A little good news

According to longtime WV statehouse reporter Tom Miller, 

The idea of housing West Virginia's state prisoners at a private, for-profit prison in neighboring Kentucky has been shelved and is no longer a priority, Commissioner Jim Rubenstein of the state Division of Corrections told state legislators last week at one of the interim committee meetings.

Rubenstein said the idea has now "been put way back on the back burner" because of the current decrease that his agency has been seeing "within the total (inmate) population." This seems to put to rest this earlier proposal that called for the state to possibly house up to 400 inmates at a prison in eastern Kentucky that would be operated by the Corrections Corporation of America.

This is welcome news for all kinds of reasons. I was proud to work with WV allies to keep this from happening. The main reason it didn't was the success of a 2013 bill addressing prison overcrowding.

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