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, and 55 percent have received at least one dose of the shot.

In September, Deryck Brown claims the jail added a new person to his block in the middle of a lockdown. The man soon started exhibiting minor COVID symptoms, and the whole block had to get tested. Four people tested positive and were put into quarantine, but “we all had it, all 12 of us,” wrote Brown.

Over the next few days, he and another man started to experience COVID symptoms too. They were tested again and moved to a quarantine block. However, they were later moved to the medical unit due to issues with a “problematic bunch,” then back to quarantine.

“Initially I praised ACRJ’s handling of COVID, but now I’m simply appalled,” wrote Brown. “[Jail administration is] moving all these people around, potentially exposing healthy people to sick people and making a huge mess out of this whole situation.”

When he wrote his letter, Brown was still experiencing severe symptoms of the virus. 

“Now it hurts to breathe, I can’t smell anything, my whole body aches, and I feel like shit, all because they forgot the meaning of the word ‘lockdown,’” he wrote.

‘Filthy as fuck’

Incarcerated people also report that jail leadership hasn’t addressed their complaints about the building’s numerous health and sanitary issues. 

One woman, who asked to remain anonymous, claims that the older part of the jail, built in the 1970s, is filled with cockroaches and spiders. The showers get backed up regularly, and the faucets don’t work properly.

“We are always getting watered down cleaning solution,” she wrote of the women’s quarters. “And the towels that we get to exchange once a week ALWAYS smell bad.”

The men—housed in the newer part of the jail, which was built in 2000—report similar conditions, including black mold in the showers, cells, and air vents. There are also leaks in the ceiling. One letter writer reports that the heat hasn’t been turned on yet, either.  

“There is a bag full of poop water hanging from a pipe from the ceiling,” wrote Winston. “It’s filthy as fuck.”

“This is a nightmare,” wrote Allan Via, who has been incarcerated at ACRJ for four years.

Men also report cockroaches, maggots, spiders, silverfish, and fruit flies running rampant in the facility.

While heading to bed one night in August, Winston realized he had a small bump on his left arm. When he woke up, his entire arm was swollen and filled with fluid. Though the nurses told him it was a staph infection, he believes it was a spider bite.

“I’m sitting there playing spades, and it just busted. This stuff just starts bleeding out of my arm,” explains Winston. “It was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“I had a humongous hole in my arm. They were supposed to treat it every day, then they wanted to stop,” he continues. “Once the hole finally closed, it still was swollen…they kept putting me on antibiotics instead of just checking on it to make sure it was fine. They just gave up.”

Other men in the jail have also gotten spider bites, including on their faces, claims Winston.

“We reach out, we ask for help…and we pretty much get treated like shit,” he says.

Little to do 

Since the start of the pandemic, the jail has banned in-person visits, which has taken a heavy toll on the population’s mental health. 

“The ban was horrible,” wrote one man, who wished to remain anonymous. “I only gotten to see my kids in pictures.”

“The ban on visits takes away from your spirit, your hope, adding to your loneliness and the great hurt you already have being separated from your loved ones,” wrote Via.

After months of waiting, every person in the jail now has their own tablet, which they can use to do video visitations with those outside, as well as watch TV, listen to music, and send emails. However, it costs $15 per video call, and 5 cents per minute for other tablet activities. Want to catch a football game? It’ll cost you around $9. 

And the tablet system doesn’t work for everyone. “My papa has no smartphone or computer, so even video visits are not [worth it] for some of us,” wrote the incarcerated woman.

Kumer says the jail will allow in-person visits again “as soon as it is safe to do so.”

With classes and programming also still on pause, people at the jail are left with little to do. They are not allowed to go outside, and have limited indoor recreation time each week. They are also banned from ordering books online, meaning they can only read books already inside the jail. The jail says this rule was put in place because people had used books to smuggle drugs into the building.

To pass the time, many people feel they have no choice but to become trustees, says Winston. 

“Without the trustees, this jail would be fucked. Right now they’re short staffed,” he says. “[Trustees] fix the jail, they help clean the jail, they help keep the jail presentable, they cook…They work like slaves down there.”

Though they do not get paid or receive any special benefits for their hard work, they at least have “something else to do for the day,” Winston says.

Winston himself has not been allowed to be a trustee due to his charges. 

“I’ve been sitting up in this jail for almost three years. There’s no programs that will help me,” he says. “It’s like I can’t do nothing. I just gotta sit here.”

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‘I was not sentenced to death by virus’: Stories of disturbing COVID containment procedures at regional jail

People incarcerated at the ACRJ report unsanitary conditions and poor COVID containment procedures. PC: Skyclad Aerial

“We are treated like animals, and are told that we have no rights, and we sure feel like we don’t,” reads the final paragraph of the letter. “I have great concern for the safety of myself and others here at [the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail].”

The handwriting, in pencil, is large, legible, soft; the paper’s rounded corners and jagged left edge hint that it was ripped from a composition book. The letter details the jail’s cleaning procedures, or lack thereof. “All inmates in lockdown blocks share one shower. …The green cleaning rags are washed with dirty mopheads. …You have to eat, sleep, and work in the same clothes all day.”

This letter is not unique. Since the fall, the Charlottesville chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America has been corresponding by mail with two dozen people incarcerated in the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail.

Around the country, jails, prisons, and detention centers have been hit hard by COVID-19. For incarcerated people in the United States, the infection rate is three times higher than that of the general public, while the mortality rate is twice as high. At least 275,000 have tested positive for the virus, and over 1,700 have died.

Locally, 12 incarcerated people and 12 staff members have tested positive for coronavirus since the start of the pandemic, says ACRJ Superintendent Colonel Martin Kumer. The jail currently reports one incarcerated person and two staff members with active COVID cases.

