1,100 Pa. prisoners return from Michigan

    More than a thousand Pennsylvania prisoners who had been housed in Michigan have returned to the commonwealth.

    Pennsylvania sent the 1,100 inmates to Michigan, and another thousand to Virginia, to deal with overcrowding in its corrections system.

    The prisoners have returned because Pennsylvania’s prisoner population has leveled over the past year.

    Pennsylvania had been paying Michigan $62 a day for every exported prisoner, which added up to about $480,000 a week.

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    Corrections spokeswoman Susan McNaughton said it took about a month to bring them back.

    “We started the process the later part of April, and we did several trips over each week, with the last trip this past week,” said McNaughton. “So now all of the inmates who were housed in Michigan are now back in Pennsylvania state prisons.”

    Earlier this year, Corrections Secretary John Wetzel said his department would also bring the Virginia prisoners back to Pennsylvania this year.

    But McNaughton said the inmates will remain there for now, with the goal of returning them as soon as it’s feasible.

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