HOLLIDAYSBURG - The Blair County Prison Board is investigating a state-run program that could help save the Sheriff's Department time and money when it comes to prisoner transportation.
Sheriff Mitchell Cooper said Thursday that his deputies must drive inmates housed in state correctional facilities to and from Blair County many times each week. The trips require the use of a county sheriff's vehicle and normally involve two officers.
Many of the prisons are hours away from Hollidaysburg. For instance, the State Correctional Institution at Albion is in Erie County, at least a 3-hour one-way trip to bring the inmate to Blair County for a hearing.
Cooper learned Thursday from Blair County Prison Warden Michael Johnston that the state Department of Corrections has a program where it would transport to SCI Cresson any inmate who must be returned to Blair County from his home institution.
Sheriff's deputies would then have to drive to Cresson to pick him up, a 40-minute trip.
"It would be a savings in manpower and expenses," Cooper said after a prison board meeting.
Before the program can go into effect in Blair County, some groundwork will have to be laid, Cooper said.
The state Corrections Department needs 14 days' notice of when an inmate must be transported, Johnston said. This means that the county's court administrator must have a hearing date for an inmate several weeks in advance, which is not always possible.
The state will charge the county 16 cents a mile for the trip, but it often waives the charge, Johnston said.
Even if the cost per mile is charged to the county, it would be less than the cost of the wear and tear on the county vehicle and the wages for two deputies.
Cooper said he intended to present the transportation program this week to the county's Criminal Justice Advisory Board - county officials who make recommendations concerning the justice system.
The Blair County courts in the past three years have begun using the state prison system more often by sending inmates to a state facility for drug rehabilitation.
While the local jail population was only 262 Thursday, compared to more than 300 per day in years past, the number of county inmates in the state's 27 prisons has burgeoned from the mid-200s three years ago to 557 on Thursday, according to the Corrections department's Web site.
It means that more inmates must be transported by the sheriff's department to state facilities.
County judges have eased some of the problems by using Internet video conferencing, allowing a hearing to be held in Blair County while the inmate goes to a conference room inside the state prison where he is housed.
