By Mark Gilger Jr.
Republican & Herald
POTTSVILLE, Pa. — Schuylkill County has to reduce its inmate population by Nov. 24 or risk not being allowed to house any additional prisoners. The prison board and county commissioners approved an agreement Wednesday with the state Department of Corrections ensuring that the inmate population will not exceed its approved capacity of 277, except on a temporary basis not exceeding 30 days. The prison will soon start sending inmates to other correctional facilities.
“The Department of Corrections and the county have reached an agreement basically to alleviate what has been called ‘triple celling,’” County solicitor Al Marshall said. “Unfortunately, the population at the prison, because of circumstances, has been consistently higher than the state regulations provide, and the state is working with us to enable us to reduce it down to an acceptable level. In order to do so, the department has asked us to enter into an agreement with them, and we have agreed to do so.”
“Triple celling” refers to placing three inmates in a cell meant for two people with the addition of a plastic bed. Those inmates are rotated each month.
There are 277 permanent beds at the county prison. It has a suggested capacity of 240, which takes into account other factors like inmates that may need to be housed alone. There were 285 inmates at the prison Wednesday afternoon, but the facility has averaged 294 for 2014.
The prison received citations regarding overcrowding in 2012, 2013 and 2014 and has three inmates to a two-person cell in at least three of its housing blocks, according to the agreement. A pre-release program was recently started at the prison to electronically monitor inmates on house arrest rather than the prison. However, the DOC said it has yet to relieve overcrowding to the necessary extent.
The county is required to submit monthly status reports to the DOC starting Sept. 1 until Jan. 2, 2016. If the DOC believes the county has not complied with the agreement, they can issue an order on or after Feb. 1, 2016, classifying the prison as ineligible to receive any additional prisoners sentenced to terms of six months to five years.
“We are looking at all the options,” Commissioner and Prison Board Chairman George F. Halcovage Jr. said.
Halcovage said the board is still looking at how many inmates to send away and what facilities have additional space.
“While these other options are being looked at, this needs to be done,” Halcovage said. “This is an ongoing problem that will continue, and we need to continue to look for solutions.”
One of those options includes building an intermediate placement facility, which has been considered over the past several years.
“I don’t think the solution is going to be cheap, and I think it is important the public knows why we have to do this,” President Judge William E. Baldwin said. “We have been dealing with overpopulation problems since 2002, and at one time everyone was on board with going with another facility. Then administrations changed, and attitudes changed, and it became a political football.”
The previous board of commissioners moved forward with building a low-security prerelease center for nonviolent criminals in Ryan Township, but it was scrapped in March 2011 when bids for the project averaged $4.2 million, about $1 million more than the board wanted to spend.
“By the time it was finally decided to pursue it, the cost had gone up and the price for the new facility came in over budget, so the commissioners kept their word and didn’t go forward, but the problem has not gone away,” Baldwin continued. “We have really been dealing with this since 2002, and the Department of Corrections gave us latitude because we were working on something, but when we stopped working on it, they lost their patience.”
Commissioners Chairman Frank J. Staudenmeier has been a member of the county board since 2002.
“The attitude that the commissioners always took with this situation is ‘Let’s look at the least-cost scenario,’ ” Staudenmeier said.
Eventually, the county also had to invest in other major projects like upgrading the emergency communications system and finding a new human services building.
“There were a lot of other issues in the county that we thought we would rather put money into that we truly believe the people of Schuylkill County would rather see us put money into than a capital project at the prison,” he said. “Will we have to do something down the line? Yes. Maybe something off site.”
According to DOC statistics for 2014, it cost Schuylkill County $44.23 a day to house one inmate. That is one of the lowest county rates in the state. The average at all county prisons for 2014 was $67.76, meaning the county will likely have to pay about $20 more a day per inmate at another facility.
“If they shut us down and we can’t house anybody, then we are going to have to pay to house everybody somewhere else,” Baldwin said. “The cost of that would be phenomenal and very different, if not impossible, for the county to bear. I think we need another facility. I know it is going to be expensive, but I don’t think it is going to be as expensive as housing people on a long-term basis at other facilities.”
Commissioner Gary J. Hess agreed.
“We also need to make sure we are aggressive in looking at another facility or other things so that we are not in this diversion for a long time, because I don’t think the finances could hold that long,” Hess said. “Now that we are being pushed, we need to come together to work on a facility or whatever it comes to.”
Baldwin said the lack of housing in the area is not helping the situation.
“There is a problem that affects our prison population that is not strictly something the prison board or commissioners can address,” he said. “We have a number of people that can be paroled but have no place to go. We can’t parole them unless we can supervise them, and we can’t supervise them if they are roaming the streets and we don’t know where they are. I think at any given time we have 15 to 20 people in that category.”