Yes, West Virginia, There’s Still a Jailhouse With Home Cooking

At Lee and Terri Frederick’s place, guests enjoy old-fashioned home cooking and are greeted at breakfast with a friendly “Good morning.”

They can watch television, play table tennis in the recreation room, use the telephone or entertain visitors in the family garage.

Don’t pack your bags for a weekend in the mountains yet. The Fredericks’ place is the Gilmer County Jail, one of the last of the “mom and pop” lockups.

It is an arrangement closer to “Mayberry R.F.D.” than to Attica or San Quentin.

While the inmates dine on Terri Frederick’s pasta, pizza or a meat entree in their cells upstairs, the family is having the same downstairs.

“I just make extra for the guys upstairs,” Terri Frederick said.

Every other Thursday, the couple pulls their 1986 Chrysler out of the garage and sets up folding chairs so the inmates can entertain visitors.

The Fredericks’ house rules are posted in the jail recreation room:

“Golden Rules: If you open it, close it. If you take it out, lock it up. If it will brighten someone’s day, SAY IT!”

The couple and their sons, Joey, 6, and Lynn, 2, live in the two-story, three-bedroom brick house where the county has placed its detainees for 50 years. The house is atop a hill between the county courthouse and a Glenville State College dormitory.

The rest of the neighborhood is made up of modest, single-family houses that look a lot like the Fredericks’ place, except they have no bars on the windows.

Lee Frederick, 29, is a former truck driver who took the job of jailer a year ago. Terri, 27, lived in the house as a child while her parents ran the jail. She does the cooking and cleaning.

In her spare time, she works as a dispatcher of sheriff’s deputies, police, ambulances and rescue crews. The living room also is the terminus of alarms connected to Glenville’s two banks.

Until recently, when a night jailer was hired, one of the Fredericks was always on duty from 7 a.m. until midnight. After that, prisoners could summon Lee by pushing a button on the elevator.

Wall-mounted loudspeakers allow Terri to hear calls when she is working in the kitchen.

It’s easy to know what’s happening among the inmates because “we can hear them right through the ceiling,” she said.

Frederick said his sons are not allowed to go upstairs no matter how curious they get.

“They’ll find out about this stuff soon enough anyway,” he said.

On an average day, the jail houses about nine people. The most common reasons are drunk driving, destruction of property or game-law violations.

In the evenings, prisoners play table tennis or watch television in the family-size recreation room. They have access to the telephone every night, but long-distance calls are not allowed.

The homey touches aren’t lost on the inmates.

“Lee treats me OK, and the food’s all right, but I just don’t like being in jail,” said Carson Yeager, 45, who described himself as a “chronic alcoholic.”

Yeager is one of the Fredericks’ regulars.

“The majority of ours are not hardened criminals,” Frederick said. “They don’t need to be exposed to that type of people.”

Some former inmates have even come back to say hello. A 21-year-old man now incarcerated elsewhere has written the couple four letters in the last two months.

Such rural “mom and pop” jails increasingly are being phased out because of generally substandard conditions, high maintenance costs and a move toward regional jails.

“They are a rapidly dying breed,” said Michael O’Toole, chief of the jails division of the National Institute of Corrections.

More than 19 million people spend time in one of 3,300 county jails each year, according to U.S. Justice Department statistics.

“Small jails are not cost-effective,” O’Toole said. “Although a lot are well-meaning and well-intentioned, the conditions of confinement aren’t what they should be. A lot are just incapable of being up to standards.

“The operation rises and falls on the integrity of the operator. For each example where somebody is fulfilling their responsibility, you can look at another side of the ledger and see someone who shouldn’t have any authority over anybody in custody whatsoever.”

Recently, the state Facilities Review Panel warned that it would shut down the Fredericks’ jail unless Gilmer County expanded its staff.

So Sheriff Kenneth Smith Jr. hired a jailer for the night shift and beefed up the part-time staff so the Fredericks would not have to work more than 40 hours a week. But that’s not entirely good news for the family.

“It’s cramped our personal lives a little bit, sure,” Frederick said.