Luzerne County is stepping up its examination of prison options, but officials stressed there are still too many questions and unknowns to proceed down a particular path.
County officials have periodically discussed the possibility of a new county prison for more than two decades because the existing aging, multistory facility on Water Street in Wilkes-Barre requires significant maintenance and has an inefficient layout. The facility was built in 1887 and renovated in 1987.
Possibilities cited during Tuesday’s council work session included exploring:
• Expansion opportunities at the current prison.
• Takeover of the former State Correctional Institution at Retreat in Newport Township.
• New prison construction somewhere else.
• Partnering with other counties to construct a regional prison facility.
County Manager Randy Robertson said there must be a concerted effort to bring all impacted county departments together to share expertise and feedback on future prison options. In addition to prison and fiscal staff, these offices include the sheriff, courts, public defender and district attorney, Robertson said.
Robertson said the first meeting of this internal committee was held Wednesday morning, with more than 20 representatives from these offices.
“I thought it was a wonderful conversation,” he said, promising more meetings.
Many in the group also will be visiting the former state prison in Newport Township next week, he said.
Some county council members had toured the complex earlier this year and saw potential.
Robertson said everybody is saying they heard the state is willing to convey the site to the county for $1, but he has not received written confirmation of that commitment to date.
Even if it is available for $1, extensive analysis would be required to determine if it is the “right place,” he said.
He and council discussed plans to publicly seek requests from outside professionals in the near future.
No county staffers are qualified to design a new prison, Robertson said.
“This is rocket science. It has to be someone truly state-of-the-art in project management and engineering and penology to take us from flash to bang on what we will need 25 years from now,” Robertson said.
County Correctional Services Division Head Mark Rockovich presented a lengthy list of factors that must be considered, including costs, staffing, transportation and the impact on court proceedings and technology.
County Councilman Brian Thornton said council must “move forward and do something” because the current prison is not designed for the current capacity, contains too many blind spots and is costly to maintain.
Rockovich has said the common belief the prison was designed to hold approximately 500 inmates is false because its capacity was lowered to 250 inmates when it was remodeled around 1986.
The facility has been largely running at double capacity since the 1990s, when officials dealt with the rising population by switching to bunk beds in most cells and then later converting six day rooms into housing units capable of holding 10 inmates each, he has said.
After touring the current prison in March, Thornton said the housing of two inmates in cells built for one causes them to be “right on top of each other living 24-7 in basically a large closet.”
“Whatever we come up with is going to be our prison for the next 100 years,” Thornton said Tuesday.
Robertson said he also wants to at least consider the possibility of a regional prison for efficiency and to reduce the county’s costs, saying he was informed several other neighboring counties are in the same predicament with aging prisons.
Councilman Tim McGinley warned his council colleagues they will have to think “long and hard” about taking on additional debt. The county’s home rule government structure started in 2012 with $465 million in inherited debt that has been dramatically reduced and is slated to be paid off in 2030, he said.
Councilman Kevin Lescavage said Berks County recently constructed a new prison that cost $400 million, and the cost will continue to rise.
In the mid-2000s, the county has paid architect L. Robert Kimball & Associates approximately $1.27 million to study and design a 1,134-bed prison that had a building footprint resembling a wheel, with a hub at the center and various wings shooting out like spokes. Offers also were received from landowners willing to sell at least 25 acres for a new prison, but the project remained on the back burner.