But in the letters collected by the DSA, and in interviews with C-VILLE, ACRJ’s incarcerated people tell of a terrified jail population, disrespectful guards, and insufficient COVID containment procedures.

Keeping the outside out

The problems with COVID containment begin at intake.

One woman reports that when she was brought to the jail in September, she was put in a cell by herself that had not been cleaned, and was not allowed to take a shower. When she asked for cleaning supplies, staff claimed they could not find any for her to use. (Most of the incarcerated people who communicated with DSA and C-VILLE for this story requested anonymity out of fear that speaking up could lead to punishment inside the jail.)

Over the next two weeks, the woman says she was moved three times into cell blocks that had also not been cleaned, before finally being put into a quarantine area with two other people for another two weeks.

“This is deliberate indifference by the facility, from the top down,” she says. “They are ignoring conditions of confinement that are likely to cause a serious, life-threatening illness.”

A different letter writer reports that he contracted COVID while quarantining on his way in. When people are first brought into the jail, they are screened for COVID-19 symptoms and exposure. People who are symptomatic or have had a recent exposure are tested for coronavirus, while those who have no symptoms are put into a quarantine unit for two weeks.

Placed in a quarantine pod with 11 men, the letter writer describes catching the virus from a man who was asymptomatic. When he—and several others—began to develop severe symptoms, he says the nurses ignored him for several days before finally moving him to the medical unit, where he reports receiving further inadequate treatment. Though he recovered from the virus, it has left him with brain fog and memory issues.

After the initial screening period, incoming incarcerated people join the general population and are not tested again unless they show severe symptoms. The last time the jail tested the full population and staff members was in September.

“Large-scale facility-wide COVID tests are only conducted when an outbreak has occurred,” says Kumer. “We have been fortunate that we have not experienced an outbreak that would warrant a large-scale test.

“Testing asymptomatic, non-exposed staff or inmates…would [also] yield a false sense of security, since a person could contract and shed the virus in between testing, or test negative today, only to be exposed or contract the virus tomorrow,” he adds. “We have to operate on the assumption that everyone is positive and wear PPE and take universal precautions whenever possible.”

“While the jail has sort of touted their preventative measures, and what a good job they’ve done…it seems like they’ve actually done the bare minimum just to keep people from dying in droves,” says Melissa, a DSA member who has been writing and receiving letters from the jail, and who asked that we not use her last name out of fear of retaliation.

The jail has taken some substantive steps to reduce its population. ACRJ has drastically expanded its Home Electronic Incarceration program, allowing people to be removed from the jail early and serve out the rest of their sentences from home, while wearing an ankle monitor. Before the pandemic, an average of 430 people were housed in the jail, with only three to five on HEI. Now, the jail population has dropped to as low as 300, with an average of 65 to 75 people on HEI, says Kumer. As of January 18, there are currently 345 people incarcerated at ACRJ, a majority of them ineligible for HEI due to their charges or convictions.

But even with the reduced population, it’s impossible to socially distance inside the jail, where people are constantly moved around, says Jennifer Hughes, who has been incarcerated at ACRJ since December 2019.

“The [cells] stay open all day until night time, when you have to go to sleep, but…[they’re] not very big,” says Hughes, who is currently housed in a closed cell block. “If you put your foot off the [bunk] bed, you could put your foot in the toilet—it’s that tight.”

And Kumer confirms that social distancing is also not enforced in common spaces.

“When the food comes, we’re expected to eat at a bench. Right now, there’s six people in the area I’m in, and you can maybe get six inches from the next person. You’re basically elbow-to-elbow eating,” says another incarcerated woman.

‘Nasty’

In addition to the close quarters, incarcerated people report that the jail itself is in poor physical condition. The older part of the jail, where the women are currently housed, was built in the 1970s.

“It’s so nasty in here,” says Hughes. “The paint is peeling off. We have bugs in here biting us. There’s springs hanging out of the wall. There’s pieces of iron sticking out. If you’re not careful, it’ll hit your feet and it’s sharp.”

In their letters, women report black mold and mildew in the vents, as well as faulty wiring, freezing temperatures, and standing water. And because there are no call buttons in the older part of the jail, the women have to yell and bang on the doors whenever they need help.

“We had an emergency in here today with a woman that has high sugar. It took a good five minutes of hollering, banging, and waving frantically at the camera to get anyone’s attention,” wrote one woman. “Good thing no one was dying.”

Kumer admits the older section of the building is “in desperate need of renovation.”

The men, housed in a newer part of the jail which was built in 2000, have also reported a range of sanitary issues in their cell blocks, including bug infestations, heating outages, and dirty vents.

One trustee, who works on a cleaning detail in exchange for a reduced sentence, reports receiving only one cleaning rag and watered-down solution to clean an entire cell block, which includes bunks, toilet, and shower.

According to Kumer, the cleaning solution used at the jail is approved by CDC to kill the coronavirus, and is properly diluted.

“The showers in my block have not been cleaned in over three weeks,” reports one man. Another letter writer puts it bluntly: “The sanitation or lack thereof is appalling.”

Unguarded

Multiple incarcerated people report the jail staff taking a lackadaisical at best approach to COVID prevention.

“Half of these officers wear masks at their own discretion,” says Hughes. “They’ll come into our pods, take their masks off, and start coughing and making jokes. It’s really not funny.”

“The guards hardly ever have the mask on properly, they constantly pull them down,” reads one letter.

Some of the writers report officer misbehavior unrelated to COVID. “The COs are very disrespectful at night,” reads another letter, “slamming on the doors every 15 minutes to ½ hours at night all night long.”

“It is not feasible to force any resident to wear a mask, although it is encouraged…since the majority of our facility is open air and dormitory in nature,” says Kumer. “Unless residents also wear their mask properly while they sleep, it’s not as effective as it otherwise could be. …Staff are required and if necessary disciplined if they are not wearing their PPE.”

