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By JOHN RISHEL
jrishel@lockhaven.com
McELHATTAN -- The Clinton County Correctional Facility received good news from the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) Audit.
PREA Auditor Patrick J. Zirpoli, who conducted the audit last week, reported the prison exceeded in 11 standards, and met the remaining 34 standards.
"This is a major improvement from the 2016 audit where he had exceeded in just two standards," Warden Angela Hoover reported at the prison board meeting Wednesday.
In a letter addressed to the board, Zirpoli stated that he "found the operations, culture, and overall safety and security of the Clinton County Correctional Facility to be unprecedented."
The Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA) is the first United States federal law intended to deter the sexual assault of prisoners. The bill was signed into law on Sept. 4, 2003.
The U.S. Congress, within the text of PREA, provided an estimation that at least 13 percent of the inmates in the United States have been sexually assaulted in prison.
All adult prisons and jails, juvenile facilities, lockups (housing detainees overnight), and community confinement facilities, whether operated by the Department of Justice or a unit of a state, local, corporate, or non-profit authority covered under PREA, must be audited at least once during every three-year audit cycle to be considered compliant with PREA standards.
An audit of a medium-sized facility typically takes at least five working days, according to the PREA Resource website, including approximately three days of work at the facility touring the physical plant; interviewing staff, contractors, and volunteers; interviewing inmates/detainees/residents; and reviewing facility records.
If the PREA auditor determines that a facility "does not meet standard" with respect to any standard provision, the auditor and the agency then develop a corrective action plan. Within 180 days, the auditor is required to verify implementation of the corrective action plan, issue a final determination, and complete a final PREA audit report.
"It is about protecting our detainees and our staff," Hoover said. "A big part of that is having the auditor talk to our staff to make sure they are knowledgeable of their role, observing interactions, reviewing log books. Zirpoli did provide a few suggestions for improvement, nothing major, and we were correcting them before he left the building."
"I commend you and your staff on that," said county commissioner Pete Smeltz.
Hoover noted that the "full 96 page report is available on the county website," clintoncountypa.com/departments/CCCF/index.shtml.
More information on the PREA Act can be found at prearesourcecenter.org.
The prison board also approved a motion to extend their contract with Zirpoli through the next audit cycle of Aug. 20, 2019 to Aug. 19, 2022.
"This allows us to retain Zirpoli as well as schedule our next audit for the first year of the three year audit cycle," Hoover said. "He is available to us 24/7. Any time we have questions, concerns or any kind of incident, he is available to us."
In other business, the warden reports that a new art therapy program for female detainees began on Feb. 4, with Deborah Kincaid, registered art therapist of Karibu Arts, 306 N. Grove St., Lock Haven, serving as the group facilitator.
"The first session went very well; 16 women signed up, which is a high number considering our female population. They are now actually doing two sessions to keep the groups at eight detainees. It is very popular, and I have heard nothing but positive things," Hoover said.
Kincaid opened Karibu Arts last month, a non-profit agency whose mission is to restore dignity and self-respect, through arts, to women that are in or have been released from the prison system.
For the month of January, the warden reports an average Clinton County detainee population of 63 males and 19 females, and an average of 156 outside agency per diems.
The warden reports that the prison is operating with a full complement of correctional officers, with 58, and plans to hire eight part-time officers by the end of the month. After two resignations and one termination, three full-time positions were then immediately filled with trained part-time COs.
Reported overtime hours for the month of January totaled 30 hours, which Hoover said "is substantially lower than any monthly total in recent years. Compare that to January of 2018, where we had 829 hours of overtime," she reported.
There were 445 total overtime hours by the officers in the month of December last year and 836 total overtime hours in the month of November, the warden said.