Meeting Set for Public Input on Outdoor Rec at Centre County Jail

A meeting scheduled for this week will give community members an opportunity to provide their ideas on possibilities for outdoor recreation at the Centre County Correctional Facility.

The county’s Board of Prison Inspectors will host the meeting from 6 to 8 p.m. on Thursday, March 6, at the correctional facility, 700 Rishel Road, Bellefonte.

After years of advocacy by community members, the Board of Commissioners in January approved a contract with TranSystems Corporation Consultants of Pennsylvania not to exceed $82,840 for a feasibility study of outdoor recreation options at the 20-year-old jail in Benner Township.

The study, which is expected to take about six months to complete, will “look at all possibilities for recreation, whether that includes expanding what we currently have or if that includes adding traditional outdoor exercise areas,” Warden Glenn Irwin said in January.

Pennsylvania law requires that all jails provide inmates “at least two hours daily, physical exercise in the open, weather permitting.” Centre County, however, has an indoor recreational area with openings for fresh air and spots of sunlight, but the only time incarcerated individuals are outdoors is when they are out for work release.

Among the 47 of Pennsylvania’s 62 county jails that responded to a Pennsylvania Prison Society survey in 2024, only nine reported not having “an outdoor, open-air recreation area in addition to a covered/enclosed exercise area for the general population.”