The number of inmates housed at Schuylkill County's jail had dropped to 221 as of Wednesday morning, the lowest in years, said Commissioners' Chairman George F. Halcovage Jr.

But that doesn't necessarily mean the state Department of Corrections will rescind its May 4 order that bars admission of defendants sentenced to maximums of six months to five years.The state issued the order to relieve overcrowding at the jail on Sanderson Street in Pottsville.The county has been sending inmates to other prisons to try to comply with the state's demand that it reduce the prison population a monthly average of no more than 277 for three consecutive months.Halcovage, who is also chairman of the county Prison Board, said that as of Wednesday, 39 Schuylkill County inmates were being housed at the George W. Hill Correctional Facility, Delaware, and 12 at the Centre County prison.It costs Schuylkill $60 a day per inmate, so the total expenditure on Wednesday was $3,060.It costs Schuylkill $44.23 to house each inmate in its own jail each day.In addition to Delaware and Centre County, Schuylkill has also signed an agreement with Columbia County to take inmates, and is fine-tuning an agreement with Berks County.The diversion is a stopgap measure while the county figures out how to keep population down at the jail, built in 1851.Officials are working to create a drug court, which would funnel addicted defendants into strictly supervised treatment programs in an effort to keep them out of jail.Several years ago, the county explored building a pre-release center adjacent to the state correctional facility at Mahanoy, but that plan fell through after it became too expensive.