Multiple letter writers accused the jail’s medical team of not taking pre-existing ailments seriously, failing to provide people with the treatments they need.

“The medical care is a joke,” wrote one woman. “I have serious medical issues. I was not sentenced to death by virus.”

“Medical is very neglectful in here and don’t care what people’s needs are and there are issues that many people have,” wrote one man. “I’m diabetic, it took me 10 months to convince them that I’m a diabetic in need of diabetic meds + insulin…I could have died of a heart attack.”

And on top of their physical ailments, those held in the jail report suffering from acute loneliness and boredom.

Throughout the pandemic, the jail has allowed everyone to have two free phone calls and emails per week. However, it has banned visitation.

“We are the only jail that don’t have tablets [and] video visits…We have not seen our families in almost a year,” wrote one man.

“Once a week we have people from the outside deliver our commissary items,” wrote another man. “How come we have people from the street in here with us every day, but we can’t have visitors behind the glass?”

Because the jail has canceled all programming, people are “really bored,” adds Melissa. “Many of the books they have access to have missing pages, they’re all old…There’s just nothing for them to do.”

According to Kumer, the jail is working to provide video visitation, but programming and in-person visitation currently pose too great a safety hazard.

“I haven’t had a visit in at least nine months, but other jails have tablets and video visits. What makes us different?” reads one letter. “Thank you for responding back to me, I was starting to think I was forgot about.”

“I hope they do start some type of visitation soon,” says another letter. “It’s been almost a year since I last seen my baby’s.”

While Melissa, along with her fellow DSA activists, hopes ACRJ leadership will work to remedy the dire issues voiced by incarcerated people, she believes the solution is not a matter of funding—but of massively lowering the jail population.

“They should release people…so they can provide adequate care for the people in their system,” she says. “Increasing their budget will not resolve these issues. They will continue to treat these people as if they’re not worth anything, and their lives don’t matter.”

“It is a damn shame to be treated like fucking trash and not cared for or any care any at all. People can turn their heads and look the other way, but it ain’t them or happening to them,” ends one letter. “There is no justice anymore.”

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Coronavirus News

In brief: Coronavirus clusters, CRB concerns, and more

PC: Eze Amos

Rogers that

A statue of an old racist general in Charlottesville has once again been recontextualized—UVA’s George Rogers Clark monument was splattered with an impressive arc of red paint in the middle of the night on Sunday.

Clark was a general during the United States’ violent westward expansion in the 19th century. The statue shows Native American people cowering in front of Clark’s horse and declares Clark the “conqueror of the northwest,” a designation that UVA historian Christian McMillen called “absurd” in a July UVA Today article about the statue.

The statue was erected during the same period as the Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson monuments downtown and the Lewis and Clark statue on Main Street. The Lee and Jackson statues have been graffitied many times, most recently in May.

A petition for the removal of the Clark statue circulated last year, and earlier this month UVA’s Racial Equity Task Force recommended that the monument come down. On Monday morning, the school dispatched a crew to clean the statue.

ACPS bans confederate imagery

On August 13, one day after the third anniversary of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, the Albemarle County School Board voted to amend the dress code to ban all Confederate imagery in its schools, as well as other hate symbols, including the swastikas. The new section of the code states that these images “cause substantial disruption to the educational environment and, therefore, are prohibited.”

At a school board meeting two years ago, six activists from the Hate-Free Schools Coalition were arrested—and one was hospitalized—while lobbying for this change. Less than a year later, the school board discussed banning Confederate imagery, but the change wasn’t made until this summer.

“DO NOT praise them for *finally* doing the right thing. We worked for this for years,” tweeted the Hate-Free Schools Coalition after the meeting.—Claudia Gohn

__________________

Quote of the week

“[Are] these cameras going to be used to prosecute anybody,
such as the self-styled monument guards who have been documented to be armed and threatening?”

—City resident Brad Slocum, speaking to City Council on the new security cameras installed in downtown parks

__________________

In brief

Playing the heel

Just a week into the semester, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill already has four COVID-19 clusters reported on campus—three in school-run residence halls and one in a fraternity house. (To quote the Daily Tar Heel, the university’s student paper, UNC “has a clusterfuck on its hands.”)  UVA, meanwhile, is still sticking to its plan to bring students back in person in early September.

Bad blood

The fraught relationship between Charlottesville’s Police Civilian Review Board and City Council reached an all-time low during the CRB’s meeting last week, with multiple board members revealing they’ve contemplated resigning. “They want to have this veneer of progressiveness by having us exist, but they’ll only do what they want to do,” said member Stuart Evans.

Senator charged

Just one day before the General Assembly convened for a special session on criminal justice reform, Portsmouth Police Chief Angela Greene announced that State Senator Louise Lucas had been charged with conspiracy to commit a felony and “injury to a monument” in excess of $1,000. Two months ago, Lucas showed up to a demonstration at Portsmouth’s Confederate monument, and told police not to arrest the protesters planning to paint it. Protesters dismantled the monument hours after Lucas left the scene, which she says she did not condone.

ACRJ confirmed its first inmate cases of COVID-19 last week. PC: Skyclad Aerial

Jail outbreak

Four inmates at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail tested positive for COVID last week, according to data from the Thomas Jefferson Health District. Jails and prisons around the country have had serious COVID outbreaks in recent months, but the ACRJ had been a success story up to this point.

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News

Zero crimes, zero cases: Charlottesville’s progressive pandemic response has long-term implications

Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. Photo: Skyclad Aerial

 

As the pandemic took hold in mid-March, Charlottesville and Albemarle’s criminal justice decision-makers started letting people out of jail. Two months in, it looks like the emergency measures have paid off: The Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail has not reported a single coronavirus case among inmates, and those transferred to house arrest have not posed any notable threat to public safety.

