A major state effort to cut the number of prison inmates in restrictive housing — segregation, as it’s often called — has resulted in a 66% decline since 2016, the Department of Corrections reported Friday.
It’s the result in large part of the department’s Step-Down program, which aims to give high-risk inmates a path, if they choose it, to change behavior and return to general population, department director Harold Clarke said in an interview.
The department’s across the board focus on what Clarke calls “cognitive restructuring” — teaching inmates new ways of thinking and behaving so they don’t break the law again when their time in prison is done — is also helping.
The most serious in-prison offenses, such as attempted murder or escape, that draw long-term stays in restrictive housing are down as well, Clarke said.
An effort to give all inmates more time out of their cells and a range of programming has also helped keep prisons calmer, he said.
All in all, the number of inmates in restrictive housing stood at 521 in June, down from the total of 1,513 in 2016, when a pilot Step Down program was rolled out across the prison system.
Of that total, 484 are in short-term segregation units. Their median average stay there is 14 days, and a bit more than a quarter return to general population units within five days. Generally, they’re sent there for fighting, possession or drugs or contraband, assault or threatening staff.
There were 37 inmates, out of a systemwide total of 30,000, in long-term restrictive housing on June 30. Their median average stay is 221 days.
Clarke said cells in restrictive housing are like all others in the prison system. They have windows, there is space in front, and it is possible to communicate with inmates in neighboring cells, or even across a hallway.
Inmates are let out of restrictive housing cells for three to four hours a day, and have access to telephones, medical and mental health staff and visitors, he said.
“It is not going into the hole,” he said.
Clarke said prison officials from 13 states have come to Virginia to study its Step-Down program and restrictive housing practices.
The drop in restrictive housing is “the result of a lot of hard work on the part of both the Department of Correction and the incarcerated offenders,” state Secretary of Public Safety Brian Moran said in a prepared statement.
Clarke said it’s all about a basic mission — doing the most to ensure that when inmates are released from prison, they don’t return to lives of crime.
“Nobody made us do this; this wasn’t a court saying do it,” he said. “We did it because it is the right thing to do.”
Dave Ress, 757-247-4535, dress@dailypress.com
