Centre County commissioners on Tuesday approved a letter formalizing their objections to the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections’ proposed closure of Rockview state prison in Benner Township, as well as Quehanna Boot Camp in neighboring Clearfield County.
The commissioners cited projected significant economic losses in a tri-county area of Centre, Clearfield and Clinton, negative impacts on staff and inmates and what they said is a flawed rationale by the department for justifying the closures.
“At best, closures may achieve savings in the short term, but they don’t solve the root causes of cost growth and will likely introduce new, harder-to-resolve issues,” Commissioner Mark Higgins said.
The Department of Corrections on Feb. 10 announced that had accepted a steering committees recommendations and is proposing the closure of Rockview and Quehanna, as well as state-run Community Corrections Centers in Berks and Greene counties, in a move Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration says would save the commonwealth $10 million over the next year and $100 million in the long term.
Among the reasons cited by the DOC are $74 million in repairs and upgrades required over the next five years at the 110-year-old Rockview prison and nearly $6 million at Quehanna.
Higgins said that some those savings would be “illusory.”
“Significant components of these renovations have actually already been completed or are slated to occur regardless of whether the facilities remain in operation,” he said.
The 658 staff members at Rockview and 234 at Quehanna would be offered equivalent positions at one of five state correctional institutions located within 67 miles, but the commissioners projected that only about 20% of those jobs would remain in the local region.
Including lost wages, indirect jobs, local purchases and per capita funding, the commissioners estimated an economic loss of $117.9 million in the tri-county area including Centre, Clearfield and Clinton.
“In addition to the employees and their families, there will be significant harm to the citizens and economies of Centre, Clearfield and Clinton counties resulting from these closures,” Higgins said. “Ultimately, any savings at the state level is being taken from these local counties in the form of losses.”
The recommendation for closure cites consistent corrections officer vacancy rates of about 5.2%, reasoning that relocating employees would alleviate the need for overtime to cover staffing shortages.
Moving employees to different locations in central Pennsylvania “would be untenable,” the commissioners wrote in the letter, and there has been no guarantee of job security beyond the closure period. They added that it’s unlikely most could be transferred to the nearest alternate facility, which in Rockview’s case is the adjoining Benner Township state prison.
“The ripple effects of thousands of DOC staff being bumped in an ever-widening chain reaction will create havoc with staffing, recruiting and overtime for years to come,” Higgins said.
DOC officials have said, and reiterated at budget hearings in Harrisburg on Monday, that the state corrections system has the capacity to absorb the 2,148 inmates currently housed at Rockview and 348 at Quehanna. The state prison population has decreased by more than 2,800 in the last four years and about 18% of the the approximately 46,500 total institutional beds in the system are empty.
Commissioner Steve Dershem called the proposed closures short-sighted, noting that the estimated cost to build a new prison if needed in the future is currently $300 million.
“Not only do you have the displacement of individuals and the economic impact, but you are significantly reducing the capacity of our SCIs literally across the state,” Dershem said. “I mean, when you lose a couple thousand spots in that system, you’re never going to get those back without… what, 300 million? Well try to do that five years, 10 years from now and see what that number looks like.”
While relocation of inmates may be logistically feasible, the commissioners argued that for some it “would remove them from special programs whose successes may not be able to be replicated at other facilities.” DOC officials have disputed that point, saying that other locations have “more than adequate capacity” to accommodate the number of Rockview inmates in specialized treatment units.
Relocation “can also pose threats to the physical safety of inmates, especially vulnerable populations such as the mental health roster inmates at Rockview,” Higgins said.
The county has received “a number of heartfelt letters” from employees and inmates at Rockview, Higgins said. Among them was one from an inmate who feared violence as a new inmate at another facility.
“Imagine the unintended and reckless impact of potential violence like assault, rape and extortion the most vulnerable will likely be subject to,” Higgins read from the letter. “To use a common and demeaning predatory prisoner term, we would be ‘fresh meat’ to predators at another facility.”
Commissioner Amber Concepcion said that even though the DOC system can currently absorb the transfer of inmates, she worried about the safety issues that increasing capacity levels presents.
“I think the state DOC is looking at is that it’s only at about 82% of the capacity,” Concepcion said. “However, that doesn’t really speak to what is like an optimal capacity. And we know that the closer you get to 90% and above, the more risk there is in terms of the safety for inmates and for personnel in those facilities. So there’s some really optimal level of capacity, and we don’t want to go above that optimal level of capacity if we’re thinking about safety for everyone involved in those SCI facilities.”
Not addressed in the letter, though raised as a concern by commissioners previously, is what will happen with Rockview’s 5,700 acres, much of it rolling farmland between the State College and Bellefonte areas, if the prison does close.
Deputy Secretary of Corrections Christopher Oppman said during Monday’s budget hearings that the state would need to maintain some of it because it also serves Benner Township prison.
“There is a corridor of a reservoir that was just recently updated in water treatment and that reservoir provides water to both facilities. So there is a good section of the property of Rockview that we would definitely have to maintain because it provides utilities to the facility,” Oppman said, adding that the prison’s forestry program, K9 unit and mail security processing center would continue to be supported by Benner.
For any property that would be sold off, that would be in the hands of the Department of General Services and would require legislation. Harry said she knows there are people who havde “shown interest in the land at Rockview for quite some time now.”
“There are parts of the land that [would still be] utilized by SCI Benner. So once we parse out all of that, certainly that’s something for a discussion for the Department of General Services, the communities,” Harry said.
Per state law, the proposed closure is now in a three-month public feedback period before any final decision is made. DOC Secretary Laurel Harry said on Monday that the department has reached out to stakeholders and invited feedback.
The commissioners are hopeful that their input will be effective.
“In addition to the employees and their families, there will be significant harm to the citizens and economies of Centre, Clearfield and Clinton counties resulting from these closures,” Higgins said. “Ultimately, any savings at the state level is being taken from these local counties in the form of losses. We strongly urge the Department of Corrections to reconsider the proposed course of action before a potential disaster occurs.”
The DOC has scheduled a public hearing on the proposed Quehanna closure for 5 to 8 p.m. on April 10 at Community Alliance Church, 34136 Frenchville Karthaus Highway, Karthaus. A hearing in Centre County for the proposed Rockview closure has not yet been scheduled.
In the meantime, state Rep. Paul Takac, D-College Township, is holding five listening sessions for public input on the proposal in March and April. Feedback can be submitted directly to the Department of Corrections by emailing ra-crdocclose@pa.gov or by leaving a voicemail at 888-316-8950.
