ABOVE: Maj. Robbie Wilson, assistant deputy superintendent at the Rappahannock Regional Jail in Stafford, listens to an inmate's complaints.

Orlando Stewart monitors computers, video screens at the Rappahannock Regional Jail, which opened five years ago.

The Rappahannock Regional Jail in Stafford opened six years ago and was built to house 656 inmates. Now, the facility averages more than 900 a inmates a day, forcing officials to convert former classrooms into barracks for prisoners.

RIGHT: Jail inmates sleep three to a cell in rooms that were originally made for one. When the facility opened in July 2000, it was built to accommodate 656 prisoners. Today it holds over 900.

Segregation is about the only place where inmates get their own cell. After some began misbehaving just so they would be sent there, the jail started serving an unappealing 'nutritional loaf' in that wing to discourage them.

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Regional jail overcrowding called threat to inmates and correctional officers

Date published: 2/12/2006

IFTEEN NEW additions to the Rappahannock Regional Jail mill about one of the facility's TV rooms, watching the chaos unfold on "The Jerry Springer Show" while waiting for their cell assignments.

"What is this?" asks one of the men, jabbing at a yellowy goo in one of the depressions on his lunch tray.

Another inmate in an identical beige uniform and jail-issued sandals shrugs.

Within days, they'll each be assigned to a corner of the jail, where inmates sleep two and sometimes three to a cell, squeezing into 116 square feet of concrete-block living space originally built for one.

Onetime classrooms are crammed with bunk beds, turned into makeshift barracks to house the ever-burgeoning inmate population.

On this first day of February, 936 men and women press into a facility built for 656.

Where to put 15 more?

"We're just going to jam 'em in there somewhere," said Maj. Robbie Wilson, the jail's assistant deputy superintendent. "I don't know what else to do."

The regional jail, a sprawling complex off U.S. 1 in Stafford County, opened in July 2000 with about 400 prisoners.

Nine months later, it was overcrowded.

These days, the facility averages about 963 inmates a day--about 11/2 times its capacity.

Meanwhile, the number of correctional officers budgeted--166--hasn't changed since opening day.

The crowded conditions put pressure on the staff, not to mention the inmates, said jail Superintendent Joe Higgs, former Fauquier County sheriff.

"I feel some days I'm sitting on a powder keg," he said. "When that count starts hovering at 1,000 [inmates], I start cringing because I know I don't have the staff for 950, let alone 1,000."

Last summer, as jail officials sought state and local support for a $48.8 million expansion, the inmate population began setting records, spiking to 1,000 on some weekends.

At The Free Lance-Star's request, the jail provided a list of all the inmates who spent time in the facility over the four-day Labor Day weekend--1,066 in all, up to 967 on any one day.

The newspaper used jail and court records to find out where those inmates were from, where they were arrested and what kinds of charges they faced.

The population that weekend featured its share of minor offenders: those charged with shoplifting, reckless driving and being drunk in public.

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Date published: 2/12/2006