Any sheriff or jail superintendent may establish a program to charge inmates a reasonable fee, not to exceed $3 per day, to defray the costs associated with the prisoners' keep. The Board shall develop a model plan and adopt regulations for such program, and shall provide assistance, if requested, to the sheriff or jail superintendent in the implementation of such program. Such funds shall be retained in the locality where the funds were collected and shall be used for general jail purposes; however, in the event the jail is a regional jail, funds collected from any such fee shall be retained by the regional jail. Any person jailed for an offense they are later acquitted for shall be refunded any such fees paid during their incarceration.
Va. Code Ann. § 53.1-131.3
Payment of costs associated with prisoners' keep
Applied in 4 court decisions — leading case Slade v. Hampton Roads Regional Jail (2005)
Most recently applied in Mills v. City of Roanoke (October 2007)
2003, c. 860; 2009, c. 842; 2010, c. 548.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: Virginia Law Portal (LIS). Reproduced from public-domain Virginia statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.