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The move is significant for Bucks and Montgomery counties, which led the state in the number of state-sentenced prisoners serving time in county jail in 2006. The practice costs Bucks' taxpayers about $5 million annually and reform has been a long time coming, Corrections Director Harris Gubernick said. \"Now decisions could be made about what to build especially when you consider that against re-entry activity,\" he said. \"That's why building just to build doesn't make sense.\" In 2006 for example, the practice meant about 49 percent of Bucks' state-sentenced prisoners served time in Bucks' jail, and nearly as many -- 44 percent -- of Montgomery's state-sentenced prisoners served time in that county's jail, a Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing report showed.

According to its most recent prison population report, the county has seen a steady increase in the number of inmates it houses from 616 on average in 2002 to 672 this year. The county pays $60 a day to house 18 prisoners at facilities in Lackawanna and Monroe counties, and [Harris Gubernick] believes the number will increase. Gubernick said the county is seeing an increase in the number of \"high-risk\" inmates it houses, including those awaiting trial on homicide charges. The county has about 15 such inmates. While other counties are looking at alternative solutions to overcrowding such as house arrest or work release for low-risk inmates, Gubernick said the county has had these programs in place for some time.

Last week, commissioners approved an agreement with Lackawanna County to accept Bucks County's inmates if the population at the jail approaches maximum capacity. [Harris Gubernick] said that when the population approaches 700, it is necessary to start moving inmates elsewhere because some prisoners must remain in single cells for security or health purposes. From time to time, Gubernick said, Bucks inmates have been housed in the Monroe prison. When inmates must be moved, the county pays $60 a day per inmate to Monroe and Lackawanna. Gubernick said that is $25 a day less than it costs to house an inmate in Bucks.

Monroe has informed Bucks that it can accept no more female inmates, [Harris Gubernick] said, so prison administrators are contacting other counties as far away as Blair in western Pennsylvania to see if they have room. Gubernick said the prison has contracted with the Bucks County Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence to provide substance abuse and life-skills counseling to the inmates while they are awaiting trial. That program is expected to be in place by Aug. 1, Gubernick said. Gubernick said the pretrial house arrest program isn't expected to have much of an impact on the women's wing simply because there are fewer women incarcerated and, therefore, it is likely that fewer women will qualify for pretrial house arrest.

By barring visits during those periods, Corrections Director Harris Gubernick said, it is hoped that parking spaces on the jail's lot will be vacant for guards arriving for the 2 p.m. shift. Visitors arriving after 2 p.m. should be able to find places to park, he said, because spaces will open when corrections officers getting off their shifts at that time leave. Gubernick said that about 50 or 60 inmates typically receive visitors on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, and many of the visitors arrive at the jail in the early afternoon. Meanwhile, he said, about 90 staff members are scheduled to arrive for their shifts just before 2 p.m. All visitors and staff members must undergo pat-down searches and walk through a metal detector before they are admitted into the jail. Gubernick said the guards on duty in the prison lobby often find themselves facing large crowds of people arriving in the early afternoon. The staff members often have to wait in line to gain entry to the jail, Gubernick said, which contributes to making them late.

Bucks Corrections Director Harris Gubernick said Thursday that the county's high cost can be traced to the early 1980s, when officials started planning for construction of the jail. At that time, he said, the county government opted for \"direct supervision\" at the prison, meaning it decided that corrections officers would be stationed inside the cellblocks. According to the state's statistics, the cheapest prison that operated in Pennsylvania last year was the Wayne County Prison north of Scranton. Wayne County housed 80 inmates per day in 2003 at a cost of $22.81 per inmate. Indiana County, the most expensive, housed 68 inmates per day at its prison in western Pennsylvania. Montgomery and Lehigh counties did not provide complete statistics to the Corrections Department. Area counties that did report statistics were Northampton, which housed 684 inmates per day in 2003 at $78.28 per inmate; Monroe, 243 inmates a day at $78.80 per inmate; Carbon, 122 inmates per day at $59.39 per inmate, and Schuylkill, 220 inmates per day at $35.02 per inmate.

Monroe charges Bucks $60 per day per inmate to house up to 20 prisoners at its jail. Bucks Corrections Director Harris Gubernick said all those beds are occupied. Meanwhile, he said, only a handful of beds are open at the county's maximum-security jail in Doylestown Township. Gubernick said the Blair County Prison in Altoona is expected to open a women's facility this summer, which should free up space in Blair County's main prison. Gubernick said he hopes to find beds for Bucks inmates in the Blair prison, which is about 180 miles west of Doylestown.

The $32,000 partition was erected in the prison's multipurpose room. Under the configuration, visitors sit in booths, separated from the inmates by a plastic and glass partition running the length of the room. The only opening in each booth is a tiny circle lined with wire mesh designed to prevent contraband from passing through. Harris Gubernick, director of corrections, said it takes three guards to monitor visitation under the new configuration. Under the old system, seven guards were required. With fewer staff members needed for supervision, visitation has been available at the prison Wednesdays through Sundays since March 17. To enter the booths on the public side of the wall, a visitor has to walk through a metal detector and undergo a pat-down by a guard. Soon, visitors also will have to walk past an ion scanner, which is designed to tell whether they are bringing drugs or explosives into the jail by reading molecules that are blown off their bodies by a fan. Gubernick said components of the ion scanner are on order from the manufacturer.

On Monday, seven female inmates were transported to the Monroe County Prison because the women's population in the Bucks jail exceeded available bed space. Maximum capacity for the women's wing is 86. Women from the Bucks prison were transferred to the Monroe jail once before, in early February, when the women's wing was nearing maximum capacity. [Harris Gubernick] said corrections officials were concerned that a sudden influx of inmates would force them to scramble for bed space, so five women were transferred to Monroe County. The men's section of the prison, which has a capacity of 613 inmates, currently houses 574. The men's wings have been at maximum capacity from time to time over the past several months and male inmates have been temporarily housed in the Monroe County Prison, which agreed to accept overflow inmates from Bucks.

In February, the average daily population at the jail was 639, nearly twice as many inmates as the Doylestown Township facility was built to hold. [Harris Gubernick] said the jail hit an average daily population of 687 inmates in October, then started receding over the next three months, bottoming out at 611 per day in January. Gubernick said the jail's population included an average of 84 women a day in February. The county is now lodging five women in the Monroe County Prison because the Bucks jail no longer has room for all its female inmates. Chief Public Defender Stephen H. Shantz, a member of the Oversight Board, said the new system would be made available only to inmates who can't make minimal bails. He said a judge would have to approve each inmate for the pre-trial house arrest program. Gubernick said the prison has enough house-arrest monitoring equipment to keep track of 50 inmates.