In hopes of providing alternatives to incarceration, Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones and other officials traveled here last week to tour a former Flav-O-Rich dairy where drug offenders are treated and put to work. Richmond is looking at ways to prevent the planned new Richmond City Jail from becoming a warehouse for nonviolent criminals.

First Lady Michelle Obama touted health care reform in Caroline County. President Barack Obama visited Bristol to make the case for his health care proposals. Maybe it is time to move the White House to Virginia.  This weekend the Richmond Rebels play in a soccer tournament in Washington. Sponsored by the Daily Planet, the Rebels participate in the Street Soccer USA Cup, a league whose players are homeless. The players may be homeless, but the Rebels are a hometown team. Go!

The water is back on at the Richmond City Jail after extensive repairs following the rupture of pipes to two housing units several days ago.

Repairs to ruptured pipes at the Richmond City Jail required the facility to shut off its water service last night, but jail officials expected it to be back on this morning. Water was shut off at 6:30 p.m. so that the jail’s water pipes could be flushed. The city provided the jail with 20,000 containers of water to be distributed to inmates, said Lt. Col. Walter E. Allmon. Also, inmates were given a large cup of ice after their evening meal, he said.

A Richmond City Jail inmate died last fall naturally of acute asthma and not as a result of a beating by several deputies, Sheriff C.T. Woody said yesterday. The state medical examiner’s office ruled that Korey Larry Johnson’s Oct. 15 death was natural and caused by asthma, an agency spokeswoman confirmed. Woody said the findings are contrary to the family’s claim in a $15 million wrongful-death lawsuit that he died after being beaten by a small group of deputies.

Sometimes it doesn’t matter that mom wears an orange jumpsuit and lives—for now—behind bars. So when Catherine Bishop had to say goodbye yesterday to her family at the conclusion of a joyand tear-filled Mother’s Day celebration at the Richmond City Jail, it only made sense that her two sons trailed dutifully behind her as she made her way back to her cell.

The mother of a Richmond City Jail inmate who died in custody last fall is suing the city and the Sheriff’s Office for $15 million, alleging that her son died after he was beaten by a small group of deputies. In a 26-page suit filed Tuesday in Richmond Circuit Court, Dorreen L. Johnson is seeking compensatory damages and unspecified punitive damages in the Oct. 15 death of Korey Larry Johnson, 28, who was being held on a larceny charge.

Last year, a diverse group of congregations got the Richmond sheriff to form a task force to create a plan for a new drug-treatment program for city jail inmates. At last night’s annual action meeting of Richmonders Involved to Strengthen Our Communities, Mayor Dwight C. Jones promised to consider funding a program recommended by the task force. The program would cost about $140,000 a year for 120 inmates.

High Time For years Richmond leaders have paid lip service—at best—to the deplorable conditions at the City Jail. Members of the City Council and various mayors have tut-tutted and agreed that something must be done. But they did nothing. Until now. Mayor Dwight Jones has proposed spending more than $138 million during the next several years to create a new jail by adding to and improving the existing one. The idea deserves the full support of everyone who understands the seriousness of the problem.

Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones is tackling one of the city’s most nagging and expensive building needs: the Richmond City Jail. Calling the current conditions unconscionable, Jones is proposing to spend $2.3 million next year and $138.4 million over five years to overhaul the overcrowded, outdated jail through a series of expansion, improvement and demolition projects to be completed around 2013.

‘God Has a Better Plan’ At Richmond City Jail, the focus turns to God Ashland congregation spreads a message of salvation to the inmates Music poured out of speakers as inmates filed into the dining room of the Richmond City Jail last night. The large room where they take their daily meals transformed into the scene of a revival as members of The Master’s House in Ashland spread the word of God to about 400 male inmates.

Vann Dickerson didn’t have a father to show him how to be a good parent to his 6-year-old son and 16-year-old stepdaughter. But serving time in the Richmond City Jail has. He was among 16 men who received certificates yesterday for completing the jail’s first fatherhood class. Dickerson, 46, used skills learned in the class when his son visited recently. He patiently answered the young boy’s questions about why he was in jail and offered words of comfort.