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A Resolution of the Council of the County of Allegheny, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, establishing a working group to study possible mechanisms for recovering costs relating to the operation of the Allegheny County Jail and other costs incurred by the County's criminal justice system.
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WHEREAS, expenses relating to the operation of the Allegheny County Jail constitute a significant portion of the County’s 2015 operating budget; and
WHEREAS, for 2015 alone, the County appropriated $53,976,409 for the County Jail’s Division of Operations, and another $10,358,280 for the Jail Medical Division; and
WHEREAS, for 2015, the County’s operating budget reflected only $740,000 in anticipated cost recoveries, with $340,000 of those anticipated recoveries coming from the regional booking centers; and
WHEREAS, as a result, the County Jail’s operations and medical expenses for 2015 were budgeted at a total of over $64.4 million, with anticipated cost recoveries for its operations and medical expenses budgeted at a total of only $400,000, or 0.62% of the total; and
WHEREAS, other counties within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, perhaps most notably Lancaster County, have adopted programs of recovering at least some portion of the costs of operating their county jails, and of the costs of providing medical care to the inmates housed in those facilities; and
WHEREAS, the Department of Corrections in the State of Connecticut has created a Collection Recovery Unit in order to collect money from prisoners’ estates, inheritances, civil court winnings, lottery annuity payments and personal injury insurance claims in order to reimburse the state for services provided by the Department during the imprisonment of those individuals; and
WHEREAS, the expansion of Medicaid benefits under the terms of the Affordable Care Act may also render it possible to seek reimbursement of some of the costs associated with providing medical care to Allegheny County Jail inmates under ...
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