As the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread through the country, advocates and nonprofits are urging county jails and state prisons to reduce their inmate population.

However, the Butler County Prison Board said it has no plans to reduce the jail's population, which usually hovers monthly around 250 inmates, according to data from the jail.

At the Butler County Prison, officials have implemented their own form of social distancing, and inmates who have a fever or exhibit other symptoms related to the virus are being separated from the general prison population, according to Warden Joe DeMore. So far, no one in Butler County's jail has been confirmed to have the virus. And only one person was tested after he falsely claimed to be infected, according to an earlier report.

But Butler County's Chief Public Defender Kevin Flaherty wants more inmates to be released.

“We're trying to get more people out of jail. We'd like to see as many nonviolent people out of jail as possible. Unfortunately, we don't have a magic wand to just make that happen. We can just present our best case and ultimately it's up to a judge to determine if the person is worthy of being released,” Flaherty said. “If a person is nonviolent and not a threat to society they should probably be out but that's ultimately the call of the judge with district attorney's position being taken into consideration.”

Ashley Adams, director of nursing at the Butler County Prison health unit, said jail officials are taking precautions outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for correctional facilities.“We're following it to the letter,” Adams said. “Staying up to date with that — isolation protocols — protective personal equipment as needed, monitoring all staff and inmates as they come through the door.”She added that they “treat everybody as if they're positive so that we don't drop our guard.”Prosecuting cases is “business as usual,” according to District Attorney Richard Goldinger.“We're not taking any initiative to assist people getting out of jail because of pandemic,” Goldinger said.A nonprofit, the Prison Policy Initiative, called on local jails to reduce their inmate population because they are “even less equipped to handle pandemics than state prisons, so it is even more important to reduce the burden of a potential pandemic on jails,” the organization's director, Peter Wagner, said in a prepared statement.The organization, which aims to reduce mass incarceration, suggested officials reduce admissions to jails in the first place by setting affordable bonds and releasing nonviolent offenders on pretrial supervision.“Sadly, bail is often used as a wealth test for freedom rather than a test of dangerousness or likelihood to show up for court. But consider this: if your facility is currently holding people who would be released if they could come up with a small amount of money, why are you still holding them?” Wagner said in the statement.Goldinger said that since the jail is taking precautionary measures, there's no need to worry about the jail's population.

“Warden Joe DeMore is way ahead of the curve on this and is prepared for any outbreak,” Goldinger said. “He has been really proactive on this and on top of it. I don't see any need to do anything besides business as usual.”Throughout the country, there are 2.3 million prisoners who live in “epidemiological tinderboxes,” according to Jody Lewen of the Prison University Project in a letter calling on authorities to take additional safety measures.And on Sunday, a Pennsylvania state prison facility reported its first confirmed case of the coronavirus, sending the state's prisons — not county jails — into lockdown.The state Department of Corrections' order implements a statewide quarantine, where inmates movements will be controlled to conform to social distancing recommendations and they will be fed in their cells, according to an announcement Monday made by the corrections Secretary John Wetzel.