Updated on May 13, 2021 at 6:58 am
What to Know
A rash of deadly violence has prisoner advocates asking for better conditions inside Philadelphia jails.
200 correctional officers have quit since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to city records.
The jail population dropped below 4,000 amid the coronavirus outbreak in 2020, but has since climbed back above 4,700.
The last time Eva Diaz spoke with her son, Frankie Jr., he was complaining about fellow inmates but looking forward to what he saw as his eventual release from the Philadelphia Detention Center.
“Next month, I go to trial. I know I m going to beat this and I ll be home,” she recalled him saying Aug. 16 last year. “I ll be alright. Don t worry.”
Unvaccinated prison staff are a danger
By Betsey Piette posted on May 6, 2021
Workers World has received letter after letter from workers incarcerated in Pennsylvania prisons expressing a common concern: “We are at risk of dying from COVID-19, and the only way the pandemic is getting into prisons is from the staff!”
Our incarcerated sisters, brothers and siblings describe a shared crisis: They are subject to 23-hour lockdown, denied visitations and isolated in cells without access to fresh air, exercise or even law library visits. Many who report COVID-19 symptoms are placed in restricted housing units, reviled as “the hole.”
Prisoners threatened with the psychological torture of solitary confinement are much less likely to report when they are sick, causing further spread of COVID-19. Yet prison staff can move unencumbered, unit to unit, block to block.
‘I have rights too’
By Miley Selena Fletcher
The following letter is from a transgender incarcerated worker at SCI Forest in Pennsylvania.
When I write for Workers World about the wrongs going on here and the unprofessional abuse of authority by correctional officers or staff, I am called down to a security office. I am told: “We’re only concerned about your safety.” Or they will say, “Why don’t you write us first?” even when I have written them first.
When I write them, nothing is ever done or the correctional officer or staff alike are still around you, so the individual can retaliate against you by filing false misconducts or try to intimidate you. Or as a prisoner, you are moved to another block or transferred for speaking up.
Updated: 9:51 PM EDT April 28, 2021
HARRISBURG, Pa. Even as vaccines become available in prisons and county jails, a majority of inmates are choosing not to get one.
Jails are known as COVID-19 hotspots where the virus can spread through communal spaces and shared cells.
Yet at Lancaster and Dauphin County Prisons, which both held their first vaccine clinic this week, only about one quarter of inmates volunteered to be vaccinated.
At Lancaster County Prison, 163 of the nearly 700 inmates got vaccinated on Tuesday, according to Warden Cheryl Steberger.
At Dauphin County Prison, about 220 people signed up but only 150 people ended up getting vaccinated on Wednesday out of more than 900 inmates, according to Director of Corrections Brian Clark.