« Mother Jones July-August Issue on Mass Incarceration | Main | Report says Calif. should end juvenile prisons »
July 16, 2008
PA: More new prisons proposed
By Richard Gazarik
Pittsburgh TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Fayette County officials said Wednesday the state could build one of two new prisons in German Township to handle overcrowding within the Department of Corrections system, which expects to run out of space for inmates by 2010.
State, county and township officials met twice this year with corrections department Secretary Jeffrey Beard at the German Township Municipal Building to discuss two potential sites for a 2,000-bed prison that would create more than 500 jobs.
"It's 99.9 percent" certain a prison will be built in Fayette, said state Rep. Tim Mahoney of South Union. "In politics, nothing is a sure thing until it's done."
Mahoney expects the state to make a decision by fall.
Fayette County Commissioner Vince Zapotosky said he attended two meetings in which officials of the Fay-Penn Economic Development Council made presentations to state officials.
"I'd rather be talking about building a GM plant, but we're not," he said. "It looks good, but it ain't real until it breaks dirt."
Zapotosky said the prison would be similar in design to SCI-Fayette in Luzerne, Fayette County.
"I'm hoping an announcement will be forthcoming. It will mean more than 500 jobs," he said.
German Township Supervisor Robert Croushore said the municipality "put out the welcome mat for the prison."
"We worked hard to get it here," he said.
Croushore said the two locations being considered are near routes 21 and 166. One parcel is owned by Mario Tiberi and his family. The other is owned by Manfried Wolf, of Flemington, N.J., a farmer and real estate developer who purchased his property about 16 years ago.
Wolf confirmed that the state is interested in his land, but "I haven't even seen a contract."
Neither Tiberi nor Mike Krajovic, president of Fay-Penn, responded to a request for comment.
The recently passed state budget contains $200 million to build a prison but lists a number of other potential sites, including Armstrong, Centre, Huntingdon, Philadelphia, Luzerne and Northumberland counties.
Susan McNaughton, a spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections, said the state needs to build one prison immediately and then decide if a second is needed.
"We need at least one in the near future," she said. "We need a prison now. We're reviewing all the different sites and will go from there."
During Senate budget hearings in May, Beard testified the prison system is about 4,400 inmates above capacity now and could run out of bed space by 2010. He said if a new prison isn't approved soon, it may not be ready until 2011.
The German Township sites are located about eight miles west of Uniontown, near the Greene County border. With a population of 5,595, the municipality is rural and has a median family income of $32,428, according to U.S. Census data.
SCI-Fayette opened in 2003 and houses about 2,000 inmates, according to the state. SCI-Pittsburgh closed in 2005 but was reopened last year to handle overcrowding.
As of May, the state's inmate population was more than 46,000, which is 2,000 above capacity. Since 1990, the state has added 23,000 beds to the system.
In the 1990s, the state went on a building binge, constructing five prisons in Erie, Somerset, Northumberland, Schuylkill and Greene counties, which eventually cost taxpayers $1 billion.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/state/s_576852.html
Posted by lois at July 16, 2008 05:24 PM