It’ll be at least until the end of March before Schuylkill County officials have a better grasp on their options of resolving the problem of easing overcrowding at the 171-year old prison.

Commissioners last week agreed to extend until March 29 a contract with a Mechanicsburg firm that is updating a study of alternatives to sending overflow inmates to other counties.

Commissioner Gary J. Hess and Chairman Barron L. Hetherington, without discussion, approved the extension. Commissioner George F. Halcovage Jr. was absent.

The county has spent about $1.8 million so far this year on what officials call “outsourcing” of prisoners.

It costs taxpayers about $70 per inmate per day to do that. In September, 59 prisoners were housed in other counties.

Earlier this month, commissioners authorized financial director Paul E. Buber to transfer $520,000 from the contingency fund to the prison in part to pay for the housing.

About $445,000 of that amount is earmarked for the inmates’ out-of-county stays; however, Buber said about $200,000 in cost savings in other areas of the prison’s budget made it necessary to immediately use only $320,000 of that for the housing.

Overcrowding at the aging county prison, across from the courthouse on Sanderson Street in Pottsville, has been a burden for decades.

The problem peaked in 2016, when the state Department of Corrections determined the prison was routinely overcrowded, with too many prisoners housed three to a cell instead of the state limit of two.

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

That’s when the county found no other solution than to ship the excess inmates out of the county.

Among the other solutions was to build a prerelease center for inmates poised to be released from prison.

County officials have considered renovating the former Schuylkill Transportation System building in Saint Clair.

A plan to build a center near the state prison in Mahanoy was scuttled when it proved to be too expensive.

Commissioners in May hired Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates in Mechanicsburg for $28,000 to update the study they did in 2018. The firm also conducted a study, for the same purpose, in 2008.

In a related matter on Wednesday, commissioners approved a contract with Lehigh County to house “youthful inmates” who would otherwise be sent to the county prison.

That contract authorizes the county to pay $150 per inmate per day.