Hampton Roads Regional Jail facing a staffing shortage so severe it’s moving 250 inmates

PORTSMOUTH — A severe jail officer shortage at the Hampton Roads Regional Jail — with more than a third of the jobs now vacant — has created safety issues that led the institution to begin moving more than 250 inmates back to their home cities’ jails.

Board Chairwoman Sharon Scott said she thinks this is the first time the jail’s board has taken such an action: “We’ve never been this low in staffing before.”

Officers are sometimes left manning multiple housing pods at once because of low staffing, which they said puts them at risk and makes them unable to check in on inmates as often as they’re supposed to, according to five current and former officers who spoke with The Virginian-Pilot.

“It’s unsafe,” said Linda Hart, a former officer who resigned from the jail in October after more than nine years. “... Something has to be done about it.”

And as veteran officers leave, those with less experience are left shouldering more responsibilities at a jail that houses many of the region’s sickest inmates, the officers said.

The officers said multiple problems that feed on each other have contributed to the shortage. Low pay — sometimes under $38,000 a year — makes it hard to hire or keep officers, and short staffing means longer hours and tougher conditions for the guards who remain. That lowers morale, leading more to leave, and the cycle continues. Amid all that, the coronavirus pandemic hit, leading officers to worry about their health and their lives on top of everything else.

To mitigate the staffing shortage, the jail’s board took the extraordinary measure of voting in late November to move about 255 inmates from the regional facility back to the city jails from which they came. That’s about 30% of the jail’s overall population of 841.

The move is meant to improve the ratio of officers to inmates, and inmates won’t be returned to the regional facility until staffing levels improve, said Scott, a Newport News councilwoman who has served on the jail board off and on for about a decade.

The jail is already under rare oversight from the U.S. Department of Justice because of its staffing and treatment of inmates. In August, the jail agreed to one of the few, if not the only, consent decrees under the Trump administration. In a December 2018 report, the DOJ found conditions there likely violate the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Among other things, the jail must reduce its use of restrictive housing for inmates with serious mental illness and hire more security, medical and mental healthcare staff.

A court-appointed monitor who visited the facility in October and November said it was “critical” for the jail to alleviate its current staffing shortage over the next six months.

Monitor James Conrad Welch found there were not enough officers to accompany medical staff when they pass out medication to inmates, for routine medical and mental health visits and to take inmates to appointments in the clinic area, according to his preliminary report filed in federal court Nov. 30. About a dozen inmates were behind on their chronic care appointments, in part because there wasn’t enough security staff to escort them, he wrote.

" … Current security staff are working to full capacity and are committed to providing a safe and secure institution. However, due to the shortage of staff, this has become a challenge for many officers who are pulled in many different directions during a shift,” wrote Welch, who was assigned by the court to assess whether the agreement is being implemented.

“In conversations with multiple officers, they expressed concerns for their own and other staff’s safety due to the current vacancy count at the institution.”

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Low pay and a struggle to hire

The jail has a total of 258 jail officer positions, including 10 new jobs that were added this summer. As of mid-December, 167 of those spots were filled, according to figures presented to the jail’s board Wednesday. Healthcare staffing was down by about 19 positions when the monitor wrote his baseline report.

Law enforcement and correctional agencies across the country are seeing a “significant decrease” in applications and employee retention because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, Col. Chris Walz, the jail’s superintendent, wrote in response to emailed questions from The Pilot.

“Hampton Roads Regional Jail is not excluded,” he wrote.

The jail is “actively recruiting” for open positions, including through virtual and on-site events. Staff is interviewing, testing and conducting polygraphs for applicants using social distancing, and the jail’s board recently approved a $1,000 sign-on bonus to attract candidates, said Walz, who will retire at the end of the month after less than a year as superintendent.

In January, Jeff Vergakis of the Newport News Sheriff’s Office will take over as interim superintendent, the seventh person to hold that role in about four years.

Walz said resources were “redirected” to help when medications are delivered to inmates, and officers are assigned to the clinic to make sure inmates are seen for routine medical visits. All chronic care is up to date, he said this week.

“They’re working really hard with the staff they have to make sure that happens,” Scott said.

But despite the problems found in the 2018 federal investigation, the jail now has twice as many inmates with serious mental illness in restrictive housing — 141 — as it did two years ago, the monitor wrote in his report.

Walz said the goal is for inmates to stay in restrictive housing for “the least amount of time as possible.” Those in restrictive housing include people on disciplinary or administrative restriction, protective custody, pre-hearing or general detention, and medical quarantine.

