SUNBURY - A county prison official sought the court's help Monday to keep the facility's population below maximum.
The prison sentences for a pair of men on drunk driving charges were deferred after the courthouse received word that the prison was nearly maxed out, according to courthouse personnel.
There were 276 inmates jailed in Sunbury shortly before noon New Year's Eve. Brian Wheary, operations manager, said he could accommodate no more than 301.
"I don't want to say I'm not accepting inmates because I am," Wheary said. However, he said he called the county court to seek "leniency" to keep the population below full capacity.
Wheary said prison staff were working to transfer out-of-county inmates to other facilities in order to accept in-county inmates.
He said the population jumped by 12 inmates over the weekend after an unusually active holiday season for the facility. When he arrived for work Monday morning, Wheary said he was almost "out of beds" for any prospective inmates.
The male population was high, he said, while the female population was low. It was the opposite prior to this month's Northumberland-Montour Drug Task Force operation drug sweep that landed 32 people in jail in one day.
The population spiked to 284 with those jailings, and apparently has remained high, but in flux, ever since.