When the pandemic began, jails and prisons were quickly identified as potential coronavirus hotbeds, given the crowded living conditions and low quality of medical care. The area’s commonwealth’s attorneys, judges, and jail administration responded accordingly: They ended pretrial detentions, meaning people awaiting trial no longer had to sit in jail simply because they could not afford bail. And they transferred non-violent prisoners with short remaining sentences to home electronic incarceration (house arrest). That’s resulted in the lowest number of inmates inside the ACRJ in decades.

Local advocates have long hoped to see these decarceration policies put into practice. The pandemic offered a chance to speed that process along. Speaking to C-VILLE in March, Albemarle County’s reform-minded Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Hingeley framed the pandemic as a sort of experiment: “We are going to be accumulating information about the effects of liberalized policies with respect to sentences and bail decisions,” Hingeley said. “We’re going to see how instituting these different practices works out…My hope is that it’s going to work out well.”

Two months later, early returns show that the liberalized sentencing policies have had just the effect that Hingeley and other advocates envisioned. 

The ACRJ has transferred around 15 percent of its pre-COVID population to house arrest, and the jail has recorded zero cases of COVID among inmates. By contrast, the state prison system has transferred just 217 of its 30,000 prisoners (less than 1 percent) out of the prisons, and the system has seen more than 1,100 cases of the virus in facilities around the state.

Meanwhile, in Charlottesville, allowing ACRJ prisoners to serve their time on house arrest has not endangered the public. In the last 70 or so days, more than 90 people have been released on house arrest, and “no new criminal offenses were committed,” says jail superintendent Martin Kumer. Eight people, out of 90, have been transferred back into the jail, all for technical violations such as drug use or unauthorized travel. 

Last week, the Tom Tom Foundation convened a panel of local criminal justice leaders to discuss reforming the justice system during and after the pandemic. For some, the conclusions from the past two months support arguments they’ve been making for years. 

“The data has already been there,” pointed out panelist Cherry Henley, who runs Lending Hands, an ex-offender aid service. “Most people like myself already recognize that if you can release people into the community, they are not that high risk. At the jail, at the work release department, most of these people go out anyway, every day.” 

Even so, the pandemic has given these reformers new momentum, and keeping that going is important to them. “People forget stuff really quick,” said Harold Folley, a community organizer at the Legal Aid Justice Center. Folley thinks that moving forward, advocates for decarceration must “constantly remind [people] that releasing folks is safe. Those folks that were released didn’t go and do something criminal here in Charlottesville.”

It’s also important to remember that the house arrest system is far from perfect. “We’ve been dealing with a lot of inmates being released, and they’re on HEI, and they don’t have identification,” says Whitmore Merrick, who works for the city’s Home to Hope offender aid program. “So they’re not able to be employed. They’re stuck in the house with nothing to do. That’s been a major struggle.”

Martize Tolbert, an ex-offender who now works for the Fountain Fund, a re-entry support program, said that this moment feels like an opportunity to make change. “Let’s talk about things that we can radically do now,” Tolbert said. “Programs over prisons. Now is the time to [be] thought-provoking, to try to figure out institutions that we can use here in Charlottesville.”

Charlottesville Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania, who supports these alternatives to incarceration, outlined the challenges ahead. Not everyone in the system is on board. “You have victims, you might have detectives or police officers that have worked on the investigation, you have judges that are going to have to buy in…maybe probation officers that are involved in a violation hearing,” Platania said. “They feel a responsibility that might be at odds with some of what Jim [Hingeley] and I are trying to do. There’s a lot of different interests that you have to factor in as a prosecutor.”

“It’s a shame that it took this crisis to motivate the community to get behind decarceration,” Hingeley said, “but it’s happened now, and when the crisis has passed, we’re going to work to continue doing this.” 

Stay tuned for the next edition of the Tom Tom Foundation’s Com Com Live! series, which will feature some of the leaders mentioned in the article and will be free and open to the public. Date to be announced.

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Get out of jail virus-free: Coronavirus crisis sees local justice system adopt progressive reforms, for now

Chanell Jackson is one of 61 people recently transferred from the ACRJ to home electronic incarceration. Photo: Zack Wajsgras

 

Chanell Jackson is home early.

The local resident and mother of three had about seven weeks left on her six-month sentence in Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail when she was transferred to house arrest in late March. She’s one of the 61 non-violent offenders who have so far been released with ankle monitors, as the ACRJ braces itself for the worst-case scenario playing out in prisons across the country: a coronavirus outbreak within the jail. 

“It feels good to be home and with my family, especially with everything that’s going on,” Jackson says. “In the jail it’s scarier if you get sick. I don’t feel like I would be able to quarantine properly.”

Jackson’s concerns are legitimate: more than 5 percent of inmates in New York’s huge Rikers Island complex have already tested positive for COVID-19, meaning the jail has a higher infection rate than any country in the world. In Virginia, as of April 8, 11 inmates and 12 staff at the Virginia Correctional Center for Women have confirmed cases of the virus. Some Virginia prisons have had serious health care problems even in the best of times—in 2019, a judge determined the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women had failed to provide sufficient care after four women died while incarcerated there. 

Also nearby, local advocacy groups report that 100 immigrants held in a Farmville ICE detention center have gone on hunger strike to protest their continued incarceration despite confirmed cases of the virus in the jail. The facility, run by the for-profit company Immigration Centers of America, experienced a mumps outbreak last year. ICE denies that the current strike is occurring.

“The jails and prisons already don’t have adequate health care for people who are inmates,” says Harold Folley, a community organizer at the Legal Aid Justice Center. Given the virus, “if you lock somebody up, I feel like it’s a death sentence to them.” 

Under normal circumstances, ACRJ has six “hospital cells” for more than 400 inmates. 

