BRUNSWICK COUNTY, Va. — Once a bustling agricultural center, most of the storefronts in Lawrenceville, Virginia now sit empty.
"This is a poor county, this is country, farm, agricultural county, doesn't have a lot of industry," Brunswick County Sheriff Brian Roberts said.
Brunswick County does have one major economic lifeline: Lawrenceville Correctional Center - a level three state prison.
"I do not want the prison to close. This is a small community, impoverished community, we do not need to lose any jobs," Roberts said.
Roberts started working for the Sherriff's Office in Brunswick County 25 years ago, the same year the Lawrenceville Correctional Center opened.
"In the first half of life of the prison, it was an asset," Roberts said.
But recently, Roberts said, the prison has become a liability.
Inmate Deaths and Calls for Service
"I think the 911 call came in last year that said we've got six inmates on top of a building, escaped from their housing unit, running around on the campus, that's pretty crazy," Roberts said.
Between January 1, 2021, and May 20, 2022, the Brunswick Office of Emergency Communications received 204 calls for service from the prison.
Of those calls, 39 were for drug overdoses and 21 were to respond to an unconscious person.
Prison calls for service over time have skyrocketed since 2018.
In the last four months, two calls turned into hazmat situations.
"Our first mass casualty was a group of people exposed to a drug that we still do not know what it was," Alberta Volunteer Fire Department Chief Ted Smith said. "We had to put our squads out of service for 24 hours."
Alberta is one of three EMS agencies that respond to calls from Lawrenceville Correctional Center.
"My biggest concern is the safety of our providers not knowing what we're going into when we go over there," Smith said.
Chief Smith said when his crews constantly get called to the prison, it is the citizens of Brunswick who suffer.
"When the call volume goes up, we are taken away from our community," Smith said. "We have had calls that we have had citizens heart attacks, diabetic emergencies that was in our first due area but we was in our second due area trying to cover a mass incident for GEO."
GEO Group is the private company the state contracts with to run Lawrenceville Correctional Center.
It is the only privately-run state prison in Virginia, which is an agreement a 2020 state study found saved the Commonwealth $9.3 million for FY2020.
"It's a failed business transaction right now," Sheriff Roberts said."They obviously have a staffing issue, they have a shortage of staffing issue, an integrality of a staffing issue."
Failed business transaction
In the first half of 2022, the Virginia Department of Corrections assessed GEO $2.2 million in liquidated damages for failing to comply with the staffing requirements of the contract.
Roberts said Governor Glenn Youngkin's Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security Bob Mosier came down on August 25 and met with him and executives from GEO about the problems.
That's when he learned a shocking statistic.
"[Lawrenceville Correctional Center] contributes to over 50 percent, he quoted around 55 percent, of all the overdoses in the entire [prison] system. I was pretty startled," Roberts said.
Five inmates died at Lawrenceville in the fiscal year 2021. Twelve inmates died the following year (FY2022).
Sheriff Roberts said the numbers show it's time for a change.
Time for a change
"Most perfect world they would turn it back into a state-run facility," Roberts said. "Second most perfect world, the state holds GEO accountable or they figure out their contract to do better, whether that is an accountability do better, or change companies do better, I don't know what that is."
In the meantime, he has a message for the people who run the prison.
"Do better, it's real simple. Be a good partner. You were a good partner. You failed this community. Just do better. Figure it out," Roberts said.
Governor Youngkin's spokesperson Macaulay Porter said the Department of Corrections was looking into the matter and the facility is submitting a plan to address these issues.
The CBS 6 Problem Solvers asked GEO Group what they are doing to fix the problems inside the prison.
A spokesperson responded via email with an August 23 letter sent to the head of the DOC.
In the letter, Geo Group Senior Vice President James Black said due to the recent overdoses, the facility was placed on restricted movement status to curtail the movement of contraband by limiting the movement of inmates.
Among the other solutions Black mentioned:
- Systematic searches and mass urine testing
- Transferring the inmates involved in the overdoses to other facilities
- Investing in a state-of-the-art drone detection system because some of the contraband was being dropped by drones
- Implementing a pilot program to scan mail for enhanced contraband detection
- Increasing officer pay to 20 dollars per hour.
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