The Cumberland County Prison Board last week advanced a proposal to hire a third drug and alcohol case manager to handle a projected surge of inmates needing treatment services.
The current caseload of 28 inmates could double or possibly triple within the next year as the prison implements its Medication Assisted Treatment program, Warden Travis Shenk said last week.
“We need to be able to provide the proper counseling and groups for these individuals,” he said. “So, it’s necessary to have a third person as a case manager.
“The prison board approved us to move forward with the concept paper to HR [human resources] and the salary board to see if it’s something that can be done,” he said.
If the third manager position is approved, the county would use opioid settlement money to pay the estimated $87,000 in starting salary and benefits, Shenk said.
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Pending salary board approval, the goal is to post the job in December with the hope of getting the position filled by February, he added.
County prisons in Pennsylvania face an unfunded mandate brought on by court rulings handed down in recent lawsuits involving inmates receiving the most common treatments for opioid use disorder. Under the rulings, prisons must pick up the cost of continuing these treatment protocols for each inmate during the length of their local prison term.
It is projected that the county could receive an estimated $9.3 million from two multi-state opioid settlements in 18 payments over 17 years. This past summer, the county was working on a plan to spend down by late June 2024 about $769,560 from its first two payments of this settlement money.
In a months-long investigation, the Tulsa World found that drug rings run by inmates using smuggled cellphones is on the rise, despite efforts to thwart their use.
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