Update: Jail Policies Regarding Wearing Masks

MRRJ is having a COVID-19 outbreak, according to a WHSV-TV report.

In a press release issued yesterday, the Middle River Regional Jail reported that 25 staff members and 4 nurses at the facility have tested positive for COVID-19, and that 15 inmates are also infected. That number is almost sure to increase today when testing of all inmates and staff is being carried out.

There is no mention of any of this in today's Daily News-Record, even though Middle River houses many of the incarcerated men and all of the women from our area who are sentenced to time behind bars or who are awaiting trial.

Already three months ago, Tracy Stover, whose son was then an inmate at Middle River, launched a crusade to get MRRJ to fully comply with the Governor Northam’s orders requiring the consistent wearing of masks in all public facilities, including jails.

In a petition Stover circulated in early September, one that got over 500 signatures, she cited multiple documented cases of staff at the jail either not wearing masks or wearing them improperly. Her persistence resulted in what she believed was a retaliatory action by MRRJ which involved having her son moved to the Rockingham/Harrisonburg Regional Jail. There, incidentally, none of the staff members are required to wear masks, based on their attorney advising them they are exempt from the Governor’s order since the jail is the “residence” of the inmates and because their staff members are engaged in law enforcement, an activity for which masks are not mandated.

Meanwhile, Ms. Stover has been untiring in her efforts to see that her son and other inmates are protected from staff members who may expose inmates to the virus. Among her efforts have been to submit both letters to the editor and an Open Forum piece to the Daily News-Record, but to date none of these have been published, and her personal contacts with the sheriff, who is in charge of the local jail, and with the administration at Middle River Jail, have also yielded less than positive results.

But the current number of infections may represent a word to the wise: Sometimes a mother really does know best.