Warden wants prisoner moved back to state facility during trials
Warden Larry Medlock wants inmates from Fayette County’s state correctional facility to be returned to the prison nightly instead of staying at the county lock-up during criminal trial terms. Medlock said at Wednesday’s prison board meeting that he planned to speak with the president judge, district attorney, sheriff and commissioners to develop a plan that would limit the length of time those inmates, which he dubbed “the worst of the worst,” would spend in the county’s jail.
Prisoners from the State Correctional Institution at Fayette in Luzerne Township are routinely brought into the county prison during the criminal court term to face charges for crimes at the state facility, Medlock said. He wants to have those state prisoners transported back to SCI-Fayette at the end of the court day instead of housing them at the county prison overnight.
With SCI-Fayette filled with some of the state’s biggest problem inmates, Medlock said it is important to get them in and out of the county prison as quickly as possible.
Recently, for example, an inmate charged with throwing urine and feces on guards and a prison nurse was convicted of those crimes at trial. But while he stayed in the county jail, Gary Jay Williams also flooded the fourth floor of the prison, ripped out a surveillance camera and refused to leave the facility to go to court, Medlock said.
Coming to Fayette County’s prison from the state facility is “basically a vacation from their cell,” Medlock said. “We want to get them in and out quickly.”
In other news, Medlock said there are a total of 266 inmates in the county’s facility, and an additional nine inmates are being housed in Greene County. The first nine months this year showed a 14.3 percent increase in the prison population as compared with the same period in 2004.
In the next few months, Medlock said he expects the population to increase, as it generally has in the coming months.
Controller Mark Roberts, also a member of the prison board, said that the prison has used about 40 percent of the $350,000 budgeted for cell rentals this year.