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Pennsylvania's county prisons have been a hot topic in the news periodically for much of the past half-century, with county prison boards and commissioners often wrestling with issues like:
-- Deterioration and whether to renovate the existing facility or build new.
-- How to deal with temporary overcrowding.
-- Whether to transfer inmates to counties with available space in their prisons.
-- Investigations tied to successful escapes.
-- Correcting "weak spots" and that provide a gateway for escapes and behaviors that can lead to troublesome inmate interactions.
-- Developing or improving safeguards to keep drugs and other contraband outside the prison walls.
-- Providing suitable meals as the cost of food keeps increasing.
One underlying issue is that county prisons still house many inmates awaiting transfer to state prisons -- and the state prison system remains the gatekeeper on those transfers.
Despite financial constraints in most counties, the elected officials responsible for running prisons have dealt with such challenges through planning and efforts aimed at minimizing the negative impact on their taxpayers.
In some cases, their taxpayers were forced to dig deeper into their wallets and pocketbooks to pay for the decisions made.
Meanwhile, the counties that delayed prison-related improvements, purportedly to avoid raising taxes, are still dealing with the issue of running out of housing for inmates and how to pay for the cost of a larger facility.
Blair County, for example, has been among the counties that could have addressed its prison shortcomings by building a new facility but instead chose to build additions and undertake renovations. The decision created some more housing and helped keep taxes down -- but never truly resolved the facility's overcrowding.
It is, for sure, a difficult balance to strike between adequate prison facilities in Pennsylvania's 63 counties and resisting undue burdens on those counties' taxpayers. We believe our state's lawmakers need to consider if the state's role in maintaining its prison infrastructure should be greater.