ACRJ Superintendent Martin Kumer understands the concern. “I want to be clear, jails and prisons are not set up for social distancing,” he says. “They’re designed to house as many people as efficiently and effectively as possible.”

 

Emptying out

Across the country, advocates have demanded that local justice systems reduce the risk for incarcerated populations by letting as many people as possible out of jails. Some such programs are underway—in March, California announced it would release 3,500 people over the next two months. 

Locally, some prosecutors have enacted progressive emergency measures designed to reduce jail populations. Others haven’t deviated from their usual practices. 

Charlottesville Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania and his Albemarle counterpart Jim Hingeley have worked with the jail to identify nonviolent prisoners with short amounts of time left on their sentences, and transfer those people to house arrest or release them on time served. The commonwealth’s attorneys have also recommended releasing nonviolent prisoners being held pre-trial. That’s resulted in 122 of the jail’s 430 inmates leaving the premises so far. 

Nelson County prisoners also go to ACRJ, but Nelson County Commonwealth’s Attorney Daniel Rutherford, a Republican who campaigned on aggressively prosecuting drug crimes, has not participated in the efforts to decrease the jail population, says Hingeley. Rutherford did not respond to a request for comment.

“People don’t understand, the commonwealth’s attorneys have so much damn power,” Folley says. “Joe and Jim have the ability to release people to home monitoring free of charge.” Normally, offenders must pay their own home monitoring costs, up to $13 per day.

“Home electronic incarceration is not release,” says Hingeley, a point Platania also emphasizes. People on HEI are still incarcerated, and can be returned to the jail without any court getting involved if they violate the terms of their house arrest by doing things like traveling without permission or failing a drug screening.

A history of violent convictions will ensure an inmate stays in jail, Kumer says, but there are other considerations, too, like if the inmate is medically vulnerable or where they might go upon release. “We have a large number of individuals who are otherwise nonviolent but they have no place to live,” Kumer says, so they have to stay in jail.

Police Chief Rashall Brackney supports the shift to home monitoring. “I am very confident in the commonwealth’s attorneys, as well as the superintendent, that they are reviewing those cases and taking a very careful look at each of those individuals who would qualify,” she says. That’s a more tempered tone than some other police chiefs in Virginia: “The COVID-19 pandemic is NOT a get-of-out-jail-free card in Chesterfield County,” the county’s police chief wrote in a Facebook post. Last week, two employees at the Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center in Chesterfield County tested positive for COVID-19.

The jail is emotionally isolating in the best of circumstances, Jackson says, and coronavirus precautions won’t help—all visitation has been halted, except attorneys. The jail is offering two free emails and two free phone calls per week to try to ameliorate the situation. (Normally, an email costs 50 cents—“a stamp will cost you more than that,” Kumer notes—and a phone call costs 12 cents per minute.)

Fewer people behind bars means prisoners can be more spread out and the facility requires fewer staff to operate. Kumer says the plan is to segregate—the jail has emptied out and rearranged one wing to house all inmates who start exhibiting symptoms. 

For now, inmates and officials wait with bated breath to hear the virus’ dry cough rattle through the cell blocks. So far, “no one has been symptomatic enough to test,” says Kumer.

Despite these precautions, Kumer isn’t rosy-eyed about the situation. “There’s not a lot we can do if an outbreak does occur,” he says. 

 

Looking ahead

The 308 inmates currently inside the jail is the smallest number in at least 20 years, says Hingeley. 

The emergency measures represent baby steps towards a more equitable justice system. The city-commissioned Disproportionate Minority Contact report earlier this year concluded that black people were disproportionately punished at every level of the local justice system. As it turns out, releasing non-violent offenders and people serving short sentences disproportionately helps black people: A little less than half the jail’s total population is black, but two-thirds of the people transferred to HEI due to coronavirus are black. 

“There’s a lot of folks who are not paying attention to people who are incarcerated,” says Folley. “When you think of people incarcerated you think, automatically, they are criminals, right. But what people should know is they are human, too.”

“I think they definitely should offer [HEI] more,” Jackson says. “There’s still rules and regulations that you follow, but some people have minor violations and they’re being incarcerated and taken away from their family. At least on home monitoring you can stay home and take care of your family. Because every day is precious.”

Jackson says she loves cooking, and she’s been doing plenty of it since she got home. Her favorite thing to make is lasagna; she just pulled one out of the oven. “I’m very family oriented. I’m very happy to be home with them,” she says. “I have a younger daughter, she’s 1, so I’ve been catching up with her, spending time with her…Everything is mama, mama where’s my mama,” she says, laughing. 

Will the change last? That depends who you ask. 

“We’re taking some calculated risks with some of these decisions,” Platania says—he doesn’t want to “overreact one way or another.”

He says it’s “absolutely” possible that the local justice system takes a more progressive view of sentencing and bail decisions after coronavirus. “But you know to turn that on its head,” he adds, “if we make a decision to release someone on a nonviolent larceny offense, and they break in to someone’s house and steal something or hurt someone, do we then say well, everything we did was unsafe and foolhardy?” 

Hingeley, who ran his 2019 campaign as a candidate for prosecutorial reform and alternatives to incarceration, is more direct. “Absolutely it is my goal to have these practices last,” he says. “From my perspective these are things that we should be doing.”

The emergency measures offer an unusual opportunity to see progressive policies in practice. “We are going to be accumulating information about the effects of liberalized policies with respect to sentences and bail decisions,” Hingeley says. “I am optimistic that that experience—as hard as it comes to us, in this emergency—that experience nevertheless is going to teach us valuable lessons. And we’ll see big changes going forward.”

“I can take the initiative, but other people have to agree,” Hingeley says. Platania also emphasizes that judges are a coequal branch of government to prosecutors, and though there’s been great “judicial buy-in” during this emergency, that won’t necessarily be true in the future.

