Schuylkill prison struggles with costs
Trying to house people with records is sounding like a broken record – the Schuylkill County Prison continues to struggle with costs associated with having more inmates than the aging jail can hold.
In order to ease overcrowding, the county currently houses 81 inmates in other prisons, paying from $65 to $70 per day for the service. During a prison board meeting Wednesday, Warden Eugene Berdanier said that the average number of outsourced inmates for July was 92.
Inmates are housed in Centre (51), Columbia (3), Lackawanna (2), Northumberland (9) and Snyder (16) counties.
In addition to the daily cost of outsourcing inmates, the county prison budget is gouged with overtime costs for corrections officers. In July, the salaries and wages were $269,432, not including overtime wages of $28,300. At full staff, the prison has 45 full-time and 5 part-time corrections officers; there are again vacancies, for one full-time and 5 part-time.
Part-timers were recently hired, and later became full-time officers as positions opened. Currently, there are three full-time officers off-duty on extended medical leave and two officers on restricted-duty status.
Although the county struggles to keep the prison fully staffed with corrections officers, there seems to be no shortage of inmates. During July, the peak population was 276, with a peak female population of 57. The average population in July was 248, with 198 men and 50 women. Adding the average in-house to the average outsourced gives a total combination of 340 — or about 100 more than the prison can hold.
In other information presented by Berdanier:
During July, 118 inmates were on watches, including 60 detox watches and 58 suicide/mental health watches. There were four pregnant inmates and one inmate diagnosed with HIV. Fourteen inmates participated in work release and 9 offenders were placed on pre-release status. The vocational rehabilitation program completed 17 jobs, 13 community service jobs and three for county senior citizens.
