By Donald Gilliland
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
GREENSBURG, Pa. — Republican John Wetzel will stay on as Secretary of Corrections under incoming Democratic governor Tom Wolf.
Wolf’s announcement comes the same day the Corbett administration touted its success in decreasing Pennsylvania’s skyrocketing prison population.
Pennsylvania’s state prison population last year dropped the most it has in 40 years, making it one of Gov. Tom Corbett’s most significant achievements, prison officials said.
Dr. Bret Bucklen, the Department of Corrections’ director of Planning, Research and Statistics said the decrease in inmates in 2014 “was the largest one-year drop in our population since 1971, and only the fourth time in the past 40 years that our population has shown an annual decrease rather than an increase.’'
The agency ended the calendar year with 50,756 inmates. Four years ago, the prison population was expected to top more than 56,000 inmates by the end of 2014.
Wetzel has won praise from both Democrats and Republicans for his straightforward style, and is recognized as an expert nationally. Recently he was appointed to a commission reviewing the federal prison system.
“He shares my view that we need to be tough on crime and put the rights of victims first, while protecting the taxpayers with smart reforms that reduce non-violent prison sentences and ensure inmates gain skills to become productive members of society,” said Wolf.
Corbett’s appointment of Wetzel from warden of the Franklin County Jail to head of the state prison system – overseeing more than 50,000 inmates, 15,000 employees and a budget now exceeding $2 billion – raised eyebrows at the time. The former semi-pro football player almost immediately cancelled the planned construction of a new prison in Fayette County and revised plans for a new prison at Graterford in Montgomery County, saying “Prison construction is not economic development.”
The decrease in inmates begins to reverse a 40-year trend that in its final stages required new prisons to be built on a regular basis. Wetzel said: “All of this, it should be noted, is occurring while the crime rate continues to go down.’'