“I do hope that this will change the system,” Folley says, “but it takes a number of people with courage.”

 

Updated 4/8 to reflect the number of confirmed cases in the Virginia Correctional Center for Women.

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In brief: Capsized cop, jail board booed, and another Tar-jay?

Local mogul Coran Capshaw’s Riverbend Development has plans for the former Kmart shopping center on Hydraulic, now known as Hillsdale Place.

Another Tar-jay?

Local mogul Coran Capshaw’s Riverbend Development has plans for the former Kmart shopping center on Hydraulic, now known as Hillsdale Place. The company went before the Planning Commission May 14 for entrance corridor approval (after C-VILLE went to press).

The plans keep the existing footprint of the center that’s been closed since 2017. An 8,000-square-foot plaza lined
with shops and restaurants will be the space’s new focal point.

A Target-red-colored anchor, an outdoors store that looks suspiciously like an REI, and a mysterious storefront dubbed “Bells & Whistles” are depicted in the drawings.

Quote of the week

“There’s no way to prepare for a madman.” —WINA’s Dori Zook reports on the May 11 machete attack of two hikers on the Appalachian trail, one of whom was killed. James Louis Jordan, 30, of Massachusetts, faces federal charges.

ICE wins

The Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail Authority Board voted 7-4 to continue voluntarily notifying U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement when an undocumented inmate is released from jail, prompting explosive reactions from some people in the audience. Activists had been pressing the board to change its policy for more than a year.

Hit and run

Police are searching for the driver of a dark-colored sedan that grazed a pedestrian around 11pm May 9 on Pine Street near the Islamic Society of Central Virginia. Police do not believe the victim was intentionally targeted, but the mosque, which is holding nightly prayers during Ramadan, has a GoFundMe campaign to pay for additional security measures, and is now paying a police officer $40 an hour to be there every night.

Photo by Edward Thomas

Cop on a roll

An unusual sight on Seventh Street caught the eyes of many passersby last week, when a Charlottesville police cruiser rolled backward over a steep embankment, narrowly missing an apartment window. Only its front end could be seen peeking over the hill, putting it in a pretty challenging position for a tow. Cops say an officer exited his car to chase a suspect on foot—and you can probably guess what happened next.

Sheared

Greene County Commonwealth’s Attorney Matt Hardin cut his 10-inch tresses and donated them to Locks of Love May 8.

New ride

Megabus is launching a route from Charlottesville to Dulles Airport beginning May 16. The service will leave from the Seventh Street SW entrance of the Amtrak station and run Thursdays through Mondays, for $25 to Dulles and $20 back. Megabus entered the local market last fall, causing the Starlight Express to halt, and a trip to New York City that once took about six and a half hours now takes nine or 10.

Sheepskin stats

UVA will hand out 7,090 degrees over the upcoming weekend, about the same as last year.

  • 4,211 baccalaureate degrees, 151 of which were earned in a speedy three years, and five in a super-fast two years.
  • 457 medical and law degrees.
  • 2,448 total graduate degrees, including 311 Ph.D.s, 12 doctors of education, 20 doctors of nursing practice, and 10 doctors of juridical science.
  • 1,210 graduates are international students.

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Unequal justice: City and county seek feedback on criminal justice disparities

MGT Consulting Group held a series of listening sessions to hear about community members’ experiences with the local criminal justice system. The group is working on a disparity and disproportionality study, and plans to make recommendations this summer. Photo by Martyn Kyle

To the list of racial disparities in Charlottesville and Albemarle County, we can add arrest rates: According to a new study, African Americans are booked at significantly higher rates than whites at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail, and the greatest disproportionality occurs during felony arrests.

This is a national problem—black adults are 5.9 times more likely to be incarcerated than whites, according to The Sentencing Project, and racial disparities exist in every stage from arrest rates to the lengths of sentences. But to address the problem locally, City Council hired an independent consulting firm to collect data on both the city and the county, solicit community feedback, and make recommendations for change. While it’s mostly being funded by the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services, the city is picking up $10,000 of the $100,000 tab.

After 10 months of analyzing data, MGT Consulting Group—a “disparity solutions” consulting group with approximately 10 offices across the country, and one in Richmond—held four community meetings to gather additional, firsthand experiences from folks such as ex-offenders, victims, witnesses, cops, jail staff, and attorneys.

At the first meeting, on April 25 at Jack Jouett Middle School, MGT announced that although the disproportionality is smaller when it comes to misdemeanor arrests, black arrest rates are still considerably higher.

This isn’t news for some.

“You’re probably saying this is something you already know,” admitted project director Reggie Smith. He added that the firm will not release any other, more specific, data until the study concludes in June.

He then turned the floor over to the first speaker, a woman who came to talk about her experiences with law enforcement. She was recently involved in a small fender bender, called the police for safety, and ended up behind bars, she said.

This was a story that other people in the room knew too well, and some nodded their heads in support. “The whole call went so wrong, and I felt like, ‘Lord, I shouldn’t have called the police,’” the woman said.

When the man she collided with became aggressive, she said she felt unsafe and called for help. And when the cop arrived on the scene of the already-tense situation, she said, “He automatically assumed I was the aggressive person. …We went back and forth, but nothing disrespectful, and he placed me under arrest.” Her charges? Disorderly conduct and DUI.

When the officer indicated that he smelled alcohol, she said she admitted to having a beer, which she told him wasn’t against the law. She said she then refused a breathalyzer test because she didn’t know her rights. The cop took her to the magistrate’s office to swear out a warrant for a blood test, which was then administered at UVA. After the test, she said he took her back to the jail, where staff gave her the option of staying locked up until they could ensure she wasn’t drunk, or taking the breathalyzer test to prove her sobriety. When she opted for the latter, she blew a 0.02 percent, she said, well below the legal limit of 0.08 percent.

