By Ashley Perham
For HDMedia
$60.35 — That’s the starting rate Kanawha County will have to pay for every day they house someone at the South Central Regional jail next year.
By comparison, there are cheaper rooms available at a Charleston-area Red Roof Inn, Days Inn and Super 8.
For fiscal year 2027, which begins July 1, the Kanawha County Commission is budgeting $5 million for the expense.
“It’s not sustainable. It’s simply not sustainable,” County Commission President Ben Salango said at the last County Commission meeting.
In an effort to reduce this annual cost, the County Commission has set up a Jail Bill Task Force they hope will save the county $1 million next year.
What is the jail bill?
All West Virginia counties have to pay a per diem cost for each inmate they have in the state’s regional jails. Defendants awaiting trial or who have been sentenced for misdemeanors make up most of the population.
Cities also have to pay a per diem for people in jail on municipal charges, but if the charge is prosecuted in county court, the county has to pay.
The City of Charleston is budgeting $523,000 for their jail bill in the next fiscal year — about 10% of what Kanawha County is budgeting.
As of March 10, SCRJ housed 518 inmates, primarily from Kanawha and Jackson counties. The data was provided by Sara Whitaker, senior criminal legal policy analyst for the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy.
The current per diem system was passed by the Legislature in 2023. Under the system, counties are given a number of inmate days. The number is calculated by multiplying each county’s 2020 population by .52. With this formula, Kanawha County is allotted about 9,750 inmate days.
- When counties have used 80% or less of their share of days, they can pay a lower rate. Starting July 1, this rate will be $60.35.
- When counties have used 81% to 100% of their days, they are billed at the base rate, which will be $75.44 starting July 1.
- When counties have used more than 100% of their inmate days, they pay a higher rate. In FY27, this will be $90.53.
As of Feb. 28, Kanawha County has used 79% of its inmate days for fiscal year 2026, according to Julianne Bowyer, county financial coordinator. In fiscal year 2025, which ran from July 2024 through June 2025, Kanawha County reached 80% by the middle of May.
The task force
Last week, the County Commission voted to set aside $300,000 from the county’s Opioid Settlement Funds for a task force to try to reduce the annual jail bill cost by seeing if nonviolent offenders could be let out of jail and supervised with other county resources.
The county is hiring four positions that would work on the task force full-time, incorporating the viewpoints of the Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, the Kanawha County Commission, Day Report and Home Confinement. The task force will work together in-person every day.
“I want them to be there looking at each other every day so they can go through these daily incarcerations to try to determine who should be out and who should be in,” Salango said.
The task force would look over the list of daily incarcerations and determine if any non-violent pre-trial offenders could take advantage of Home Confinement, Day Report or other services like recovery housing.
According to the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s website, there are about five bookings a day at South Central Regional Jail.
The task force could not release people on its own authority. Instead, prosecuting attorneys will ask magistrates to reduce the bail or send the arrestees to an alternative program while awaiting trial.
“In many instances, the magistrates and judges will follow the prosecutor’s recommendation,” Salango said. “Not always.”
Assistant County Attorney Chris Settles said the task force will also help with opioid epidemic recovery by expanding treatment options for people in jail with substance use disorder.
Cabell County
Cabell County has a similar group that has met weekly since 2017. Chuck Zerkle, chief deputy for the Cabell County Sheriff’s Office, was sheriff when the group became its current form in 2017.
Zerkle said the review committee helps with the flow of prosecution, getting people help and finding alternatives to incarceration in addition to lowering the jail bill.
The group is made up of representatives from the prosecuting attorney’s office, Day Report, the public defender’s office and a victim advocate.
Jason Spears, Cabell County prosecuting attorney, said magistrates are supportive of the system and set quick court dates for cases where the review committee has come up with solutions like a plea agreement or an alternative to incarceration. However, Spears makes sure victims of certain crimes are still notified about cases that are moving faster than normal so that they can have their say in court.
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