By Sydney Kodama | skodama@alextimes.com
A declining jail population is leading the city to study whether it wants to continue running its own jail, look to create a regional jail or consider other funding options.
The Alexandria Sheriff’s Office lists 255 people in custody at the William G. Truesdale Detention Center as of Wednesday out of its capacity of 340, with 153 housed there through a federal contract.
The average daily population of the detention center was 263 in 2025, down from 288 in 2024 and 293 in 2023.
Alexandria’s Part I crime rate – consisting of violent and property crimes including aggravated assault, homicide and robbery – and felony indictments measured by the Commonwealth’s Attorney Office also fell significantly in 2025.
City staff and CGL Companies, a consulting firm, were directed to study the cost of operating the jail as City Council finalized the city’s fiscal year 2027 budget in April. Vice Mayor Sarah Bagley and City Councilor Abdel Elnoubi sponsored a one-time transfer of $200,000 from the Alexandria Sheriff’s Office to fund the study.
The study could determine places for the city to cut costs or increase funds for its jail operations – or stop operating its own jail at all.
The study is evaluating possible cost-cutting measures including “joining an existing regional jail authority or forming a new one” and reevaluating the city’s existing contract with the U.S. Marshals Service to house people in custody based on federal charges, according to an Oct. 27 city staff presentation to Council.
Sheriff Sean Casey spoke against the measure during a Council public hearing in April, arguing that cutting the jail’s staff could have consequences.
“Without sufficient staff, you all are aware that we could be subjecting our inmates to inhumane conditions, inadequate medical care and insufficient inmate supervision,” he said at the April meeting.
The Sheriff’s Office and the National Institute of Corrections partnered on a staffing study in 2025, finding that staffing levels should remain the same even with a declining jail population because many jobs at the jail must be staffed regardless of population levels.
Sheriff’s Office Public Information Officer Caitlin Blanco wrote in an email to the Times that Casey “is not available for an interview on this at this time.”
She added a statement from Casey, where he wrote that he looks forward to the study’s “findings and our continued collaboration to strengthen our operations and enhance public safety in Alexandria.”
“I am pleased to collaborate with our partners at the City of Alexandria and CGL on this important jail study,” Casey wrote.
The city is accepting feedback on detention services through Nov. 20 before the study is completed in December.
The public survey notes that “the reason for the study is not operational failure but a sustained decline in the local inmate population, which has fallen by nearly half since 2018.”
The city’s call for feedback also references the “complex needs” of people in the Sheriff’s Office’s custody. Dana Lawhorne, retired Alexandria sheriff, told the Times that the Sheriff’s Office provides resources for people in custody.
“A lot of effort has been put into sobriety programs, mental health care, medical care [and] transitioning back to the community,” he said.
Commonwealth’s Attorney Bryan Porter told the Times that he believes the city should continue operating its own detention center. He pointed out that people are in jail, as opposed to prison, for a short period of time because they are awaiting trial or serving short sentences – often one year or less according to the Vera Institute of Justice.
“The people that are serving a sentence in jail are going to be released back to the community, and that means the Alexandria community most likely,” Porter explained. “And so the idea of being able to get them … job skills, or drug treatment or mental health treatment, really can impact the quality of the community.
“… It would pain me to see our inmates being shipped far, far away to jails that might be less capable of providing that level of service,” he added.
The federal government paid the City of Alexandria almost $7 million in fiscal year 2024 to operate the detention center in exchange for housing people who face federal charges. The federal courthouse in Alexandria often hosts terrorism cases and other high-profile prosecutions, including Sept. 11 attacks defendant Zacarias Moussaoui and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who were both held at the Alexandria jail before trial.
“The federal government pays the City a per diem rate of $133.84 for each federal inmate and reimburses the City for any off-site medical expenses incurred on behalf of federal inmates,” according to a city budget answer for FY27.
For advocates, immigration concerns also play into the question over jail funding. While Council determined the FY27 budget, local advocates asked that the city cut the Sheriff’s Office budget because it transfers people in custody to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody upon the receipt of administrative warrants.
