Our view: Corrections performance a bright spot for county
Franklin County as a whole may not be known for tinkering with tried-and-true methods, but a new approach to criminal corrections seems to be achieving the twin goals of saving money and reducing population at the county jail.
A combination of criminal justice factors -- centered mostly around the Franklin County Jail and its Day Reporting Center -- has saved the county hundreds of thousands of dollars, county and corrections officials said Thursday.
The Day Reporting Center in Chambersburg tries to correct issues that lead to a person's criminal behavior through daily counseling, education and employment at the center on Loudon Street. Criticized early on in certain quarters as being too soft on inmates, the center instead appears to have played a significant role in reducing the population at the county jail.
Housing inmates costs a lot of money, and fewer local folks at the jail not only keeps those expenses down, but also provides corrections officials with an opportunity to lease those empty cells to federal agencies and those in neighboring counties.
The jail earned $709,000 from beds leased in 2008 to the U.S. Marshals Service and Fulton County. County officials arrived at an overall savings estimation of $2 million by figuring the difference in cost between housing an inmate and sending one to the Day Reporting Center.
The average length of stay per inmate has decreased about 10 days because of the Day Reporting Center, according to Franklin County Jail Warden John Wetzel. Violators charged with technical parole violations, such as drinking or relapsing to drug use, are given treatment instead of jail time.
Wetzel credits the savings success to the Franklin County Prison Board and the Criminal Justice Advisory Board. Both include a variety of criminal justice players, including the county commissioners, prosecutors, judges and probation officials. But a lot of the credit must also go to Wetzel himself, who arrived in town about the same time as the establishment of the new jail and Day Reporting Center in mid-2007.
With 75 percent of the county budget going to crime and corrections, it's very important that officials be open to methods that can save money, shorten incarcerations and reduce recidivism.
That those methods might be non-traditional is far less important than whether they work, and we congratulate the county's corrections officials' vision and willingness to take steps in the right direction.
-- By Matthew Major, on behalf of Public Opinion's editorial board
