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The prolonged prison overcrowding at Luzerne County’s lockup cannot be allowed to continue, for reasons of safety as well as justice.
One day last week, 507 inmates squeezed into the correctional facility, which, by design, is intended to hold 505. Another 181 people were housed at a nearby building for minimal offenders.
A space crunch isn’t unique to our community’s prison by any stretch, but this factor is: As recently as November, between 75 to 80 percent of inmates at the Luzerne County Correctional Facility on Water Street, in Wilkes-Barre, were not serving sentences, but instead were waiting for the court to impose a sentence.
By contrast, the national average for inmates in a similar circumstance is about 30 percent, according to Judge Michael T. Vough, who oversees Luzerne County’s criminal court division.
Since winter, attempts to correct the disparity have pushed Luzerne County’s figure to as low as 60 percent – but that’s still unacceptable, at double the national average.
Vough and others rightly want to prevent offenders from languishing on cell blocks until their cases can be adjudicated.
“I’ve seen people sitting in jail six or seven months where their final sentence is probation,” Vough recently told a Times Leader reporter. “That’s inefficiency.”
One potential solution: Reviving “central court” – a judicial setup that aims to handle certain criminal cases more quickly, putting defendants who don’t require incarceration back into the community. Luzerne County operated a central court between 2006 and 2012, before officials quashed the program as a supposed cost-cutting move.
When whispers arose last year that central court might make a comeback, under a revised format to keep down expenses, the Times Leader editorialized in favor of the notion. “Central court deserves another try here because of the efficiency it can bring to the justice system if run properly and provided with the right tools,” the editorial stated.
Nine months later, however, central court seemingly remains a wish-list item.
Even if county officials succeed in coordinating the program’s restart, it alone probably will not solve the complex issue of prison overcrowding.
The sardine-can-like situations found today in too many prisons reflect societal issues such as gang activity and substance abuse. By Judge Vough’s estimate, for instance, drug and alcohol abuse accounts for 90 percent of the county’s criminal offenses.
Separately, a survey conducted in 2011 for a pair of advocacy organizations points to “county jails overwhelmed by inmates who suffer from mental illnesses,” according to a report released last month by the Public Citizen Health Research Group and The Treatment Advocacy Center. “Three-quarters of the jails reported seeing more or far more numbers of seriously mentally ill inmates, compared to five to 10 years ago,” the report stated.
Luzerne County spends more on its prison operation – $34.1 million a year – than any other department expense.
For the sake of controlling those costs, as well as safeguarding people’s lives and delivering timely justice, leaders in the court system and in county government must remove the shackles of the status quo and pursue solutions.
A new county prison? Maybe one day.
Until then, more immediate actions must be taken to ease the overcrowding.