Mirco-roller switches used in cell door locks at the Carbon County Correctional Facility could soon be obsolete, officials learned Wednesday.

Charles Neff, maintenance supervisor at the prison, told the Carbon County Prison Board that the switches are 22 years old, and Moyer Electronics has scoured the country for replacements, only finding eight in California."If we can't get the micro switch inside the lock, we may have to replace the whole lock mechanism," Neff said.While the switches are just $11 apiece, replacing the locks could cost "upward of $1,850 apiece."Neff said the prison has 56 of the micro switch type locks.Going to a retrofit lock would cost over $1,500 apiece."We ordered the eight switches, and that only takes care of four locks, so we're really hoping we can find more," he said. "We're checking with a company that's just starting out to see if they'll carry them."Inmate totalsThe prison was down to 213 inmates at one point last week, Warden Timothy Fritz said, but by Wednesday, the number was back up to 243."It's surprising to see such a spike and decline, but there are several factors that contribute to it," he said. "We had a lot of females complete their sentences and some other individuals out on bail."Following that, we had a lot of people brought in on bench warrants for either missing sentencing or parole/probation violations," he said.District Attorney Jean Engler said the court saw a high number of guilty plea and sentencing days recently.Fritz expects the numbers to again go on the decline."We had some people here for court who will be returning to another prison early next week," Fritz said. "Some of our inmates were also sentenced to state incarceration and will be sent out."