Her car was towed from the scene—even though she said her sister and neighbor were on-hand to park it in her driveway—and now she’s hoping to be reimbursed for the $250 it took to get her car back.

“If it had been a white woman, then it would have been handled totally differently,” she told the consultants.

Another person talked about the disproportionate police presence at race-related protests compared to demonstrations about gun control or the environment, and specifically noted the large number of undercover cops in unmarked vehicles at the recent Charlottesville High School Black Student Union protest in McIntire Park.

“It’s something about race,” she said. Referring to the police, she added, “Something about anti-racist activists just trips their trigger.”

A man told the consultants about recently buying a house in a new neighborhood. One day before move-in, he went to check out his new digs during his lunch break, and said he noticed a white woman following him through the neighborhood in her car. When he parked outside his new house, she did, too. And when he introduced himself, he said she refused to give him her name, said he was “harassing her,” and called the police.

“I just walked away because I didn’t want to be the next Trayvon Martin,” he said. “It’s just this idea that I can’t even exist without the police being called on me for being in a place that someone thought I shouldn’t be.”

The last person to speak was Darrell Simpson, a former Sheriff’s deputy in Rockingham County who has also worked as a case manager for the Department of Corrections.

“One of the reasons I left that line of work is the disparity and disproportionality that I witnessed, and the fact that my viewpoints were in the extreme minority,” he said, adding that he often witnessed racism from “inside the walls. …I didn’t feel like I was really a part of the family in any of those settings, so I decided to get out.”

Harold Folley, a community organizer with the Legal Aid Justice Center, attended the April 27 meeting at the Carver Recreation Center, where he says approximately 10 or 15 people shared their stories.

He notes that MGT didn’t share any specific data it has collected, and that most people are already aware of the local disparity.

“You didn’t have to do a $100,000 study to say, ‘Oh my God, this is happening,’” he says.

And perhaps there was a relatively low turnout because people have little faith that this study—or any study—could actually have any influence on the criminal justice system.

Says Folley, “They just feel like nothing’s going to change.”

 

Corrected May 1 at 12:55 to show that the disproportionality is smaller when it comes to misdemeanor arrests. We originally reported the study showed that the disparity is smaller when it comes to misdemeanor arrests.

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YOU issue: Who’s in jail?

The Charlottesville-Albemarle Regional Jail. Photo: Eric Kelley

Here’s what readers asked for:

Pick one day and find out in Charlottesville and Albemarle County the name of everyone locked up in the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail on that day, the reason they are there, and their anticipated release date.—Catherine Wray

With close to 500 inmates in the regional jail, we pretty quickly nixed the idea of listing the name of everyone locked up, the reason they’re there, and their anticipated release date.

Here’s what we can tell you about what was going on at the jail on October 31, courtesy of Superintendent Martin Kumer.

Number of inmates: 488

How that fluctuates: Over the past few years as low as 380 to a high now of 488.

Number of beds: The jail is rated to have 329 beds, but actually has around 600.

Number of men: 415

Number of women: 73 (It’s been consistently 85 percent men, 15 percent women for the past two years.)

Racial breakdown: Roughly 50/50 among blacks and whites (the prison software does not track any other races).

Average age: Unreported, but “I would put it in the low 30s.”

Average length of stay: 35 days.

Number that are U.S. citizens: “We don’t have a report for that but I would estimate fewer than 10 at any time report being a citizen of another country.”

Most common charge resulting in incarceration: Not tracked, but “probation violation is probably the most common.”

Number in solitary confinement:
18 on October 31.

Number in work release: 28, but it fluctuates.

Cost per day per inmate: $91, but “that number is not a true cost of incarceration and is very misleading. That number is derived by totaling all of the inmate days per year and dividing it by the total budget. However, some of those costs are fixed so the jail population doesn’t directly impact the overall budget.”

Annual Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail budget: $15,345,000

Budget contribution from Albemarle: $3,541,000

Contribution from Charlottesville: $4,591,000

Nelson County: $618,000.

(Contributions are based on a percentage of that jurisdiction’s inmates.)

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Overflow meeting: ICE calls continue

Michael Del Rosso, chairman of the Charlottesville Republican Committee, was the first person to speak to the jail board during the public comment session. He said, "illegal aliens...have no reason to be here, anyway." Photo by Eze Amos

After months of thousands of community members urging the authority board at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail to stop voluntarily reporting the release dates of undocumented immigrants to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the board held a special meeting September 13 to take a revote on that policy.

At the local jail, and every jail in the state, staff is required by state law to tell ICE when an undocumented immigrant is taken into custody—but they also voluntarily call the federal immigration agents when that inmate is about to be released, and oftentimes, they’ll be there waiting for a newly released immigrant as he walks out the door.

At a July board meeting, jail Superintendent Martin Kumer said ICE picked up 25 undocumented immigrants from the ACRJ between July 2017 and June 2018, who were charged with crimes such as malicious wounding, domestic assault, abduction, drunk driving, driving without a license, public swearing or intoxication, failure to appear in court, and possessing drugs.

A vote didn’t happen at the September 13 meeting, but further discussion on the practice did, and Kumer introduced new information that could eventually lead to ending those ICE notifications.

VINE, a tool on the jail’s website, could be the game changer. Kumer said anyone—including ICE agents—can sign up to receive notifications on any inmate’s custody status or release date. The system updates every 15 minutes.

While the program currently has some kinks—as noted by Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Tracci, who uses it often—Kumer said he’s already working to update the system, and would support encouraging ICE to track undocumented immigrants’ status through VINE instead of having staff call the federal immigration agents upon an inmate’s release.

But the absence of a vote didn’t sit well with community members who have long been calling for the jail board to end the process, and who prompted the special September meeting.