“Every individual entering the facility or returning from the hospital is placed in quarantine status to mitigate the spread (of the) COVID-19 virus,” Walz wrote. “All of the above factors contribute to the number of individuals in restrictive housing.”

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Problems ignored

Staffing shortages are a chronic problem at the regional jail, and state studies over the past three decades show the facility has needed more officers since it opened its doors in 1998.

Located in Portsmouth, the regional jail today houses inmates from five member jurisdictions — Chesapeake, Hampton, Newport News, Norfolk and Portsmouth. The sheriffs, city managers and a council member from each city sit on the board that oversees the jail.

A staffing study published in 1999, the year after the jail opened, recommended adding security positions. More inmates needed to be taken to court and to the hospital than initially planned.

Because of its security design and “relatively comprehensive” medical unit, the member cities were sending their higher-risk inmates and those with medical and mental health problems there, the study said, and those inmates require more attention and care.

More than 20 years later, the cities continue to send inmates with the most serious medical and mental health needs to the regional jail, although the facility has fewer staff members per inmate than the city jails, an analysis by The Pilot found last year.

In 2007 and 2017, staffing studies again recommended expanding the number of security and medical positions. The 2017 report called for boosting overall staffing from about 300 jobs to 422, including emergency positions: “Although the Compensation Board would not normally consider the jail to be eligible for emergency positions ... the volatile and excessively needy population at the Hampton Roads Regional Jail makes this facility very staff intensive.”

However, the state Compensation Board currently funds about 300 positions at the jail, roughly the same number it funded 13 years ago, when the 2007 staffing study was done.

Among its December 2018 findings, the Department of Justice said the jail didn’t have enough medical or security staff. Their investigation was prompted by deaths of inmates at the jail, including Jamycheal Mitchell in 2015 and Henry Stewart in 2016.

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A climb in vacancies

Today, though, staffing numbers show the jail has struggled this year to keep its already-funded positions filled.

The regional jail began the year with 19 vacancies in January, a number that improved to 12 the following month, according to figures shared with the board.

After the coronavirus pandemic hit in March, the jail had to cancel planned recruiting events and moved its hiring efforts online, according to meeting minutes of the Hampton Roads Regional Jail Authority.

Jail officer vacancies climbed to 27 in June and 51 in September, which included 10 additional positions added over the summer.

Newport News Sheriff Gabe Morgan said sheriff’s offices are facing challenges in recruiting because of the ongoing national conversation on criminal justice reform and also because of the pandemic.

He said the board’s decision to move some regional jail inmates back to the city jails was a “proactive” and “temporary” solution meant to keep inmates and jail staff safe.

“We’re doing what we can to make sure the ship keeps sailing until the weather gets a whole lot better,” Morgan said.

Scott said the member cities will still have to pay daily rates for beds that are empty: “Every city is really just taking as much responsibility as they can to improve the situation there.”

But a former officer told The Pilot that the Norfolk Sheriff’s Office rejected several difficult inmates the regional jail tried to send back to that city’s jail. The officer said this is part of a systemic problem with the design of the jail’s board: It’s composed of sheriffs, council members and city managers with their own jails and city interests in mind. In some cases, that can make the regional jail a dumping ground for the sickest or most difficult inmates.

“There’s not a sincere effort to help the regional jail. It’s cosmetic,” said the officer, who, like all those interviewed except Hart, spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concerns for retaliation.

Asked whether the Norfolk Sheriff’s Office had rejected the return of any inmates, spokeswoman Deanna LeBlanc didn’t answer, but she said her office was working with the regional jail to make sure transferred inmates are “placed in an environment that promotes life, health, safety and security.”

“If for any reason an inmate has a medical or classification concern that would put the safety of them or others at risk, we work with HRRJ to address such concerns,” she wrote in an email.

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‘I was not feeling safe’

April Brumley of the jail’s human resources department told the board in September officers cited the coronavirus pandemic, being overworked and short-staffed, low pay and lack of hazard pay among their reasons for leaving.

In late September, a master jail officer — Robert Sunukjian — died of the coronavirus. He had worked at the facility for over 16½ years. Sunukjian’s death was a hit to staff morale, the monitor wrote in his report, and some people resigned.

The five officers who spoke with The Pilot described burn out, 16-hour shifts, low morale and housing pods that go unmanned because of a lack of staffing.

In some instances, “you don’t have the people you need to respond to an emergency or a fight,” a former officer said.

The officers said they sometimes felt their safety was at risk because not enough people were working and did not always believe supervisors had their backs.

