As Schuylkill County officials wait for the results of a $28,800 update on a 2018 study of options for a pre-release center for nonviolent inmates, taxpayers continue to pay about $70 per inmate per day to house prisoners in other counties.

As of June 14, 79 inmates were housed in other prisons, 58 in Centre County and 21 in Clinton County, said Warden David J. Wapinsky.

The price tag comes to $5,530 a day. That doesn’t include transportation costs.

Commissioners in May hired Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates, Mechanicsburg, to update the study they did in 2018. The firm also conducted a study, for the same purpose, in 2008.

The county last year budgeted $1.5 million to pay for the housing.

The county started sending inmates out-of-county in 2016, after the state Department of Corrections found the 171-year old prison on Sanderson Street in Pottsville was routinely overcrowded.

The state ordered the county to stop accepting new inmates, and capped the average daily population at 277.

That cap is easily topped at the aging prison.

Since at least 2008, the county has searched for a solution.

It’s explored a number of options, including using the former Schuylkill Transportation System building as a pre-release center.

Years ago, the county planned to build a center near the state prison in Mahanoy, but it never came to fruition because it was too expensive.