A Philadelphia corrections officer is facing charges after prosecutors said he helped an inmate smuggle nearly $70,000 worth of illegal substances into a Philadelphia prison in exchange for money.
Three people are facing criminal charges for an alleged conspiracy to smuggle contraband, including drugs and cellphones, into the Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center. Prison guard Haneef Lawton, 33, is accused of working with an inmate and his girlfriend to bring the drugs into the facility in exchange for bribes.
Councilmembers of Philadelphia’s Public Safety and Inmate advocates question the vaccination efforts of the Department of Prisons
The Covid-19 pandemic has put a spotlight on vaccination attempts being done by the Philadelphia Department of Prisons. This spotlight was shone at a Joint Committee meeting of the Philadelphia City Council on March 17 as they questioned the testing efforts of the prison department, as well as Covid-19 positivity rates in the prisons.
Philadelphia Department of Prisons releases a daily census of positivity rates and mortalities. There’s about 1136 adult males in the Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center (PICC) with COVID-19 according to the Department of Public Health’s website. In addition, there’s 32 juvenile males in Riverside Correctional Facility (RCF) with COVID-19. Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility (CFCF) has the highest positivity rates in the PDP system with 2326 male prisoners with COVID-19.
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Some Philly jail locks can be easily disabled, staff warn, as violence continues Samantha Melamed, The Philadelphia Inquirer
On March 12, two prisoners at the Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center “breached” their cell doors and they and their cellmates all dived into a brawl that resulted in minor injuries, according to an internal report obtained by The Inquirer. Staff pepper-sprayed them and returned them to their cells where one of the men broke out of his cell again, an hour later, to fight a different prisoner.
The lock mechanism was one of many concerns cited by staff, prisoners, and advocates at a heated City Council hearing Monday regarding the state of the city jails in the pandemic. They also warned of deteriorating building conditions, inadequate staffing, scant protections against the spread of the coronavirus, and a lack of contact tracing when staff are infected all as the jail population has risen to its highest point since the pand