By Joseph Bell

Record Staff Writer

If it was easy, everybody would do it.
That's the way Elk County Prison warden Greg Gebauer looks at his job maintaining the county's jail.
"There are many challenges in this field and the biggest undertaking that I've had so far has been new regulations," Gebauer said. "In 2010, the Department of Corrections will inspect all county prisons for these new regulations and that has been a huge undertaking for me since I took over in 2007.
"All of the new regulations require specific policies and the documents, the regulations are probably at least 70 pages thick and all through it is having specific policies addressing certain things. That's basically what I've been doing, just trying to get all the policies going."
Recently, overcrowding at the county prison has also caused heightened concern.
"The overcrowding condition that we've been facing, and pretty much all county prisons have been facing it lately, but it's been an issue for us for about the last year or so," Gebauer said. "Since August of this year, we've been at almost full capacity. When the new facility was opened in 1996, we were only about 30 to 35 inmates.
"Now we're housing around 70, plus or minus, and that's always an ongoing issue for us."
Once the prison reaches full capacity, Gebauer said he has to find another facility to house additional inmates.
"We usually use surrounding counties but we're finding out that these facilities don't usually have room either," Gebauer said. "That becomes difficult at times, managing the facility when we're totally full."
Prison officials also are experiencing difficulty with 'dual diagnosis' inmates, individuals who are diagnosed as having a mental health issue in addition to drug/alcohol dependancy.
"We've been seeing more and more of the dual diagnosis offenders and with their problems, we do require unique treatment due to the dual diagnosis," Gebauer said. "They need mental health treatment and they have to have drug and alcohol treatment for them.
"We're fortunate to have some of the programs in the community that can offer treatment to these offenders and we do have them here in the facility. But when an inmate requires inpatient mental health treatment, that's usually where we're finding it difficult. The state forensic hospitals are pretty much the only places where a corrections facility can house an inmate with a mental health problem."
However, another problem emerges as there are only two such hospitals in the state that Elk County can use.
Warren State Hospital can house less than 100 inmates while Torrance State Hospital, a facility located in Indiana County, houses less than 200 inmates.
"Warren doesn't house any female inmates so if we'd have a female mental health offender that requires inpatient treatment, the only facility that we could use would be Torrance," Gebauer said. "If those facilities are full, then we have to be put on a waiting list and have to try to manage the inmate here until there's room.
"So we're trying to manage a mental health inmate when we're not mental health professionals. That is one of our problems that we have here. Even though we're a small county and a small community, we are seeing more and more mental health offenders and dual diagnosis offenders."