The state Department of Corrections has lifted the final requirement of an agreement aimed at relieving overcrowding at Schuylkill County’s jail.

“They basically feel that we’ve corrected what we needed to correct,” Prison Board and Commissioners’ Chairman George F. Halcovage Jr. said Wednesday.The state in May 2016 ordered the county to stop committing inmates whose sentences fell between six months to five years until it consistently kept its average monthly population at or below 277.It lifted the restriction in August after the county kept the population down by sending overflow inmates to prisons in Centre, Columbia, Delaware and Berks County at a cost of $60 to $72 per inmate per day.Also last August, county commissioners and the county prison board signed a new one-year agreement with the state that allowed new inmates to be committed, but required the county to continue to report prison population numbers every two weeks and keep the numbers under 277.In a letter to the county from Department of Corrections Executive Deputy Secretary Shirley Moore Smeal, the state lifted the reporting requirement.“The county’s work to address its census issues and to abide by the reporting requirements during the term of the agreement is to be commended,” she wrote.However, Smeal warned Schuylkill it has yet to find a “long-term solution to address internal capacity management. The Department encourages the county to address the temporary bedding concern, which will be reviewed for compliance in future annual inspections,” she wrote.The bedding concern refers to a practice known as triple celling, where three inmates share a cell.As of Wednesday morning, 21 inmates were triple celled, according to Warden Eugene Berdanier.The county continues to work to alleviate overcrowding. As of Wednesday, the population was 256. A total of 37 inmates were housed in jails outside the county. Fifteen at Berks County, seven at Centre County, one at Columbia County, and 14 at Snyder County.County officials last month hired Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates of Mechanicsburg for a proposal to update a 2008 needs assessment it had done so the county can more accurately determine the specifications for an intermediate punishment center.The county in April sought requests for qualifications for long-range plans for a center to ease overcrowding.They asked five companies, including Crabtree, to respond with various options for brick-and-mortar centers, programs, or combinations of both.The others were Heim Construction Company, Orwigsburg; Fedetz & Martin Associates, Allentown; Core Civic, Nashville, Tennessee; and Geo Reentry, Houston, Texas.The updated needs assessment will research prison population projections for five, 10 and 20 years to properly size the center.Once the assessment is done, commissioners will review the proposals and select a consultant for the construction, and possible operation and programming, of the center.