RICHMOND, Va. – A bill that would have restored parole in Virginia was killed Friday after lawmakers heard emotional testimony from family members of crime victims who pleaded with them to guarantee their assailants would stay locked up.

The Senate Rehabilitation and Social Services Committee voted to send the measure to the Virginia State Crime Commission for study, ending the bill’s chances of passing this year.

Virginia abolished discretionary parole in 1995 and began requiring offenders to serve at least 85 percent of their sentences.

A Virginia Senate committee on Friday approved a bill to legalize marijuana in the Commonwealth, bringing the proposal one step closer to a full floor vote. Before advancing the legislation to another panel, lawmakers defeated a proposal to remove home cultivation rights for cannabis.

The Senate Rehabilitation and Social Services Committee approved the legislation in a 8-7 vote. Members also accepted a series of recommended amendments from a newly formed subcommittee that’s singularly focused on marijuana policy and that held two hearings on the bill earlier this week.

The legislation, which was unveiled by Gov. Ralph Northam (D) last week and is being carried by top Senate and House leaders, would create a system of regulated and taxed marijuana sales and production, and allow adults 21 and older to purchase and possess up to one ounce of cannabis and cultivate up to four plants for personal use, two of which could be mature.

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — Nine of the 11 Virginia state senators who voted against a bill that would have abolished for-profit prison management by 2024 received campaign contributions ahead of this year’s General Assembly session from the company operating the state’s only privately run facility, according to campaign finance reports.

On Jan. 15, the Virginia Senate Rehabilitation and Social Services Committee debated SB 1179, proposed by Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria), that sought to end the for-profit prison management system in the commonwealth by stripping the authority of the director of Virginia’s Department of Corrections to enter into contracts with private prison operators.

The only prison in Virginia not operated by the Department of Corrections is Lawrenceville Correctional Center, which has been run by GEO Group, Inc., a Florida-based private prison contractor, since 2003.

A proposal to bring Virginia’s only privately operated prison under state management failed in the General Assembly on Friday when it was voted down by members of the Senate’s Rehabilitation and Social Services Committee.

The decision means GEO Group, a publicly traded corporation based in Florida, will likely continue to oversee the Lawrenceville Correctional Center in Brunswick County, where advocates and some lawmakers worried persistent staffing shortages have jeopardized inmate safety.

“They do not hold up their end of the contract as far as medical, dental,” said Franchesca Hylton, who told lawmakers during a hearing on the legislation that her husband is an inmate at the facility and was not getting proper care for his heart condition. “There’s a lot of stuff going on at that facility that shouldn’t be.”