W.VA. IS FACING TOUGH CHOICES ABOUT PRISONS

State officials cut the ribbon last week on the new $24 million Lakin
Correction Center for Women. The prison is the first in West Virginia
designed exclusively for female inmates.

No one seems to know exactly why, but West Virginia's judges are finding
female offenders coming before them in increasing numbers. Thus, the new
240-bed facility won't lack for guests.

But Wednesday's dedication ceremony was overshadowed by release of a new
report that paints a grim picture of the state's future prison needs. The
study, commissioned by the state Supreme Court, predicts the number of
offenders soon will overwhelm the state's capacity to house them.

As a consequence, the report warns, the state faces a difficult choice. It
can spend millions of dollars to construct more prison cells. It can cut
the prison population by reconsidering the life-without-parole sentences
handed some inmates. Or it can send some prisoners out of state. None of
those options is appealing.

As the report notes, a provision in the state Constitution that prohibits
"banishment" could be interpreted as barring the transfer of prisoners out
of state.

The idea of paroling murderers and other violent criminals, even though
they may have spent long stretches behind bars, clearly isn't going to play
well with the public.

That leaves expensive new prison construction as seemingly inevitable.
Those costs might be trimmed if home confinement and other alternative
sentencing measures were more widely used.

One way or another, however, there's no escaping the fact that the rising
tide of prison inmates is going to challenge the state as never before.