Schuylkill County officials have for years explored solutions to overcrowding in its 171-year-old prison on Sanderson Street in Pottsville.

Now that the Schuylkill Transportation System is moving, the building has joined the list of options.

STS is moving into a new $33 million building at the intersection of Route 61 and Wade Road. The county Transportation Authority purchased the 20-acre parcel in 2020.

The plan surfaced at a commissioners’ work session Wednesday when Jeffrey Dunkel, Port Carbon, told commissioners he had seen the plans and asked for confirmation on the plans and whether federal pandemic funds would be used to pay for it.

Commissioners did not answer his questions.

However, Commissioners’ Chairman Barron L. Hetherington after the meeting confirmed the STS building was being considered.

“We’ve kicked around several ideas,” he said. “Including the possibility of revamping the STS building.”

“We have consultants looking at a number of things,” he said.

Hetherington said officials are also mulling building a prerelease center and selling the STS building.

“That way, it would be put back on the tax rolls,” he said.

Commissioners in the past have attempted to build a prerelease center, which would house inmates who are serving short sentences, on work release, and preparing for release.

In 2008, officials studied buying a 4.6-acre parcel owned by the state Corrections Department near Frackville State Prison.

But the project was too expensive.

That same year, the commissioners hired Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates, Mechanicsburg, for $38,400 to update the county’s 2008 prison study to determine what the county’s needs will be over the next 20 years, with an eye toward a prerelease center.

In 2021, the county considered using federal pandemic relief funds to build a center. There has been no further public discussion on that.

The overcrowding caught the attention of the state Department of Corrections in May 2016.

The result was that the DOC and the county agreed to keep the population at a maximum of an average daily count of 277.

The DOC lifted the restriction three months later, after the county kept the numbers down by “outsourcing” inmates to other counties.

That solution is becoming increasingly expensive.

In 2021, the county budgeted $932,292 for outsourcing inmates. This year, that rose to $1.5 million.

Last month, the county shipped 41 inmates to other counties at a cost of $65-$70 per inmate per day. That’s a total of $2,665-$2,870 a day.

The county has long worked on plans for an intermediate punishment facility to help alleviate overcrowding, hiring Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates, Mechanicsburg, for $38,400 to update the county’s 2008 prison study to determine what the county’s needs will be over the next 20 years.

Most recently, they considered refurbishing a vacant supermarket on Progress Avenue in Pottsville, but that also fell through.