Virginia board shields jail action plans from public

The Arlington County Jail submitted a corrective action plan to the state on how officials there plan to comply with minimum state standards following the October 2020 death of Darryl Becton. The state officials at the Virginia Board of Local and Regional Jails last month were satisfied and voted in favor of closing their investigation.

But what’s in the action plan for the Arlington jail and others that violated state standards? It’s unclear because the board won’t release those plans publicly.

The board, through its executive director, cited a discretionary exemption in the Virginia Freedom of Information Act in withholding the action plans in four cases that a board committee voted in June to resolve. The other jails recently found in violation of state regulations after jail deaths in 2020 are the Henry County Jail, the Virginia Peninsula Regional Jail and the Rappahannock-Shenandoah-Warren Regional Jail.

The FOIA exemption allows government officials to withhold public records if the records are prepared exclusively for use in a closed meeting.

Mark Krudys, a lawyer in Richmond who regularly files litigation over deaths of people in jails, said it’s not just the public and families that should see such records. The system benefits from more information; sheriffs and regional jail superintendents need to see records on what other jails are doing so they can fix or avoid their own problems, he said.

“This board is basically saying just trust us. We’ll go behind the door, not allow you to see these proceedings, and we’ll come back and you should just be satisfied with that,” Krudys said. “Well, that’s not how, for instance, courts work.”

Krudys represented the family of a man whose death led to new powers for the Board of Local and Regional Jails to review all jail deaths. Jamycheal Mitchell, 24, died in the Hampton Roads Regional Jail in 2015 after a series of systemic failures prevented him from getting proper medical care. He had mental health problems and was being held in jail on shoplifting charges.

In response, then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe in 2017 signed legislation to expand the powers of the board and change its makeup to better oversee local jails. But since then, the board at times has been plagued by a lack of transparency, a case backlog and interference by powerful officials at the Virginia Department of Corrections. The department oversees state prisons, but staff of the jail board are housed in the department.

It’s difficult to gauge results of the work done by the board, whose members are unpaid appointees of the governor. And it’s not easy to even know which cases the board is talking about at its meetings, because board members opt to do most of their work in closed session.

“However, the Jail Review Committee finds that the corrective actions taken by the jail appropriately addresses the substance of the violation such that no further measures are necessary,” read the motion the committee voted on. The committee voted to recommend that the full jail board close the four death cases.

But only the internal case numbers were mentioned publicly, numbers that without further context are meaningless to the public. The date, jail and name of the person who died weren’t discussed in open session or listed in the meeting minutes.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch asked on June 15 for a copy of the notices sent to the four facilities and a copy of the corrective action plans they sent to the state.

Three weeks later, Ryan McCord, the board’s executive director, provided the redacted records, withholding the corrective action plans and details of the cases that the board didn’t want released. The board cited discretionary FOIA exemptions for inmate records, health records and personnel records. Nothing stops the board from releasing the records, but the law doesn’t require it.

McCord said the board wants to protect the “privacy” of people who die in jails, and their families. Board Chairman Vernie Francis Jr. didn’t respond to an email.

In the Arlington case, Becton was suffering from withdrawal over use of opioids as well as alarmingly high blood pressure.

He was left for hours without monitoring, observation or treatment, his family alleges in a pending lawsuit in Arlington County Circuit Court against Corizon Health Inc. and other defendants. Corizon was the jail’s medical provider at the time; a Corizon nurse was charged criminally with falsifying records related to Becton in a case that remains pending.

Arlington County ended a contract with Corizon Health in the fall. Krudys, the attorney who represented Mitchell’s family, also represents the family of Becton in their lawsuit.

Krudys said it’s problematic that minimal detail is publicly available from the Board of Local and Regional Jails death investigations. Broad publicity of jail board findings and how jails respond would lead to improvements, he said.

“There’s no acceptable reason as far as I’m concerned as to why this information hasn’t been made public,” he said.

If the board wants to protect the privacy of families, Krudys said, the board should contact the families to get their views on whether records should be public, or the board should make only modest redactions to protect privacy.

The Becton family, he said, calls for full public disclosure of all board records in their loved one’s case, as well as release of Arlington County’s corrective action plan.

“Cloaking board findings and alleged corrective actions does not serve the public’s interests; it only shields jailers from scrutiny,” he said. “It is time to halt that practice.”