“End the torture. No more jail deaths” was pasted on a banner held in front of Philadelphia’s City Hall, part of a rally held by dozens of people attempting to bring awareness to the violence and abuse that is plaguing Philadelphia’s prisons. Between chants of “No one knows when you die; the PDP always lies!” and “What do we want? Oversight! When do we want it? Now!” rally administrators paid tribute to the 46 people who have died within the Philadelphia Department of Prisons since 2020, according to the Abolitionist Law Center, which has been tracking the number through Right-to-Know requests.
“We really wanted to highlight and make aware the torture that has been happening in Philly’s jails and in particular highlight the extreme number of deaths that have occurred since 2020, which has been nearly 50. There is no accountability, no transparency, and no oversight over the Philly jails,” said Sam Lew, an organizer for the Abolitionist’s Law Center, the organizer of the rally on September 28th.
One proposed solution: implementing a Prison Oversight Committee, an independent oversight body dedicated to overseeing Philadelphia’s Department of Prisons. The proposed Committee, spearheaded by the Abolitionist’s Law Center’s Prison Oversight Board Advocacy Coalition and City Councilman Isaiah Thomas, is a response to the growing number of incarcerated deaths as well as the recent uptick in prison breaks, consistent staffing shortages, and a growing concern with prison conditions.
But the Prison Oversight Committee is just one of many reforms geared to creating a more just and fair Philadelphia criminal justice system. Below is an outline of multiple current reform proposals driven by community mobilizations and advocates working to better our correctional system.
“Right now, Philadelphia’s court system is really set up like a conveyor belt. The high number of cases being seen every day, a high number being arrested, [the system is] not able to handle the capacity of people that it’s processing every day.”
– Candace McKinley, Philadelphia Community Bail Fund
Ending Pretrial Detention & Probation Detainers
“The vast, vast majority of people who are incarcerated on State Road have not been convicted of a crime. They are there awaiting trial, or they were on probation and violated probation. That can be as simple as skipping meetings with their probation officer,” said Julie Zaebst, a member of the ACLU of Pennsylvania and Still We Rise Freedom Coalition, a group that works with women and other gender oppressed people incarcerated in Philadelphia.
Pretrial detainment occurs when either the detainee cannot make the bail set for them, or when the court refuses bail on the grounds of public safety and/or flight risk. People who are held pretrial have yet to face charges, have not received the opportunity to be represented in a court of law, and have yet to be proven guilty of a crime.
In the same breath, those who violate their terms of probation, be it by missing mandatory meetings or therapy, are held on a probation detainer and are incarcerated until they are granted the opportunity to appear before a back judge. In the court system, a back judge is the judge that heard the original case.
“If somebody has a probation detainer they can’t pay bail and come home and await the opportunity to see their back judge. They are stuck [in jail] until scheduling allows them to meet with their back judge. That’s sometimes months and months and months and months to get the judges schedule to align with the lawyers schedule to align with the court schedule,” Zaebst explains.
Zaebst categorizes limiting incarceration under probation detainers and pretrial detainment as central to the effort to decarcerate Philadelphia, which is necessary in order for prisons to return to a fully operational capacity.
The most recent report filed by a court-appointed independent prison monitor found that the PDP is currently operating at less than a 60% staffing capacity. With the employment deficit remaining relatively unchanged since 2020, the PDP needs to see an increase of about 800 sworn officers, or more feasibly, a 1,200 reduction of the prison population in order to operate safely and legally.
“People aren’t even getting basic things like toilet paper, soap, and clothing. There are people going into the intake, which is a room that typically you should only be in for a few hours, but people are there for days.”
– Sam Lew, Abolitionist Law Center
Ending Bail
Along with pretrial detention, bail is a condition that applies to those incarcerated prior to being proven guilty.
According to Philadelphia’s Rules of Criminal Procedure, bail is supposed to be set with consideration to a person’s ability to pay the set monetary amount. If a person is to be held without bail, an evidentiary hearing must prove that they are a danger to society and/or a flight risk.
According to these stipulations, pretrial detainment without bail is designed to be a last resort in order to maintain public safety. If other security measures, such as house arrest and electronic monitoring, fail to mitigate safety concerns, then detainment is applicable.
Data from the Philadelphia Community Bail Fund finds that Philadelphia’s cash bail trends disproportionately affects poorer communities and citizens of color are offered higher bail amounts than white counterparts when charged with the same crime. Additionally, those people held on bail pretrial are 9x more likely to plead guilty and 4x more likely to be sentenced to prison.
