By Marcia Moore
Inmates sentenced to state prison are remaining in county jails for several weeks, in part because of severe statewide overcrowding that has prompted the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections to ask neighboring states for help in housing prisoners.
Among the 220 or so inmates in the Northumberland County Prison, as many as a dozen are still in the Sunbury lockup although they have been sentenced to state prison.
One of them is Troy A. Trick, 20, of Northumberland, who has nearly served the minimum of the three-month to 24-month state prison sentence for institutional vandalism he received on Aug. 17.
In Snyder County, which houses about 85, offenders are sentenced every quarter, and Warden Ruth Rush said three or four remain incarcerated locally a few weeks after being ordered to serve state prison terms.
The delays cost the counties money. The per-day cost to house an inmate is $72 in Snyder County and about $60 in Northumberland County.
Rush said the Snyder County sheriff’s office tries to move inmates out quickly.
Randy Coe, of the Northumberland County sheriff’s office, said sometimes the transportation issue is out of county’s hands because state prisons are not always able to accept more prisoners as soon as they’re ready to be moved.
“They can only take so many a day,” Coe said.
Some transportation delays are normal, said Northumberland County Warden Roy Johnson, a retired state prison administrator.
They usually occur because paperwork on the offender’s sentence and background has to be assembled and sent to the diagnostic and classification units that take in almost all newly sentenced prisoners. They are the State Correctional Institution at Camp Hill for men and SCI Muncy for women.
Classification centers average 925 new inmates a month, state Department of Corrections press secretary Susan McNaughton said.
According to the Department of Corrections, Camp Hill has 3,200 beds for 3,912 prisoners.
The number of offenders serving time in prisons across the state is climbing.
Between 2002 and 2008, the statewide inmate population increased 23 percent, from 40,090 to 49,307.
As of Sept. 30, the inmate population was at 51,022. It is expected to reach 58,000 by the end of 2013.
And with 27 state prisons providing a total of 43,357 beds, resources are being strained.
Modular housing units with 736 new beds were added last year.
Some county jails are housing state inmates, and the state Legislature has enacted new laws allowing nonviolent offenders to be sentenced to alternative punishments and reduced sentences to free up cells for violent criminals.
But more cells are still needed, and the Department of Corrections is responding by spending $800 million for four new prisons in Fayette, Centre and Montgomery counties.
McNaughton said construction on the four, 2,000-bed facilities won’t begin until next year, and each will take three years to complete.
Because beds are needed now, the Department of Corrections has asked six states to house Pennsylvania offenders and is waiting for replies.
“We should know within the next couple of months,” McNaughton said.
