Prison warden sees way to get inmates more to read
Nov. 17—Lackawanna County Prison inmates may have easier access to books and magazines soon.
Warden Tim Betti discussed a proposal to provide an unspecified number of books and magazines to inmates' tablet computers during a county Prison Board meeting Wednesday.
Betti said OverDrive Marketplace, a leading provider of digital content to public, school and other libraries is offering to provide books, magazines and other publications for $8,750 a year. The prison could pay that from the inmates' canteen fund. The fund contains money that family members contribute so inmates can buy goods from the prison commissary. Commissary earnings also go into the fund.
The publications would be free to inmates.
"There was quite a selection," Betti said in response to a question from Judge James Gibbons, the Prison Board chairman. "Again, I didn't go through and really study it all that closely, but there was a good variety of genres to go through. Fiction, nonfiction, you know, some things I've never heard of, some I heard of."
The prison now has enough tablets for every inmate, Betti said.
Gibbons raised the possibility of gaining access to the Lackawanna County Library System's online publications. Betti said he plans to talk to the library system about that. The board took no action on Betti's proposal, preferring to wait for the outcome of the library system discussions.
In other business, Gibbons said he and Betti talked to officials at the Advocacy Alliance about providing behavioral health services to inmates.
County Commissioner Debi Domenick raised the issue for the second month in a row. At the board's October meeting, Domenick expressed unhappiness at the attrition of a five-person team of mental health professionals that she helped put together.
Betti said he planned to ask Outreach Center for Community Resources in Scranton to provide the treatment, but Domenick said Wednesday that Outreach has never provided mental health treatment. She asked Betti for an alternative, and Gibbons said he and Betti met with alliance officials.
Domenick also raised the possibility of an outside organization studying prison staffing needs. Last month, Betti said he need more prison guards rather than to replace three mental health professionals who departed, though he wouldn't mind having both.
Betti acknowledged Wednesday the previous treatment setup worked and Domenick suggested hiring an outside organization or person to study prison staffing needs.
Gibbons said he would discuss the matter with Thomas J. Earley, a consultant who extensively studied prison operations in 2016, a study Domenick cited.
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