In Centre County, the prison continues to take inmates from neighboring counties while also maintaining stepped up COVID testing procedures.
“Yeah, it’s actually everybody, even if they’re from Centre County,” explains Centre County Commissioner Michael Pipe. “There’s a period of quarantine and we work with them to verify their vaccination status.”
The county recently renewed a long term COVID testing program.
“These tests we purchased are for a year from now,” Pipe said. “So, it gives us breathing room as we go into next year.”
Whether it was COVID, or other issues the county prison was seeing a lot of turnover in staffing.
That’s decreased with the minimum wage for prison employees raised to $15 an hour.
“Thankfully, that temporary wage increases greatly reduced the issue we were having,” Centre County Commissioner Mark Higgins added.
It costs neighboring counties $65 a day for each inmate they send to the Centre County Prison.
