By Bonnie L. Cook
The Philadelphia Inquirer
PHILADELPHIA — Saying it would fix overcrowding that has inmates “stacked up like cordwood,” officials dedicated a $23.5 million wing Monday at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility in Eagleville.
County dignitaries, local police chiefs, and politicians heard speeches and took the first public tours of the two-story, brick-and-concrete structure in Lower Providence Township.
“This is both a good day and a bad day,” President Judge Richard J. Hodgson said. “It’s good that the addition to the prison got constructed. It’s sad that we’ve gotten to the point in our society that we needed one.”
When it opens to nonviolent offenders next month, the new wing will allow prison authorities to group 512 men within 56,000 square feet, organized into dormitory-style units of 32 bunks. Women will continue to stay in the main prison building next door.
An additional 27,000 square feet in the new wing will hold guard desks, a cafeteria, a visiting area, and classrooms, officials said.
The classrooms will be used to teach inmates the skills they need so they will not repeat their crimes.
“In building a prison, we wanted to address recidivism,” warden Julio Algarin told a crowd of more than 100. “We cannot continue to build on ‘lock ‘em up and throw away the key’ thinking.”
Inmates to be housed in the new wing include DUI offenders, probation violators, and those on work-release programs, said corrections Cpl. Mike McGrath.
He said such offenders move in and out of the lockup often; that can create an administrative nightmare, especially on Fridays, when some report to serve weekend jail sentences.
“Friday nights can be a real zoo,” McGrath said. “We often have 75 to 80 coming in.”
To help with processing, special lockers have been set up in the wing to secure wallets, personal effects, and cellphones. To help with safety, the new wing has twice the number of video-surveillance cameras as the old facility, built in 2000, McGrath said.
Montgomery Township Police Chief Richard Brady called the new wing “very nice.”
“It gives you a way to keep the DUIs in segregation from the rest of the prison population,” he said.
Lower Providence Police Chief Francis Carroll said he found the wing very progressive. “I think it will help the community as a whole,” he said.
John Corcoran, county communications director, said that the prison has been overcrowded for years. Designed for 1,240 inmates and expanded to hold 1,500, the prison currently houses 1,700, he said.
In 2010, the prison increased fees, including those for the work-release program. The fees were expected to raise $300,000 a year to pay $1.7 million a year in debt service for the expansion.
Prison administrators are likely to look for other ways to increase revenue, such as housing immigration violators awaiting deportation, for a fee, Corcoran said.
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