Jail As Animal Shelter?
The idea — to operate a shelter at the Monroe County PA jail — isn’t without precedent, and could yield benefits beyond what a normal shelter provides.
The Pennsylvania SPCA closed its Monroe County shelter Thursday after 50 years of operation, citing lack of community support and money. Prisons around the country provide a wide variety of programs involving animals, from pre-adoption training to full shelter services. In Maricopa County, Ariz., famed Sheriff Joe Arpaio — better known for issuing inmates pink boxer shorts — converted an old jail into a shelter and staffed it with corrections officers and female inmates to care for the animals. “I think it’s a great idea. It shouldn’t be discounted,” said state Rep. Mario Scavello, R-176.
Scavello, who suggested the idea, said the benefits would go beyond the care of the animals. “It’s a therapy for the prisoners and it teaches them to care for somebody. It teaches the prisoners a sense of responsibility. It can become a trade for these inmates. And rather than play basketball and watch cable television all the time, we will have productive inmates,” he said … “All we need is to put some type of facility in there to house the animals,” he said. “I’d like to see the commissioners look into this. If I were a county commissioner, I’d be doing it now. I’d find the dollars to do it” …
But there are practical obstacles too. Such as supervision of inmates by the sheriff’s department. “We use prisoner work details, but we have more work than prisoners. It’s up to the sheriff. He knows how many deputies he has. But we are not going to take on and run the shelter. We don’t have enough hours in the day,” she added. And then there’s the problem of security classification. Only minimum security prisoners could be used for such work, and she said the Monroe County Correctional Facility houses a rougher mix. Some of the shelters operating at prisons are in rural counties that don’t have the types of violent criminals Monroe County has.
There is a lot more information on this idea at the Pocono Record.