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| 'Emergency' Addition of 30 Cots Completed at Schuylkill Prison |
| By Shamokin News Item |
| Published: 10/21/2002 |
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The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections ordered an 'emergency' at the Schuylkill County Prison so that 30 cots could be installed. County commissioners declared that the bedding situation was an emergency recently in order to legalize a $15,000 contract that was awarded and executed weeks before without ever being bid. The problem was that during a DOC inspection, it was discovered that some prisoners were sleeping on cots that were loose wooden beds resting on the floor, not steel, wall-mounted pallets as the state requires. 'You really can't have loose furniture in the cells. The state said to fix it immediately, so we had to do it,' Commissioner Chairman Forrest L. Shadle said at a recent commissioners meeting. 'We had to declare the emergency to legalize everything.' Prison Warden Gerald Britton said the wooden cots had been used as a temporary solution and that all cells in the prison are now 'double-bunked' according to state guidelines. 'What happened was that our population exceeded the number of beds, so we had to fix it,' Britton said. 'It was just one of those things.' Prison officials were planning on installing the cots anyway, Britton said, the state just ordered the work done sooner. With a population of 179 inmates, the prison is below capacity now that the additional bunks were installed. Britton noted the Schuylkill County Prison is 'at full complement,' meaning that it is fully staffed and has not been using any of the staff reduction measures that drew fire from employees of state prisons recently. |
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