By Kyle Wind
The Times-Tribune
SCRANTON, Pa. — Three years after Lackawanna County moved its inmate work release program from a downtown Scranton dormitory to the county jail, the prison board may be ready to pull the plug on the experiment.
The Lackawanna County Prison Board on Wednesday agreed to explore reversing the decision after the program’s success rates plummeted and prison officials said the move brought drugs and other contraband to Lackawanna County Prison.
At its best, the work release program acts like a halfway house that helps low- to minimum-level offenders transition back to being productive members of society while generating money for the county through fees to participate, Judge Vito Geroulo said.
“It was a great tool in its original concept,” Judge Geroulo said. “I thought moving it was a mistake to begin with. It never made sense from a penal viewpoint or from a common sense viewpoint.”
When the state decided to pull its prisoners from the facility in 2012 — costing the county money for housing them — commissioners spearheaded the plan to relocate the work release program from the Community Corrections Center on Spruce Street to Lackawanna County Prison.
The move was part of a series of steps to address a nearly $1.8 million shortfall. At the time, officials expected to save $56,000 in annual building maintenance and other costs and generate $52,500 in new revenue by expanding the number of available beds from 43 to 55.
It didn’t go as planned.
Enrollment dropped from an average of 43 inmates plus a waiting list of prisoners who wanted to participate in 2012 to 33 inmates in 2013; 30 inmates in 2014; and 25 inmates in 2015, according to a report from Brian Jeffers, director of community corrections.
That translated to $213,251 in total projected lost revenue.
Meanwhile, the percentage of inmates who completed the program fell from 77 percent in 2012 to 52 percent in 2013, 56 percent in 2014 and 59 percent in 2015.
“If you really want to put it in perspective, if you or I had a DUI or something like that, you’re paying $105 a week to live in jail,” Mr. Jeffers explained. “When you were downtown, you were able to not come and go as you please, but have a lot more freedom. You’re not in jail.”
Now the program doesn’t allow for nearly the same kind of flexibility because security is so tight at Lackawanna County Prison, leaving only specific windows when people can come and go.
Another problem Mr. Jeffers mentioned in a report to the prison board is some prisoners try to bring contraband into the prison when they return from work. Officials throw participants out of the program when they catch them bringing banned materials into the jail.
“The No. 1 violation is tobacco,” he wrote. “It is cheap to buy outside and sells at a high price within the prison. The drug known as spice (synthetic marijuana) is also smuggled into the prison in high volumes.”
Commissioners Patrick O’Malley and Jerry Notarianni expressed support for moving the program back to its original location. Commissioner Laureen Cummings indicated she was still learning about the situation but said returning to downtown Scranton initially sounded like a good decision.
County officials need to work out some details like the extent to which the original site needs renovations before they can make a final decision, Mr. O’Malley said.
“It’s not something where you just hit the switch and say, ‘OK, get in the bus and go downtown,’” Mr. O’Malley said.
Copyright 2016 The Times-Tribune