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West Virginia regional jails and state prisons

West Virginia has 55 counties and no county jails. The sheriff does not run a lockup. A person arrested in Charleston, Morgantown, Wheeling, or Beckley is taken to a regional jail. City police have a holding room for a few hours. That room is not a jail. The Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation runs the regional jails, the prisons, and the youth centers. One agency covers all of it.

The regional jails are the booking buildings. South Central Regional Jail in Charleston covers Kanawha and the counties around it. Western Regional Jail is in Barboursville. Northern Regional Jail is in Moundsville. North Central Regional Jail is in Greenwood. Eastern Regional Jail is in Martinsburg. Tygart Valley Regional Jail is in Belington. Potomac Highlands Regional Jail is in Augusta. Southern Regional Jail is in Beaver. Southwestern Regional Jail is in Holden. A family in a member county may have to drive to a jail two counties away. Search the county of the arrest. The listing is the regional jail that covers it, not a sheriff.

Jails in West Virginia hold people before trial and people serving a short sentence. A longer felony sentence goes to a state prison, still under the same division. Mount Olive is the maximum-security prison. Huttonsville, Northern, St. Marys, Salem, and Denmar are the other men’s prisons families ask about. Lakin, in West Columbia, is the women’s prison. A federal sentence goes to the Bureau of Prisons. FCI Morgantown and FCI Gilmer are the federal prisons in the state. Those are not regional jails.

How many county jails are there in West Virginia?

None. About ten regional jails cover 55 counties. The old count of 24 mixes those jails with prisons and community corrections centers. A full regional jail means a transfer to another region, not a second jail in the same county.

How many juvenile detention centers are there in West Virginia?

Youth centers are regional too, and the same division runs them. Donald R. Kuhn Juvenile Center is in Julian. James H. “Tiger” Morton is in Dunbar. Gene Spadaro is in Mount Hope. Kenneth “Honey” Rubenstein is in Davis. Ronald C. Mulholland is in Wheeling. A youth waiting on a hearing and a youth who has been committed can both be in one of those centers. There is no county juvenile hall. Search the county of the arrest. The youth listing is the center that covers that part of the state.

What the first days in a West Virginia regional jail are like

The first day is a magistrate court, then a ride to the regional jail. Name, prints, a medical screen, a search, clothes in a bag, one call if the phones are working. The person has not been convicted. There is no phone in the cell, and no way to know if the job, the truck, or the kids got covered. Glasses stay in property until somebody signs for them. Charleston and Martinsburg look the same once the person is inside. The difference is the drive.

The hard part is the ordinary part. The uniform does not fit. The bunk is thin, and the next bed is awake. Meals are plain and on a clock. Mail is slow. A visit from a holler to Charleston or Beaver is a drive that may not happen. Withdrawal from alcohol, opioids, or methamphetamine can start before the preliminary hearing, and the night is when that gets loud. Officers who apply the rules the same way to everybody run a quieter pod. Uneven rules are how contraband moves. South Central and Western can separate by risk. A smaller regional jail often cannot.

Tablets, video visits, and deposits take some of the isolation out. A message home does not fix the bed or the case, and the account can be shut off. Each regional jail page on this site lists the phone, the vendor, and the way to send money for the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation.