The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

In June, they began sending some inmates to county prisons and are now considering shipping others to out-of-state lockups.

"We want to continue to run secure, safe, and humane prisons," said state Corrections Secretary Jeffrey A. Beard. "And it is fast approaching the point that we cannot do that and we have to look at alternatives."

Yet one leading inmate-advocacy group believes the state is taking a wrong approach when it comes to overcrowding and should instead focus on revamping sentencing rules.

Pennsylvania has 50,957 inmates, while its system of 27 prisons has an official capacity of 43,200.

The state is expected to break ground, perhaps as soon as next year, on four 2,000-bed prisons - one each in Fayette and Centre Counties and two on the grounds of Graterford Prison in Montgomery County, which is scheduled to be closed.

But officials do not expect any of them to be completed until late 2012.

While the state's inmate population has been on the rise for decades, overcrowding concerns were compounded last year when Pennsylvania instituted stiffer parole practices after a parolee killed a Philadelphia police officer.

As a result, Pennsylvania began sending low-level inmates to county prisons. So far, 234 of them have been housed in local jails, and Beard said he envisioned that number to more than triple, to 900, by next year.

And officials are now considering sending some even farther away.

With fiscal budget crunches and excess capacity at their prisons, at least five states, including Michigan and Virginia, are opening their cells to inmates from other states.

Beard said Pennsylvania has never shipped its inmates across borders, with the exception of a period in 1989 when some were relocated to federal penitentiaries after the Camp Hill prison riots.

Even so, now might be the time.

"We are heading in that direction," said Beard, adding that state officials likely would decide within two or three months.

The state is exhausting other temporary options.

It has already maxed out the usefulness of portable units, similar to double-wide trailers, that have been parked inside the walls of seven existing prisons.

Beard described them as "ugly beds" - OK for now, but not a long-term solution.

That's why officials are examining another option, one they are tentatively calling "reentry centers." They are smaller, less costly sites to house low-security inmates who have fewer than two years left before they are released.

Corrections officials are considering a former state prison as the first of what Beard has nicknamed "mini prisons."

In 2005, the state closed and sold a correctional facility in Waynesburg, Greene County. At the time, officials mistakenly believed there wasn't a need for the building because population trends were flattening out.

A private company converted the 117-acre property into a drug- and alcohol-treatment center. It closed about three years ago, and corrections officials are now in talks with the owner to lease the site for 500 inmates.

Taken as a whole, Pennsylvania's efforts at dealing with overcrowding are among the most resourceful of any state in the nation, said George Camp, a national prison expert.

"They have been very creative in anticipating the future needs to avoid a real crisis," said Camp, a principal at the Criminal Justice Institute, an independent consulting group. "Someone has been doing their homework."

Few other states are building prisons in such a down economy.

Just last week, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, in an effort to raise needed revenue, signed legislation allowing the state to sell the rights to operate some of its prisons to for-profit companies.

Funding for the new Pennsylvania prisons was authorized several years ago. They will be financed through bonds and not the state's annual general-fund operating budget, which is now overdue by nine weeks.

William DiMascio, executive director of the Pennsylvania Prison Society, said he understands that corrections officials are limited in how they can cope with overcrowding as they wait for the new prisons.

Temporary and makeshift cells are not ideal, he said, but they are better than "triple-celling" inmates.

But he called "awful" the prospect of sending inmates out of the state.

"If you move people farther away from their homes, they lose contact with the people close to them," he said. "And it hurts their chances for successful reentry into society when they do get out."

DiMascio and other inmate advocates also argue that the state, rather than focusing on building more cells, should embrace alternatives to incarceration, such as residential drug-treatment facilities for certain offenders. Such policy shifts have allowed other states to reduce their prison populations.

But historically, the Pennsylvania legislature has been reluctant to approve more lenient sentencing rules for fear of looking soft on crime.

Without those changes, come 2013 when the ribbons are cut on the new prisons, the state will already have exceeded the new capacity, according to current projections.

Then, DiMascio said, "you are going to need four new prisons because the four you just built are going to be full."

Prison Growth

Pennsylvania's state prison population:

1960 7,802

1970 6,289

1980 8,243

1990 22,325

2000 36,810

August 2009 50,957

SOURCE: Pennsylvania Department of Corrections
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/20090907_Pa__grapples_with_growing_prison_needs.html?page=1&c=y