State prisons to begin releasing inmates to reduce population
With two inmates and four staff workers testing positive for COVID-19, the state prison system is working to reduce the prison population.
Department of Corrections Secretary John Wetzel said the second positive inmate test was reported late Tuesday. Both cases are at the State Correctional Institution at Phoenix in Montgomery County, Wetzel said Wednesday.
Four staff members in the DOC system have tested positive for COVID-19, but Wetzel said state health regulations precluded him from releasing any additional information about the staffers, including where they work.
Along with suspending visitations, limiting inmate movement, maximizing social distancing and screening temperatures of people entering the prisons, Wetzel said they’re also working on reducing the prison population.
He said they’ve been looking at inmates who have reached their minimum sentence, those who are in prison on a technical parole violation with no new charges, or those who have served an appropriate amount of time on a nonviolent offense. He said there’s no set number of prisoners who will be released, meaning even if an inmate qualifies for release it does not mean they will be.
The average release of inmates from the state system is typically around 1,400 per month, but because the state parole board is not a full complement with three vacancies, the total releases for March were at 547, according to Wetzel.
He said within the next few weeks, the number of incoming inmates will be fewer because courts are only conducting limited business. When the parole board release rates return to the typical numbers, he said, the population of the correctional institutions should start to decrease.
The state correctional institutions house approximately 44,600 inmates. SCI-Fayette in Luzerne Township had about 2,022 inmates Wednesday, according to the DOC.