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A new Luzerne County central court that may reduce the inmate population should open by Oct. 1 at a county-owned building next to the prison on Water Street in Wilkes-Barre, officials said Wednesday.
Court leaders have been trying to get the court off the ground for more than a year, saying a centralized location will speed up the processing of cases and more quickly weed out defendants who don’t require incarceration.
With central court, prosecutors would get involved in cases sooner at the magisterial level. These district attorney’s office representatives have the ability to negotiate plea agreements, determine if the initial evidence supports the charges that have been filed, and weigh in on bail recommendations.
The county’s 16 district judges will take turns presiding over criminal proceedings at the Wilkes-Barre location instead of hearing them at their offices scattered throughout the county.
Another key selling point is the location by the prison, said Court of Common Pleas President Judge Richard Hughes. The building, which was once a residence, houses the county Veteran Affairs Office, which will be relocated to a county-owned complex by the Wyoming Valley Airport in Forty Fort, officials said.
Hughes pointed to a police cruiser pulling into a prison dock area known as a sally port to pick up an inmate for a court proceeding.
Police — not county sheriffs — must pick up inmates for preliminary hearings and then take them back to the prison in Wilkes-Barre. This means police are forced to make two trips back and forth to their local magisterial offices for court proceedings, taking them away from other law enforcement duties in their own municipalities.
“It can take a whole day by the time all that happens,” Hughes said. “Under this system, that won’t happen, thereby benefiting the municipality terrifically.”
When central court is implemented, police will park along Water Street or at the county’s nearby parkade and walk to the prison to retrieve inmates they then escort on foot to the adjacent central court, Hughes said. Eventually, the central court property will be surrounded by security fencing and become part of the prison complex, he said.
The change also will eliminate frequent long lines of police vehicles at the sally port, Hughes said. Sheriff deputies must waste time waiting in these lines to pick up inmates for proceedings before county court judges, he said.
Some police had criticized the county’s original central court, which closed in 2012, because they experienced long waits for their cases to be called. That central court had been in rented space in downtown Wilkes-Barre.
Strict scheduling will ensure delays are not an issue this time around, said Hughes and county Judge Michael T. Vough, who oversees criminal court. If prisoners don’t waive their right to a hearing, their proceedings will be set for central court the following week in specific time slots, they said.
“That way the police officer, defendant and victim won’t have to wait,” Hughes said.
Vough has said he and other county judges in the criminal division end up with many cases that should have been resolved at the magisterial level.
The court is needed, Vough said, because too many inmates are in prison awaiting adjudication as opposed to serving sentences. County taxpayers spend $110 per day per inmate.
The national average percentage of inmates awaiting adjudication is 30 percent. The county’s percentage was between 75 and 80 percent at the end of 2015, and other initiatives have reduced it to 60 percent, Vough estimated.
“The real benefit of the new central court system is we feel it will move people faster through the system in general, ensuring defendants get a speedy trial,” said Hughes.
No additional staffers
Central court also will allow on-the-spot arrangements for those eligible for the Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition (ARD) program for first-time offenders, the judges said.
The addition of a new inmate entrance, a security screening system and other modifications needed to convert the building for central court will be covered by a $25,000 allocation in the court’s 2017 budget and require no additional county funding, Hughes said.
No additional staffing will be necessary because an existing court employee will be assigned to oversee the court, said Court Administrator Michael Shucosky.
Court officials must wait until additional funding is identified to proceed with fencing and plans to add a holding cell that also will make the structure a central booking location where offenders can be fingerprinted and taken into custody, said Hughes. He praised other county departments for their cooperation with the project. A second central court location in the Hazleton area is also planned for the future.
In addition to the cost of lodging inmates, the prison population has been a concern because the facility had been at or above its capacity of 505 for years. The population has declined in recent months due to efforts of a special task force committee, with an average inmate count of 471 in May.
