By Debra Erdley
Tribune-Review
GREENSBURG, Pa. — Got a plan to keep people out of Pennsylvania’s state prison system?
The state’s Department of Corrections wants to know about it.
Three years after passing a law designed to reduce the state’s soaring prison population and reinvest the savings in prison diversion programs at the county level, the Department of Corrections finally has a small pool of cash to award to counties looking to join the initiative.
Corrections officials Thursday sent out a solicitation to counties across the state seeking proposals for grants for programs to divert short minimum-term offenders —those typically sentenced to two to five years in prison — from incarceration in the state system, where a year in prison carried an average price tag of $41,000 for 2014.
“This is an important initiative because some ‘short min’ inmates may be better served at the county level and that they may show better outcomes by remaining closer to home within the county criminal justice system,” Corrections Secretary John Wetzel said. “There is a real opportunity here to generate better results all around, which means increasing public safety while also saving taxpayer dollars.”
Westmoreland County Sheriff Jonathan Held, who chairs the county prison board, said he’ll be in contact with his colleagues about the possibility of applying for a grant with an eye toward a diversionary effort focusing on drug addiction treatment and rehabilitation.
In Allegheny County, Warden Orlando Harper expressed interest.
“We’re reviewing the notice that was sent out today and would certainly consider it if it’s something that would fit in with the work that we’re already doing at the Allegheny County Jail,” Harper said.
This year’s $1.5 million grant pool represented a portion of the savings from a state prison population reduction of about 750 inmates in 2014. Prison officials expect to see a reduction of about 1,000 more inmates, or about 2 percent, by the time 2015 numbers are official.
Those reductions follow 15 years when the state prison population grew by an average of 1,500 prisoners a year said Bret Bucklen, director of planning, research and statistics for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections.
“If we hadn’t done something, we were set to have to build a prison every 18 months to keep up with previous growth,” Bucklen said.
Bucklen said state officials are dividing up the counties into three tiers based on population. Officials expect to award one grant in each tier this year and award additional grants as savings increase from a reduction in the state prison population.
Grant applications are due Feb. 1. Additional information is available on the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections website, www.cor.pa.gov.
Copyright 2016 Tribune-Review