Prison board favors Letterkenny site for new county prison

January 07, 2005|by RICHARD F. BELISLE

CHAMBERSBURG, Pa. - A step toward construction of a replacement for Franklin County Prison was taken Thursday when members of the county's prison board asked the Franklin County Board of Commissioners to pursue a building site at Letterkenny Army Depot.

"It pleases me that we are moving forward," Warden John Wetzel said after the meeting. He said the price of the land was still being negotiated with the Letterkenny Industrial Development Authority, the agency created in the 1990s to manage surplus property following the realignment of Letterkenny Army Depot. LIDA owns the business park that is being created on the former Army land.

The prison on Franklin Farm Lane was built in the early 1970s and has become woefully overcrowded, County Commissioner Bob Thomas said Thursday.

Thomas said the commissioners have been considering a Letterkenny site. He said they were pleased that the prison board backed the same site.

The prison board consists of all three Franklin County Commissioners, District Attorney Jack Nelson, Common Pleas Judge Douglas Herman, County Sheriff Robert Wollyung and County Controller Carol Diller.

Thomas, who was elected Thursday to his 10th term as president of the prison board, said the local prison population reached record numbers in 2004.

The average daily population was 14 inmates higher in 2004 than the more than 354 held daily during 1993, Thomas said.

The prison and the work-release annex that opened in 1992 have a design capacity of 194 for both buildings.

Overcrowding is so serious that the prison has to put three inmates in a cell. It also has forced the county to send inmates to prisons in other counties to alleviate conditions in the Franklin County lockup, he said.

"Overcrowding is not a good situation," Thomas said. "In December, we housed 11 prisoners in Adams County Prison and 13 in York County."

It costs the county more to house prisoners in other facilities than it does in the local jail, he said. "That's another reason to look for a new jail," he said.

Thomas said overcrowding creates even more serious situations when it come to prisoners on a suicide watch or those with serious drug, alcohol or health problems.

"It just aggravates the problems," he said. "We're dealing with more challenges at the jail."

|

|

|