Apr 19, 2002 By Steve Ostrosky 3 min read

WAYNESBURG – Until Fayette County finishes the first portion of its prison expansion project, Greene County will continue to house some of its inmates, according to the Greene County Prison warden. Harry Gillispie told the county prison board Thursday that after a few months without Fayette inmates, the county is once again taking inmates from across the river. As of Thursday morning, 14 inmates were being housed at the jail and Fayette County owes $5,640 for inmates who were housed in Greene County last month.

He said he expects inmates to be sent to Greene for at least another few weeks in advance of a new steel building for Fayette County inmates as a way of dealing with overcrowding issues. No additional staff has been required to handle the additional inmate capacity, Gillispie said, as existing corrections officers and a pool of casual officers are being used to address the situation.

The housing of Fayette County inmates in Greene County more than paid for the Greene County prison expansion last year, and Gillispie said he may have found another way for the county to recover some additional money. During a recent meeting with officials of the Social Security Administration, they told him that the county could receive as much as $400 per inmate that is collecting Social Security if they report the information by disk to the SSA.

The administration and the county are still working out an agreement, which is currently being reviewed by county solicitor David Hook. Gillispie said that the process earned Fayette County almost $23,000 last year and said Greene County could make some money from the effort, as well.

Amounts of money are given to counties based on the amount of time inmates are incarcerated and they are not re-distributed if an inmate is released and returns to prison later in the same year, he said.

The prison is still short by two employees after the board accepted the resignation of corrections officer Scott Arbogast. Gillispie said Arbogast will be taking a similar position at the State Correctional Institution at Greene over the weekend.

In other matters, a prison inspector from the Department of Corrections visited the facility on March 26 and 27, and Gillispie said the only recommendations from the inspector were that shower lids in two blocks of the prison be repainted and that an in-house training and staff development policy be written.

The warden said the painting has already been completed and the policy should be written by the time the prison board next meets, May 16.