Casey has maintained that transferring people to ICE’s custody is mandatory according to Virginia code. Council unanimously requested that he cease transferring people on the basis of administrative warrants in November 2025.
The Sheriff’s Office transferred 54 people to ICE custody in 2025, a nearly 26% increase from 43 in 2024 and the highest since 2019’s 89 transfers, according to a city website. The Sheriff’s Office transferred 23 people to ICE custody from Jan. 1 through June 30 in 2026.
In addition to the occupancy of the jail declining, the Alexandria Police Department reported a 30% decline in Part I crimes in 2025.
Porter said felony indictments fell by about 40% from 194 felony indictments in 2024 to 114 in 2025.
“That is a statistically significant drop,” he said. “But it’s only one year, and we’ve had anomalous years in the past.”
Porter noted that there were about 130 felony indictments through October, already slightly higher than 2025’s count.
He said there were 378 felony indictments in 2019, 360 in 2020 and a sharp decrease to 178 in 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“That was a sharp drop because COVID really hit us,” he said. “… It really got to be a big deal in the fall of 2020 into the spring of ’21 [and] really impacted [court] dockets, and we just saw a significant decrease all across the board.”
Neither Part I crimes nor felony indictments correspond directly to the jail’s occupancy but represent an overall decrease in prosecuted serious offenses that may result in jail or prison time.
Porter said his office has not changed how it has prosecuted crime.
“The numbers are statistically lower than they were a decade ago, but the manner in which we’re actually prosecuting them, I think, is pretty much the same,” he said.
He noted that the Virginia General Assembly passed legislation recently allowing for more discretion in the prosecution of drug possession.
“With our approval, a defendant can enter into a program and get drug treatment in exchange for having a charge reduced from a felony drug possession to a misdemeanor possession if they successfully complete treatment,” he explained.
Porter welcomes the study but said “my opinion is the city should maintain the detention center.”
“So first of all, statistics change. … It is true that since COVID the numbers are down, but they’re not insignificant, and I think there’s always the potential for rebounding.
“But even with lower numbers, that alone, in my opinion, would not necessarily justify eliminating the jail because I think our jail does a really good job at providing rehabilitative programs for inmates,” he added.
Lawhorne said if the city chooses to end its federal contract, it should “find an alternative” to operating a city jail.
“If you cancel the federal contract, that leaves you with 100 inmates [based on recent data],” he explained. “It makes no sense to keep a jail that’s operating at 30% capacity. But if you want to keep it, then you need to find a partner to help you pay the rent, the federal government is your only option. But that comes with a mandate that you must comply with presidential executive orders.”
Lawhorne said a regional jail could mitigate issues Alexandria and other localities are facing with their jails.
“The state needs to step in and create a regional jail for Arlington, Fairfax, Alexandria and Falls Church city, and pick one of the bigger jails that can take everybody, which is Fairfax or Arlington,” he said.
The regional jail option is one of seven possible “scenarios,” or changes that could be made, that the study will evaluate, according to the Oct. 27 city presentation to Council.
One other scenario is “alternative funding models,” which could mean increasing state funding. City Councilor John Taylor Chapman asked at the Oct. 27 meeting that the report inform the city’s advocacy in Richmond.
City Councilor Canek Aguirre asked Deputy City Manager Yon Lambert, who gave the presentation, to include in the study what the city would need from the Commonwealth if it pursued a regional jail option.
“That is absolutely the intent of the study, and obviously looking at both nearby regional authorities, if there are cooperative engagements that we can make with those, or standing up something on our own,” Lambert responded.
Mayor Alyia Gaskins asked Lambert to include the costs of housing people in custody for federal charges in the detention center study, as the city reevaluates its federal contact.
The detention center study itself will not determine whether the city continues operating its own jail or not.
Gaskins said at the Oct. 27 Council meeting that “the goal is that [the report] will be useful for our decision-making as we approach budget and other conversations … in 2027.”
(Read more: City Council cuts from Sheriff’s Office budget for jail study)
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