“Generally it is mostly low income, poor Black and Brown people from certain neighborhoods,” Candace McKinley, a lead organizer with the Philadelphia Community Bail Fund, said of trends within the cash bail system and Philly’s correctional system as a whole. “Right now, Philadelphia’s court system is really set up like a conveyor belt. The high number of cases being seen every day, a high number being arrested, [the system is] not able to handle the capacity of people that it’s processing every day.”
While the PCBF currently works to raise funds to post bail for Philadelphia residents, their long-term goal is to end cash bail in Philadelphia and implement a procedure similar to that in New Jersey, D.C., and Illinois, where “people just get reminders, a court date, a citation, and they come to court” says McKinley.
Making Parole More Accessible
From a legislative standpoint, advocates are currently pushing towards ending death by incarceration, also known as life without the possibility of parole sentences.
This policy is largely a result of minimum sentencing, where people who are implicated in a crime must serve a predetermined sentence attached to the charge. Life without parole is one of the most extreme. “That means you could have just been driving the getaway car, for example,” Sam Lew of the ALC says.
This issue often bleeds into the death sentence and minimum sentencing, but the ALC is currently only pushing for broader access to parole. “They would still have to go to the parole board and state their case, and have the parole board hear and determine what will happen. But just to make them eligible, is a really, really small but important thing that isn’t happening now,” Lew explains.
Under the same umbrella is the campaign for the passage of Pennsylvania state bill HB 587, which is still up for consideration. This would allow incarcerated people who have medical conditions or are over 55 years of age to be eligible for parole, as long as they’ve served 25 years or at least half of the minimum requirement, and have a serious medical condition.
Restricting Solitary Confinement
Over 2,000 people are held in solitary confinement on any given day in Pennsylvania, and the use of solitary confinement is often unregulated and at the guards’ discretion. Solitary confinement has proliferated to the point where today, one in every ten Black men in Pennsylvania are put into solitary confinement at some point in their life, with some incarcerated people in solitary confinement for 30 years. To put this into perspective, the United Nations describes torturous conditions to consist of solitary confinement for more than 15 days.
Many close watchers want to see Philadelphia follow Allegheny County’s footsteps. In 2021, a ballot initiative was passed there with nearly 70% of voter support prohibiting the use of solitary confinement along with a few other measures to improve prison life. In addition, progress has been made in New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut regarding excessive use of solitary confinement.
Creating a “New” Prison Oversight Committee
Aside from the systemic issues that are laced within the City’s correctional procedures, a spotlight has been cast on leadership as well. Specifically, the Philadelphia Department of Prisons, which is responsible for the poor conditions incarcerated people are currently living in.
“Huge wait times and inadequate medical care, both on the mental health and physical health side,” Lew said, listing off some of the most pressing criticisms. “People aren’t even getting basic things like toilet paper, soap, and clothing. There are people going into the intake, which is a room that typically you should only be in for a few hours, but people are there for days.”
Lew is not the only one concerned with prison conditions, as a court-appointed independent monitor found that the current staffing deficits lead to unsafe, illegal, and unconstitutional prison conditions. The report reads: “[T]he trauma experienced by Class Members is profound and clearly observable to all who work in, enter, or reside in PDP facilities. Exposure to extended periods of isolation, institutional violence, squalor, and neglect breach all standards for humane confinement and is certain to have lifelong effects for many.”
Julie Zaebst of the the ACLU of Pennsylvania expanded on the monitor’s findings of the poor physical conditions in jails. “We hear a lot about rodent and insect infestations. We hear a lot about infrastructure issues, like mold and peeling paint. And then the other concerns that we hear about are that folks are not getting the time that they’re supposed to have out of their cells. So this is often due to understaffing, and they may be locked in 23 hours a day or more, and only get the opportunity to come out once a day for a very brief period of time,” Zaebst said.
“People will tell us that they’re often choosing between taking a shower and making a phone call home to loved ones because that’s all the out of cell time that they get every day, which has a dramatic impact on folks’ mental health if they’re isolated day after day, week after week, month after month.”
Currently, Philadelphia’s prisons are overseen by the Prison Advisory Board, which has little binding authority and was described as a “farce” in a scathing op-ed written by a former member of the group. Prison advocacy groups and local politicians have looked at the Board’s failure to improve oversight and accountability within prison administration, or to make inroads with prison breaks and incarcerated deaths.
In response, Councilman Isaiah Thomas has been drafting an amendment to the City Charter that will create the Prison Oversight Committee, a board of community members charged with the safety and wellbeing of prison populations—and, essentially, do the work that the original Board has not.
The resolution was slated to be discussed at City Council’s Committee of Law and Government November meeting, but is currently facing delays.
“We’re just fine-tuning the details with our advocates and the legal department about what that would look like in terms of a charter change,” Max Weisman, Councilman Thomas’s communications director, recently told Metro.
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