State to close to 2 prisons

Budget problems cited as main reason

MEDIA >> The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections will announce the closures of two prisons later this month in response to a projected $600 million state budget deficit, Department Secretary John Wetzel said Friday.

“I think if you look at the financial reality, our choices were to reduce staffing and programming or do this, along with reducing the capacity at community corrections,” said Wetzel in a phone press conference. “This will allow us to continue to run three facilities and it will allow us to continue to have the population trend down.”

The five prisons being considered are State Correctional Institution Mercer in Mercer County, SCI Retreat in Luzerne County, SCI Frackville in Schuylkill County, SCI Waymart in Wayne County and SCI Pittsburgh in Allegheny County.

Wetzel said the department will announce which two will be mothballed Jan. 26 with a target closure date of June 30. He added that every current employee working in the affected prisons – expected to be about 800 individuals – will be offered employment elsewhere within the department.

Legislators have consistently complained about the cost of corrections, according to Wetzel, with overtime pay being a major concern. Shifting staff to other facilities should ease that burden while retaining those jobs, he said.

The DOC is facing about a $200 million shortfall and about an 8 to 10 percent reduction in the budget, said Wetzel. Depend-

ing on which prisons close, he said the department can hope to recoup approximately $40 to $50 million. Reducing the central staff of about 15,000 by 10 percent, cutting halfway home populations by half and possibly accepting rents from other states to house their inmates should shore up the remainder, Wetzel said.

A DOC spokesperson later clarified that Wetzel intends to simply let central office positions go unfilled as employees retire rather than lay-off current employees. The department typically sees about 90 to 100 retirements per month on average, Wetzel said, though he

indicated the second week of April seems to be when most of those occur.

Frackville and Pittsburgh are already housing above the “operational capacity” available to prisoners, at 1,177 and 1,921 respectively, according to DOC numbers. Retreat, with 1,403 prisoners, is just under the capacity wire, while Mercer, with 1,404, and Waymart, with 1,451, each still have dozens of beds available.

With a current total population of 44,836 inmates in 24 prisons, the state prison system is now running at 103 percent of “operational capacity,” or the number of prisoners that can be housed given existing facility limitations. Wetzel stressed that the state is currently at 86 percent of its “emergency capacity,”

however, which he called “true capacity” and represents the absolute limit of available housing. Operational capacity is expected to grow to 109 percent and emergency capacity is expected to reach 92 percent with the closures.

Wetzel said the remaining prisons could expect to absorb approximately 2,500 inmates, give or take 200 depending on the facilities being shuttered. He said Pine Grove was recently cleared for 1,000 additional beds, so that facility is expected to accept the brunt of transferees. The DOC has also been closing other housing units across the system that will be reopened to accommodate prisoners, said Wetzel.

The state is in the final stages of completing a new $371 million facility in

Montgomery County called SCI Phoenix to replace the aging SCI Graterford, according to Wetzel. The new facility, built next door to Graterford, is designed to house 3,872 inmates, about 500 more than Graterford. The plan has always been to transfer the older building’s employees and prisoners to the new facility once complete, Wetzel said and that has not changed.

Wetzel noted prison populations in recent years have been dropping as the crime rate has decreased (though crime for 2016 was flat) but said the state also has to plan for the potential impact of incoming U.S. President Donald Trump making good on campaign promises to ramp up deportations, which could add to overcrowding.

The DOC is also looking to cut halfway house populations from 3,000 to 1,500 through a more “outpatient” approach to parole for prisoners at a lower risk of reoffending, Wetzel said. Recent studies have shown placing those individuals in halfway houses is actually detrimental to their rehabilitation, according to Wetzel.

The state already has a housing voucher program in place that can help streamline that process, Wetzel said, and the DOC would be working with the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole to get parole plans for low-risk offenders in place sooner.

The DOC also plans to meet with the departments of Community and Economic Development, Labor and Industry, General Services and the Office of Administration next week to explore any potential ripple-affect the closures might have.

The last prison closures in the state occurred at SCI Cresson in Cambria County and SCI Greensburg in Westmoreland County in 2013. Wetzel, who

has headed the department since 2011, said that decision was handled from a purely DOC perspective to reduce costs.

“Last time, all we focused on was department of corrections operations, what makes the most operational sense,” he said. “This time, we’ve added a layer of weighing and measuring the impact it has on the community also, so questions like … are you going to close three prisons in the same area or the same zip code, however you want to put it, will be factored into this new process.”

Wetzel added that the exact numbers at this point are still fuzzy because the department will have to go through its budgeting process along with Gov. Tom Wolf and the Legislature in the coming months.

“Keep in mind this is for the governor’s proposed budget,” said Wetzel. “This is what we think is a responsible but lean budget for the department, but we have to go through a bunch of processes, so I’m not sure where we’re going to come out on the other end.”