“The officers at the HRRJ work extremely hard every day they report to work,” Walz wrote in the email to The Pilot. “... It has been reinforced to the supervisors to empower the officers to do their job and to support them in their efforts.”

The Pilot is not detailing specific stories so as not to identify officers who spoke on the condition of anonymity. But the officers shared similar experiences, and the monitor’s report acknowledges that officers shared safety concerns with him.

When a pod is unmanned, an officer will have to conduct security checks on multiple pods during their shift, they said. Under state law, officers are required to inspect inmate housing areas at least twice an hour at random intervals.

“Does that happen? No,” said Hart, the former officer who resigned in October. She agreed to have her name used in this story because she said she’s concerned for her former colleagues.

“Everybody’s afraid to speak up,” Hart said.

She said the staffing shortage and safety were among her reasons for leaving: “I was not feeling safe coming through the doors.”

Walz said there may be times when officers will have to work multiple posts, but that officers are told to always conduct rounds as required and supervisors do spot checks to make sure that happens.

Scott, the board chairwoman, said she had not heard from officers about safety concerns and that officers should raise them with their supervisors “to mitigate their concerns.”

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Trying to help

Hart said inmates have expressed concerns about safety, too. Sundari Prasad, who was incarcerated at the regional jail this year, told The Pilot in a phone interview that she and others saw a noticeable staffing decline during the pandemic. With a smaller staff, Prasad said she saw newer hires watching over the pod.

Officers have continued to leave. Ten resigned in September, 20 in October, according to figures shared with the jail’s board.

To address the manpower shortage, the jail instituted mandatory overtime in October for officers holding the rank of sergeant and below, requiring them to work at least 26 hours of overtime within 30 days, according to an email obtained by The Pilot.

Welch, the court-appointed monitor, wrote in his November report that the jail will recruit civilian mental health staff to cover suicide watches, which will free up jail officer to focus on security. The strategy was acceptable to the monitor and DOJ and has been used elsewhere in the country, he wrote.

The jail’s medical provider is in the process of hiring staff to cover those watches, Walz said this week.

Welch also hired a security consultant to help the superintendent update security policies and procedures, post orders, recruitment and retention. The consultant — who wasn’t named in the report but identified as a retired Virginia jail superintendent — will help strategize how to address the officer shortage, Welch wrote.

Deputies from the member cities’ jails will be paid to cover transportation runs and hospital watches for inmates so that regional jail officers can focus on security inside the facility, Welch wrote.

At its October meeting, the jail’s board signed off on this, approving the use of sheriff’s deputies to cover these part-time roles at $40 an hour, meeting minutes show.

But several officers who spoke to The Pilot said the move upset them and their colleagues, who feel overworked and underpaid. Some regional jail officers make less than half that wage, Hart said.

Walz said using deputies to help with hospital watches and transportation runs was an immediate solution to the ongoing staffing issue, and he stressed that it’s a “temporary fix” until more staff can be hired. The move allows the regional jail to reassign its own officers who would have been on a hospital watch to a post inside the facility instead, he said. Along with mandatory overtime, the effort has boosted manpower within the jail, he said.

Some officers gave a letter to the superintendent this fall voicing concerns, including pay, staffing shortages, and health and safety during the pandemic, according to a copy obtained by The Pilot. Some met with the superintendent in October. Walz said pay and staffing were among the issues raised.

The jail’s board did approve one-time hazard pay for current staff in October: up to $1,200 for sworn personnel and a $500 to $750 bonus for civilians. It was something for which Walz pushed.

“These guys have busted their tails during ... COVID and everything else to try to make sure everyone is safe and sound in here,” Walz told the board this fall, according to an audio recording of the meeting.

Scott said the jail’s board recognizes officers could use a pay increase. She said the board is looking at doing a survey on officer pay and attrition levels, and the finance committee is researching compensation.

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As for paying deputies $40 an hour when jail guards make much less, Scott said regional jail officers also receive benefits in addition to their hourly wage.

“We really needed help so badly,” Scott said.

The jail is working with the Virginia Department of Corrections to transfer inmates that are supposed to be in state custody to the prisons, she said. People who have been sentenced to more than two years on a felony conviction are supposed to be transferred to the DOC within 90 days. But the regional jail housed more than 200 inmates who fit in that category and was therefore “out of compliance,” the monitor wrote in his report.

Scott said Vergakis, the incoming interim superintendent, was evaluating how to address morale and best use the officers the jail does have.

Still, officers who have left the facility haven’t stopped thinking about those who remain.

“I’m worried about them,” one former officer said.

Margaret Matray, 757-222-5216, margaret.matray@pilotonline.com