The West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation(DCR) is substituting lock down for staff at LCCJ. The women there are suffering extreme lockdown times due to short-staffing. The short staffing issue results on large part from LCCJ correctional officers being pulled to staff Western Regional Jail (WRJ) each and every shift, everyday. 
      Staff coverage for LCCJ has been as low as 6 or 7 officers for approximately 600 female inmates. In some cases, one officer is posted in a hallway overseeing four separate housing units at the same time all by their self. Each of those housing unit holds 94 inmates, which equates to one officer for 376 inmates. If that officer is in one unit attending to something, such as a security check, answering the phone, answering an alarm, addressing an issue, etc., he/she cannot hear what may be going on in another housing unit for which he/she is responsible. If an emergency situation arises on another housing unit while he/she are in a different one, he/she would not be able to respond. This leaves 3 large housing units stranded at any time. For instance is the officer is posted in all 4 units(A,B,C,D) is in unit A and an inmate in unit C gets in a fight with the roommate or has a medical emergency, such as seizures, the officer will not know about the incident and it will go unnoticed until the officer comes back into that unit. An alarm could be sounding for a very long time without anyone noticing. This leaves the population a great risk for a variety of reasons. 
     Furthermore, the extreme short-staffing issues are causing other strains on the system, as well. Office assistants, counselors, operations staff, program staff, etc. are pulled from their regular assignment and forced to post somewhere in the facility as “officers”. This means the important work they are hired to do is not getting done. Most importantly, educational programs, including GED classes, technical school classes and criminality classes are getting closed down because the facility does not have enough staff to cover those areas or to even keep the facility operating as needed. 
     These women are someone’s mother, daughter, grandmother, wife, etc. They are no less important than the inmates at WRJ. We ask that if the DCR cannot properly staff a maximum security facility in a manner that keeps staff, inmates and the community safe, they should call in the National Guard for assistance. Lockdown is not a solution for short-staffing issues. Intervene before it is to late and something goes seriously wrong.