Tuesday, September 09, 2003

By Rebekah Scott, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

A state prison inspector visited Westmoreland County Prison two weeks ago and found the 10-year-old facility bulging with inmates -- the place was built for 518 but 577 were incarcerated there Sunday.

Faced with a possible citation for overcrowding, the jailkeepers are scrambling to find -- or make -- enough beds for all their charges.

"We had to get bunks for the people who were sleeping on cots," said Warden John Walton at a county prison board meeting yesterday. "Last week we moved the women out of the gym where they were staying, and we have 11 more men in a gymnasium who should have bunks to sleep on by the end of the week."

Work crews are busy building upper-deck bunks into cells that now house one inmate, the warden said. "We just added 20 bunks to the male quarters, and 10 more to the female quarters. We have steel and other materials on hand to build another 50 bunks."

The cells are large enough to accommodate two, the warden said.

Another solution is electronic monitoring bracelets, so offenders on work-release programs can sleep at home at night instead of taking up space at the jail. "We used to have about 60 people on work-release, and that number is down to 15," said Andrew Urban, director of adult probation programs.

"This would be good incentive for more people to get into that program," Walton said. "But we still need to talk to the probation department and courts too -- not just people at the prison -- to help streamline the process of getting some of these people out of the prison."

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