LEWISBURG — Union County has a “serious problem” managing its inmate population and it will take a substantial amount of money to resolve, a federal government consultant said Wednesday.
That’s the bad news, according to Nate Caldwell, a Seattle consultant with the National Institute of Corrections, an agency within the U.S. Department of Justice’s Federal Bureau of Prisons.
The good news is county officials are finally addressing the problem.
“They are taking a proactive approach,” said Mr. Caldwell, who was invited by the county’s judicial advisory board to assess the court system and Union County Jail operations to help steer them in the right direction.
The board, composed of county administrators, court officials, local police and community members, was formed a little more than year ago to review the judicial system and come up with solutions to the overcrowded county jail.
“We want to do it the right way,” Commissioner William Haas said.
After three days interviewing county employees and officials and touring the small jail inside the Lewisburg courthouse, Mr. Caldwell said he found there’s “a workload issue and there’s not a plan here to manage it.”
As a result, the 35-bed jail can’t handle the 72 inmates it consistently incarcerates and has been spending thousands of dollars every year housing prisoners in other counties.
“It’s an inadequate jail. It’s too small,” Mr. Caldwell said, urging the county to act swiftly in order to avoid “the big crisis” of a multi-million-dollar lawsuit as a result of an inmate disturbance.
To do that, he said, a new jail will have to be built and programs created to properly manage the county’s inmate population.
“It will eventually involve considerable amount of taxpayer money,” he said. “There is no zero-cost option.”
While Union County is providing some alternative programs to ease inmate growth, such as a proposed drug court that allows nonviolent offenders a chance to avoid jail while receiving supervised treatment, Mr. Caldwell said the probation department needs extra staff and other resources to do more.
There are 11 staff members in the probation department and very few options available to offenders facing jail, Probation Director Scott Lizardi.
The county has a “very limited” community service program and only three people are presently serving sentences at home on electronic monitoring due to a lack of employees, he said.
“The issue in Union County is there is lower serious crime, higher use of the jail and limited capacity,” Mr. Caldwell said. “Someone needs to raise the question of what’s going on here.”
Mr. Caldwell said he reviewed 10 similar-sized counties and found that although Union County has a lower crime rate, it sends more people to prison, has a 71 percent lower jail capacity and uses probation and parole more frequently.
Warden Douglas E. Shaffer said he’s not surprised by the statistics, but Mr. Lizardi questioned the numbers that showed a large disparity in serious crime during 2006 between Union and Snyder counties.
Mr. Caldwell’s report showed there were 297 serious offenses in Union County compared with 784 serious offenses in Snyder County in 2006.
“I know we had more in 2006 and Snyder County was lower,” Mr. Lizardi said.
Although Snyder and Northumberland counties are also struggling with inmate overcrowding in their jails, Mr. Caldwell said it’s not a rampant problem across the nation.
And while there has been some talk of a regional jail, Mr. Caldwell doesn’t favor the idea.
“Very few work,” he said, citing jurisdictional problems that often arise between county officials.
Mr. Caldwell will provide the board a written report in a few weeks, but he said the group should immediately begin working on a vision for housing and treating offenders and use local resources to help frame the discussion and develop a plan.
Mr. Haas said it will take two to three years to study a new jail proposal and about five years to implement.
n E-mail comments to mmoore@dailyitem.com
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