Schuylkill County Prison Board
The Schuylkill County Prison Board on Wednesday elected President Judge William E. Baldwin chairman. He succeeds county Commissioners Chairman George F. Halcovage Jr.
Halcovage presided over the board as it worked to resolve overcrowding at the county jail on Sanderson Street, Pottsville.
The board also elected Commissioner Gary J. Hess as secretary.
Baldwin appointed Sheriff Joseph G. Groody as chairman of the board’s personnel committee. Commissioner Frank J. Staudenmeier and Hess also serve on the committee.
In other board business, Warden Eugene Berdanier said a total of 61 inmates were housed at prisons outside the county to keep the population below the 277 cap promised to the state by the county.
Seventeen were in Berks County, 19 in Centre County, nine in Columbia County, three in Lackawanna County, and 13 in Snyder County.
The county started shipping overflow inmates out to other jails after the state Department of Corrections in May 2016 ordered it to stop accepting new inmates until it got the population below a daily average of 277.
The DOC lifted the restriction three months later, after the county kept the numbers down by housing inmates at other counties’ prisons.
The board is developing specifications for an intermediate punishment facility to help alleviate overcrowding.
Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates in Mechanicsburg, is being paid $38,400 to update its 2008 prison study to determine what the county will need over the next 20 years.
The update, which will take several months, involves determining the needs of the intermediate punishment center through the review of current inmate statistics and update population projections and building program requirements.
