{"id":216073,"date":"2026-06-11T01:54:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T01:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/216073\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T01:54:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T01:54:11","slug":"berks-county-hires-new-warden-to-oversee-jail-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/216073\/","title":{"rendered":"Berks County hires new warden to oversee jail"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Berks County Jail System is getting a new warden.<\/p>\n

The Berks County Prison Board on Wednesday authorized the appointment of Sean Smith to serve as warden starting July 13. He was most recently assistant warden of community corrections at Montgomery County Correctional Facility.<\/p>\n

The previous warden, Jeffrey Smith, stepped down from the post<\/a> last month after five years in the role to accept a position at Lehigh County Jail to be closer to his family.<\/p>\n

Following the appointment, Sean Smith thanked the board for having the confidence in him to lead the Bern Township facility.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will do this job with diligence and pride,\u201d he said. \u201cI look forward to working with everyone and thank you for this opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Berks County Judge Scott Lash, who serves as board chairman, said he believes Sean Smith will do a fine job based on his experience working in corrections.<\/p>\n

Sean Smith had built a career at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility, working his way up the ranks from a correctional officer to being named assistant warden in 2021.<\/p>\n

Commissioner Christian Leinbach said the fact that he has held so many titles over his tenure at the facility made him an ideal candidate for the position.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou came up through the system and I think that is so valuable,\u201d he said. \u201cThat gives you a certain level of credibility with the entire jail team that someone without that experience will have a tougher row to hoe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leinbach also thanked Deputy Warden Stephanie Smith for serving as interim warden while they conducted the search for a permanent replacement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Berks County Jail System is getting a new warden. The Berks County Prison Board on Wednesday authorized…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,182,200,139,28,128,130,129,10918],"class_list":["post-216073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-local-news","tag-montgomery-county","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-top-stories-tth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}