Day-reporting center to open next month
WILKES-BARRE - The Luzerne County Correctional Facility plans to treat about 40 inmates at the new day-reporting center in Wilkes-Barre when it opens in late July, Warden Joseph Piazza said at Monday's prison board meeting.
The county hired Colorado-based Behavioral Interventions Inc. to manage the 3,400-square-foot facility at 125 N. Wilkes-Barre Blvd. The facility could open by July 17 if facility renovations are complete, Piazza said.
Under a three-year deal, the county could pay more than $100,000 a month to BI to manage between 126 and 150 nonviolent offenders at the day-reporting program. Piazza said he hopes to have 100 clients in the facility by the end of the year.
Between 100 and 150 clients would report to the BI center, where the treatment program lasts about 120 days and requires offenders to report to the facility three to six days a week. Only 40 criminal offenders would be on site any given time.
Piazza said the day-reporting center should free up space in the prison and allow the county to charge the state and federal government $60 a day to detain state and federal prisoners. About 2,000 state prisoners are in prisons in Virginia and Michigan, Piazza said.
County officials say the BI deal will reduce county spending because fewer inmates will be locked up 24 hours a day in the main prison on Water Street in Wilkes-Barre. The current county prison population is 748.
The cost to detain an inmate in the main prison is about $87 a day. Under the BI deal, the county this year would pay a daily treatment rate of $44.10 for 26 to 50 inmates, $30.58 for 76 to 100 inmates, $26.50 for 101 to 125 inmates, and $23.44 for 126 to 150 inmates.
Luzerne County Commissioner Stephen A. Urban first suggested establishing a day-reporting center in 2007. He said it would reduce recidivism and the prison population in the county.
Then-Warden Gene Fischi opposed Urban's suggestion and backed a proposal to build a 1,500-bed prison, but county commissioners abandoned plans for a new prison in 2008. A new prison could cost more than $100 million.
By Michael P. Buffer, Citizens Voice
