BELLEFONTE — Centre County commissioners on Tuesday heard public concerns about conditions at the county jail and adopted a proclamation recognizing Justice Education Month, among other business.

The lack of outdoor recreation at the Centre County Correctional Facility was raised during public comment at Tuesday’s board meeting. While commissioners acknowledged the concerns, they said the facility meets state requirements and cited budget and staffing constraints as barriers to expanding recreation options.

Cynthia Carpenter, of State College, started the conversation when she raised questions about the status of outdoor recreation at the county jail.

“The decision making was turned over to the county commissioners, and at this point I haven’t been aware of any movement on it,” said Carpenter. “Everyday that outdoor rec is not established at CCCF is another day that the people incarcerated go without the healing effects of sunshine and nature — a necessity for people to exist.”

Lisa Maris, of Ferguson Township, who also spoke on the issue, said she only recently learned that outdoor rec is not being provided at the county jail.

“Although I am embarrassed about my prior ignorance, I am more concerned by the fact this has been brought to your attention for several years, and yet this very real problem is still not fixed,” she said.

Commissioner Mark Higgins thanked the women for speaking before saying, “This facility meets and exceeds all state requirements for a correctional facility.”

Higgins said the jail’s exercise room exceeds state size requirements and that a large garage door opens in good weather, allowing fresh air and birds to enter the facility.

“We take in tenant inmates from other counties. They love the facility, they have high praise for the facility, they do not want to leave when it’s time for them to go back to their home counties,” he said, also adding that the number of inmates from Centre County has decreased significantly over the last 12 years.

He said the population has fallen from 250 to 260 inmates at any given time to 98 at last check.

“No other county in the Commonwealth, possibly even the nation, has seen that large of a decrease in an inmate population, and yet we have no crime wave in Centre County,” Higgins said, crediting county staff and mental health services for inmates.

He said the commissioners are considering outdoor recreation options, but “at this point, though, we have a huge shortage of correctional officers, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime.”

While that challenge is not unique to Centre County, he said “until that particular issue is resolved, moving forward with a solution that could potentially involve the hiring of as many as a dozen additional corrections officers, at this point just isn’t on the table.”

Commissioner Amber Concepcion said they would see how the cost of the project fits into the prioritization of capital needs around the county.

“We have an $11 million budget up there. For the number of inmates that we have, that is a huge, huge number per capita, and quite frankly that’s all taxpayer real estate dollars,” she said. Commissioner Steve Dershem said, “I don’t see that we have the financial capability of taking on a project that would potentially be very expensive — not that I don’t see where you are coming from.”

On Tuesday, the commissioners also proclaimed April 2026 as Justice Education Month in Centre County, recognizing the work of Penn State’s Restorative Justice Initiative (RJI).

For more than a decade, RJI and Centre County Government have partnered to raise awareness of incarceration-related issues, support reentry programs and expand educational opportunities for justice-impacted individuals.

“It is an opportunity for us to celebrate and make visible a lot of the work that we often do behind the walls of the prisons and jails in the area,” said RJI’s Prison Education Program Manager Liana Cole.

The month will feature programming aimed at sharing the lived experiences of justice-impacted individuals, addressing barriers to successful reentry and fostering conversations about restorative justice.

The first event — a screening of the HBO documentary “The Nature of the Crime,” which examines the U.S. parole system and its complex bureaucracy — will be held tonight from 5:30 to 8 p.m. at the Dickinson Law Building.

More information about the month’s programming is available at www.ed.psu.edu/justice-education-month.