Schuylkill County continues to keep its prison inmate population under the state’s mandated level, but at a cost to taxpayers.

The peak census in January was 241 inmates, according to Warden David Wapinsky’s report.

As of Wednesday, 43 inmates were sent of out of county prisons at a cost of $65-$70 per inmate per day. There are 32 to Centre County, one to Columbia County, eight to Northumberland County and two to Snyder County.

The county began sending inmates to other prisons in May 2016, when the state Department of Corrections and the county agreed to keep the population at a maximum of an average daily count of 277 in the aging jail on Sanderson Street in Pottsville.

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

The county has since 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.

However, the intermediate punishment facility project has yet to come to fruition.