The Virginia Department of Corrections dismissed more than 10% of its hourly community corrections employees between Dec. 16, 2025, and the end of March, a spokesperson for the agency said.
Internal emails obtained through a public records request indicated VADOC leadership initially considered dismissing 37 of the division's 89 hourly employees, despite there currently being 153 full-time vacancies in community corrections.
Jermiah Fitz, who was recently appointed chief deputy director of the agency, wrote in a December email that he recommended the terminations be carried out “at the end of the first pay week in February (I’m unsure when that is) but it would give time to notify individuals and hopefully far enough after the holidays that it would not have a negative impact on the agency’s image.”
Community supervision encompasses a range of programs, including probation and parole, GPS monitoring, substance abuse services and sex offender supervision. VADOC’s website says its “programs provide growth opportunities for inmates, probationers, and parolees.”
More than 73,000 people in the commonwealth are on probation or parole — compared to the 40,000 people incarcerated in state prisons and local jails, according to The Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit advocacy organization. About 22,000 people are incarcerated by VADOC, which employs about 11,000 people.
Kyle Gibson, the department’s communications lead, wrote in an email that the community corrections dismissals were first broached during discussions around fiscal issues, though ultimately they “were not directly attributed to those initial budget and staffing discussions, but occurred for a variety of reasons.”
Those discussions, he said, were part of a “broader review process” to assess how resources at the state’s largest agency were being used.
Fitz’s December email acknowledged that “any reductions in (community corrections staff) will lead to increases in overtime pay.” A previous assessment of security staff OT showed it costs the department millions of dollars each year. Other VADOC emails obtained through records requests show a temporary incentives program for nursing staff at River North and Beaumont correctional centers.
The Commonwealth’s spending plan currently being hammered out in Richmond would increase the department’s annual budget to about $1.6 billion.
Will Pelfrey, a criminal justice professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, said letting community corrections staff go can result in fewer probation and parole checks.
“That's one of the populations that you can either cut or simply not rehire as a way to level your budget,” he said. “If you're facing budget cuts, if you're operating at a deficit, it's really hard to cut (corrections officers), because when you reduce the number of COs, you create safety issues in the correctional facilities. But community corrections people, you don't have those safety issues.”
The agency has struggled with staffing in various divisions for years, and critics have blamed a shortage of corrections officers for violence at state facilities. But during the past decade, VADOC’s fired more than 4,000 COs — more than half being dismissed over unsatisfactory performance while still on probationary status, according to information from the department.
Another 240 were fired for an inability to perform their duties, and 821 COs were dismissed for violations of conduct during the past decade.
“They take whoever they can,” Pelfrey said, discussing corrections officer staffing and the department’s terminations. “They probably only refuse a very small number of people who meet their criteria. If you apply and you have a felony record, they're not going to hire you in DOC — or if you fail a drug test. If all the hiring criteria indicate that you are hirable, then they almost certainly hire you.”