York County may spend $3.3 million to relocate central booking
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York County’s central booking, where criminal suspects are first processed, could be relocating from the Judicial Center in York City to York County Prison in Springettsbury Township.
The proposal, which marks a significant change in the day-to-day functioning of the county’s criminal justice system, would cost an estimated $3.3 million if approved by the Board of Commissioners. On Wednesday, the county’s Board of Prison Inspectors voted to move forward with planning the move.
While this change would streamline the booking process, particularly in cases where suspects require medical attention, it raised some opposition due to the additional travel time for some police agencies.
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York Area Regional Police Chief Tim Damon said he supported of the move to the prison, saying it would help promote efficiency for police officers. Currently, when police officers take suspects to central booking in the Judicial Center, there are times that they then need to be taken to a hospital for a checkup.
“What an officer has to do then is leave booking, take that [suspect] to York Hospital or a hospital and then wait,” Damon said. “And then they have to transport them back to central booking and go through that intake process again.”
Moving the booking process to the prison, Damon said, would mean the prison’s medical staff could conduct that checkup without requiring the officer to stay with the suspect.
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“It makes sense now to move it, for saving on transport and medical treatment,” Commissioner Doug Hoke said, at Wednesday’s prison board meeting.
President Commissioner Julie Wheeler was generally supportive of relocating central booking — she voted in favor of it at Wednesday’s meeting — but noted that several police departments raised concerns about travel time.
Wheeler did not respond to a request for further comment and it was not clear Wednesday which departments raised those concerns.
During the meeting itself, Hoke noted he’d received a letter from Windsor Township Chief David Arnold in support of moving central booking. Likewise, York County Sheriff Rich Keurleber spoke in favor of it.
“If there’s ever a time to make a move, the time is now,” Keurleber said.
This move comes after a feasibility study completed by civil engineering firm C.S. Davidson and County Engineer John Klinedinst.
“It would add a lot of features,” Klinedinst told the board Wednesday. That includes a secure sally port — where officers can easily enter and exit the facility — as well as holding cells and administrative offices.
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With the board’s approval, C.S. Davidson will now look to begin redesigning an area of the prison that will house central booking. Based on the feasibility study, the costs were initially estimated at $3.3 million.
Klinedinst said the project could be complete around November or December of 2023. A contract for the design phase will go before the Board of Commissioners for approval at some point in the future.
— Reach Matt Enright via email at menright@yorkdispatch.com or via Twitter at @Matthew_Enright.
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