Pa. had fewer inmates in 2017. Did central Pa?

Across the board, Pennsylvania’s prison population is down, but in central Pennsylvania, the issue is a little more complicated.

This week, Gov. Tom Wolf announced that the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections had its fourth consecutive year of dropping prison numbers, going from 49,301inmates in custody in 2016 to 48,438 in 2017, a 1.8 percent dip year-over-year.

But what about Centre County and its surrounding area?

There are two state prisons in Centre County — old-school Rockview state prison and its newer sister facility Benner Township state prison.

Adjacent counties also play host to Pennsylvania facilities, including Houtzdale state prison and the Quehanna boot camp in Clearfield County and Huntingdon and Smithfield state prisons in Huntingdon County.

In the area, most prisons’ individual numbers are down if you look at capacity.

In December 2016, Benner was at 109.9 percent of its threshold while Rockview was at 104.7 percent. Today, they are at 102.8 percent and 104 percent, respectively. Huntingdon is down by 12.5 percent and Smithfield is down by 14.9 percent. The boot camp dropped by 6.1 percent.

Only Houtzdale went up, by 1.5 percent, making it the sixth-most overcrowded prison in the state at 106.4 percent of its capacity. It narrowly edged Huntingdon, which sits in seventh place at 106 percent.

But look at the actual number of prisoners in each facility, and only one, Quehanna, actually decreased in bodies. The boot camp went from 498 people in December 2016 to 447 in December 2017.

Every other area prison went up. Benner and Rockview had the smallest growth, with just 19 more men between them. Smithfield had 44 more, Huntingdon 50 more and Houtzdale had the largest growth with an additional 68 inmates.

So how did capacity go down while numbers went up? Because the capacity changed.

On the November 2016 monthly population report, each of the 25 prisons in the state had a different capacity listed than they did in December. Five — Quehanna plus Laurel Highlands, Mercer, Retreat and Waymart — went down. The other 20 all went up.

Benner’s new capacity is 2,039, up by 139. It’s now closer to Rockview, which rose by 26 to a capacity of 2,309.

Huntingdon had the highest boost at 260, followed by Smithfield, which went up by 201. Houtzdale increased by 32.

However, according to Bret Bucklen, the director of planning, research and statistics at the DOC, nothing really happened.

“We changed a source. It was an old data source for capacity. There wasn’t any actual change in number of beds. Just a change in data. This is more accurate. It needed to be done for a long time,” he said.

Bucklen said the dropping numbers had created empty beds across the prison system for years, including 800 at Camp Hill.

Changes were to be expected after the closing of Pittsburgh state prison. In January 2016, the state announced that five facilities were on the chopping block, with two planned to be shuttered. Only the Allegheny County prison, one of the oldest in the state, was closed, with its 1,803 inmate capacity absorbed by others in the system.

“The 2017 calendar-year reduction represents the single largest year-over-year decrease of inmate population on record,” Wolf said in a statement, pointing to his pleasure with both reducing crime and lowering costs.

The population had already been headed down, with a more than 3,000 inmate reduction between 2012 and 2017.

That is part of a national trend as well. Federal numbers peaked in 2013 and have declined annually since then.

This story was originally published January 26, 2018 at 4:42 PM with the headline "Pa. had fewer inmates in 2017. Did central Pa?."