Nearly 500 violent West Virginia criminals, including 65 convicted of homicide and more than 120 sentenced for felony sex offenses, remained in the state’s regional jails last month because the prisons are at capacity, according to figures shown Monday to legislators.

The network of 10 jails together had 4,807 inmates as of last week, 2,023 more inmates than they were designed to hold. The lack of prison space figures prominently in this crowding crisis. The jails housed 1,789 convicted felons in May – the figure has since grown – who should be in prison serving their sentences. The May figure included 481 inmates – nearly 27 percent of the felon backlog – convicted of violent crimes.

The 170 felony sex offenders in jails include 124 sentenced for offenses involving force, a House-Senate oversight committee learned at a meeting Monday. Another 148 inmates should be in prison for assault-related crimes, while 14 stand convicted of kidnapping or abduction.

“I think we are marginally more dangerous and we’re certainly not equipped in all cases to house the population that we have now,” acting regional jails chief Joe DeLong told the lawmakers.

The risks include attacks both on corrections officers and inmates, DeLong said.  The jails also lack the long-term treatment, training and educational programs that prison-sentenced inmates need. West Virginia ranks fourth among the states for the percentage of jail inmates who should instead be in prison, according to a newly launched study of the crowding crisis. The Justice Reinvestment

Initiative, a project of the Justice Center at the Council of State Governments, recently agreed to scrutinize the system and develop policy options with a working group of state leaders.

The project has helped more than a dozen other states, includingneighboring Ohio and Pennsylvania. The project will conduct its study alongside the ongoing revenue by the legislative interim committee.