Confronted with significant flaws in coronavirus data, Pennsylvania corrections officials concede it s unacceptable mcall.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from mcall.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
York Daily Record
In one of the least populated, most rural counties of Pennsylvania, the coronavirus has spiked sharply just this week.
The high number of cases in Forest County center on the state prison located there. The county, which as no hospitals within its bounds, is southeast of Erie with a population of less than 8,000 people.
Among the inmate population of about 2,300 at the State Correctional Institute Forest, there are 858 positive, active cases of the coronavirus and another 24 active cases among the employees, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections.
Richard Parrett, the Forest County emergency services director, is worried about it.
bferry@timesobserver.com
In the midst of an outbreak at State Correctional Institution – Forest, the number of cases of COVID-19 in the county has more than doubled in a week.
On Jan. 14, the county had had 574 cases.
As of Thursday, that number was 1,245.
Of those cases, more than 1,000 are association with inmates and staff at SCI-Forest, according to statistics provided by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections.
Forest County’s rate is 17,179.5 cases per 100,000 population. That is almost twice as high as the rate in the county that is second highest. Mifflin County had 8,821.4 cases per 100,000 as of Thursday.
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On December 23, 2020, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court clarified an ambiguity in the state’s Right-to-Know Law (“RTK Law”), expanding the situations in which a requester can seek attorneys’ fees from an agency that denies a request in bad faith or based upon an unreasonable interpretation of the law.
See
Uniontown Newspapers, Inc. v. Pa. Dep’t of Corr., Nos. 76 MAP 2019, 77 MAP 2019, 2020 Pa. LEXIS 6488 (Dec. 22, 2020).
Until now, it was unclear whether obtaining a reversal of an appeals officer’s review of an agency’s decision was a prerequisite to a fee award. In its recent opinion, the Court held that such a reversal is not a prerequisite, and that prevailing requesters can obtain attorneys’ fees on appeal for bad faith regardless of an appeals officer’s determination. This ruling will allow requesters facing bad faith denials to consider more aggressively pursuing their requests on appeal even in si
Pa. prisoner on COVID crisis – Guards were the transmitters
Since Workers World received this letter, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections has confirmed nearly 7,000 cases of COVID-19 among prisoners and over 2,500 among staff, who are not subject to mandatory testing. Many prisoners who report COVID-19 symptoms have been placed in restricted housing units, reviled as “the hole.” Prisoners faced with the psychological torture of solitary confinement are less likely to report when they are sick, allowing for further spread of COVID-19.
Reports of deaths from COVID in Pennsylvania prisons vary widely
from 49 to over 65. It is difficult to verify since the PA DOC will only release the name of the first incarcerated person to die in each prison. In many cases, family members are not even being notified.