“They’re kicking the can down the road, obviously,” said Margot Morshuis-Coleman, a representative with the Charlottesville-Area Immigrant Resource & Advocacy Coalition, outside the jail. She noted that the “heart of the conflict is criminalizing immigration,” because ICE is currently notified of all undocumented immigrants’ release dates, not depending on the seriousness of their crimes.

“The jail should not do ICE’s work,” she said.

During a public comment session, only three of approximately 20 speakers held the same opinion. Most of them asked the jail to continue notifying ICE of the inmates’ release dates, which puzzled another CIRAC member, Priscilla Mendenhall.

“We question the fact that the majority of the public comment was by folks who were for maintaining notifications,” said Mendenhall, who was waiting in line outside the jail by 11:30am for the 12:30 meeting. Only about six of the people in line in front of her could have been in favor of continuing notifications, she reports, and when she signed up to speak, only about six or eight names were in front of hers.

Kumer said speaking time was given on a “first come, first serve” basis, and he allowed folks to enter the meeting room early because it was raining outside. He also noted that in all of the other related meetings, those against ICE notifications have dominated the public comment portion. More than 30 people signed up for public comment at the most recent meeting, and for those who didn’t get their turn, written comments were accepted and added to the meeting minutes.

Michael Del Rosso, chairman of the Charlottesville Republican Committee, was the first to speak.

“They are illegal aliens. They have no reason to be here anyway,” he said, and encouraged the jail board to continue its practice to help “get them off the streets.”

Many claimed notifying ICE of their release from jail makes the community safer, but opponents say it does quite the opposite.

In a September 12 letter to Charlottesville Sheriff James Brown—who abstained from voting on the matter in January—more than two dozen community groups and individuals encouraged him to vote to end the policy.

“While Tracci and ICE have repeatedly attempted to paint everyone who is taken into ICE custody from the ACRJ as rapists, murderers, and members of organized crime, the reality is that they are our neighbors, coworkers, classmates, parents—beloved members of the community you represent,” the letter said. “The portrayal of these inmates as violent criminals is untrue and a danger to the community in and of itself, as it stigmatizes, isolates, and persecutes an already marginalized population.”

Albemarle Sheriff Chip Harding, who encouraged the board to learn more about the VINE system before voting, was prepared to vote against ending the notifications.

“It bothers me greatly that the current ICE practice is to place detainers on almost everyone coming into our jail that is here illegally,” Harding wrote in a September 2 letter to the board.

He noted that ICE only takes a percentage of undocumented immigrants into custody after they leave the jail, and after review, some are released back into the community.

“Reportedly/understandably, the time this practice requires has a detrimental impact on the family,” he wrote, but he cites his oath of office, and said he feels compelled to comply with ICE, which has been charged by Congress to enforce 400 federal statutes.

Tracci shares Harding’s opinion of compliance, and in a letter that Tracci addressed to the Albemarle Board of Supervisors September 12, he said the ACRJ becoming the first Virginia jail to discontinue ICE notifications for inmates subject to federal detainers would have “safety and legal consequences,” partially because they’d all be released back into Albemarle where the jail is located, rather than the jurisdictions where they committed their offenses. The ACRJ houses inmates who were charged in Albemarle and Nelson counties, and Charlottesville.

But the man who holds Tracci’s job in the city, Joe Platania, wrote an August 10 letter of stark contrast.

The jail board’s position of voluntarily reporting and the media coverage surrounding it has left many community members “legitimately feeling angry, scared, and isolated,” according to the city’s commonwealth’s attorney.

“In some cases, primary caretakers or breadwinners are removed and are no longer able to care for their children, who are oftentimes citizens,” wrote Platania. “I am also concerned about witnesses and victims looking at voluntary notification as a reason to be uncooperative with local law enforcement and not report crimes or participate with prosecutions because they fear the deportation of charged individuals.”

He noted the “significant concern” of two of the immigrants deported between July 2017 and June 2018—one charged with DUI and the other with assault and battery—whom a judge had released on bond prior to their trials.

“They are currently considered fugitives from justice,” Platania said. “One problem presented by this scenario is that individuals who may not be guilty of the crime they have been charged with have no ability to assert their innocence and stand trial.”

And, he added, if they were tried and convicted before their deportation, they would have been held accountable for their actions, and Platania’s office could use those convictions as evidence in the event of a second offense. Each prosecutor is also able to reach out to ICE and request assistance in cases where they believe removal is the best option, he said.

When undocumented immigrants are charged with a crime and held without bond, Platania said his office determines whether they present a flight risk, are a danger to themselves, or a danger to the community. If prosecutors can’t establish any of those factors, they recommend release back into the community with terms and conditions, and if they do establish one or more of those factors, they ask that the immigrants be held until their trial.

Platania also said he “concurs wholeheartedly” with a July 1 letter from the jail board—signed by Kumer and board chair Diantha McKeel—in which they said undocumented immigrants don’t pose an inherent danger based solely on their citizenship status.

“If the board agrees with the letter it wrote, it may be useful to have ICE articulate with specificity how the voluntary notification policy furthers legitimate local public safety needs,” Platania said. And after examining available data on city cases, “I am unable to see the positive impact the current policy has on family stability or public safety.”

Echoing the local activists’ position, he said, “If community safety is one of our guiding principles, and it must be, it seems unwise to have a policy that perhaps unintentionally (albeit foreseeably) undermines it.”

At the meeting, City Councilor and jail board member Wes Bellamy suggested that if the ICE notifications must continue, the board should be open to compromise. He suggested leniency for undocumented immigrants charged with nonviolent crimes such as public intoxication, loitering, or civil matters related to paying child support.

The board will meet again in November to further discuss their policy and hear an update on any VINE system upgrades that have been initiated.

“The decisions that we make, they have consequences on people’s lives,” Bellamy said. “This is something we have to get right.”