The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

These locally funded and managed jails operate with little public
scrutiny. They are not required to make public their annual state
inspections or the reports they file on unusual occurrences, from inmate beatings to suicides and murders. What's more, county officials would like to shut out the state's inspectors.

But an Associated Press review of two years of state inspection reports, obtained under a Right-to-Know request filed with the Pennsylvania Corrections Department, found many local jails are struggling to meet even minimum standards for safety, housing, food quality and medical care.

The reports provide a window on a system that has endured a string of
recent scandals - inmates accused of brutally beating new arrivals
(Somerset County), jailers charged with abusing prison labor
(Lackawanna) and work-release inmates accused of smuggling drugs back
into prison (Lawrence).

They also raise questions about whether system-wide reforms are needed.

Last year, inspectors found female inmates at Fayette County Prison in Uniontown housed in areas where they were given no privacy from male inmates. The Northumberland County Prison in Sunbury, with four showers for 177 inmates, failed more inspection categories in 2003 than it passed. And maintenance problems at the Lackawanna County Prison in Scranton last year included graffiti, rust, mold, flies and the use of sheets as cell carpeting.

In one county, a jail might offer dozens of programs to reintegrate
inmates into society, while a neighboring community's prison may be
nothing more than a "lock-and-feed" operation.

"Ninety-six percent of the people going into the jails and prisons are coming out, they're coming back onto the street, and so we as a society have to decide what's really important, and what's most cost-effective," said Jim Barbee of the U.S. Justice Department's National Institute of Corrections, which provides corrections training and other support.

The prisoner population of the state's county jails stands at about
30,000 at any given time. But the actual number of inmates who pass
through the jails each year is much higher - sometimes 10 times greater than a jail's average daily population.

Nationally, about 12 million people are admitted to 3,200 local jails
annually, according to the American Jail Association.

The Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh, one of the largest county jails under one roof on the East Coast, houses about 2,400 inmates at any given time but nearly 35,000 prisoners spent at least some time there last year.

County lockups house a diverse group of prisoners including defendants accused of murder and rape, convicted drunken drivers and child-support delinquents. Some are serving sentences - the vast majority less than two years - while many others are awaiting trial.

Joe Kramer, a Hummelstown carpet installer, served nearly four months in the Dauphin County Prison last year for assault and violating probation on a marijuana-possession conviction. Before going in, he said, "I just did not care at all about what it was like. But when I went to prison my whole view of prison and the people in prison changed."

Kramer claimed he was assaulted by guards, found himself eating meals
two feet from his cell's toilet and witnessed "pathetic" medical care.

Warden Dominick L. DeRose defends his operation. He said he can't
remember the last time the District Attorney's Office found an inmate's assault complaint was justified. But for Kramer, the stay there had a lasting effect.

"I still think about it to this day," Kramer said. "I've had nightmares, and waking up in the middle of the night."

William M. DiMascio, executive director of the Pennsylvania Prison
Society, which advocates for improved prison conditions, said the public should realize that many people who spend time in county jails are not going to be convicted.

"So they're innocent people who are now made to live in these kinds of conditions. We ought to be up in arms about this," he said.
DiMascio said tougher sentencing laws, particularly in drug cases, are behind the surge in the jail population - which has quadrupled over the last two decades."The fact of the matter is that we don't treat, in any meaningful way, this addiction problem," he said. "You have addictive behavior; going to jail isn't going to stop it."

Other societal problems are also concentrated in jails, including
infectious disease, mental illness, illiteracy and racism.

"The transiency of the population, it presents problems that are hard to understand," said Tom Schlager, one of two Corrections Department
inspectors who crisscross the state each year, inspecting county jails for compliance with 25 categories. "You're dealing with people that you don't have a whole lot of information about."

Even with significant redactions by the Corrections Department, the
2003-04 inspection reports show that more than half the state's county jails did not fully meet state standards for housing and food.

"It's the basic, it's the minimum standards," Schlager said. "These
aren't some lofty goals."

Fourteen jails scored a perfect 100 by complying with state standards in all 25 categories last year, up from 12 the year before.

Some categories were passed by nearly every jail, including prisoner
hygiene, mail handling and access to legal resources.

Pennsylvania is one of more than 30 states that require local jail
inspections. A failed inspection does not result in state penalties,
although poor reports can raise liability-insurance premiums or be used in lawsuits as evidence administrators neglected problems.

"If you have an inspection report that continues to show that you're not complying, or you're not making any effort to correct those issues, absolutely it would be fuel for litigation," said Julio M. Algarin, warden of the Montgomery County Correctional Facility in Eagleville and
president of the Pennsylvania County Prison Wardens Association.

Angus R. Love, a lawyer with the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, has won landmark court rulings in lawsuits over prison conditions. He said most problems are due to a lack of resources.

"To be fair, they're really being asked to do more and more and more,
and every county has responded differently to this tremendous surge in population," Love said. Jail operations currently consume about 9
percent of a typical Pennsylvania county's budget.

The role crowding plays in a jail's operations was vividly illustrated last year after Clinton County opened a 138-bed expansion. Before that, its state inspection score was a 64 out of 100; afterward, it received a 92.

But new construction is expensive. The County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania estimates that counties have poured about $1 billion over the past decade into building, renovating or expanding their jails, and some counties are starting to look for ways to cut their populations.

A statewide task force studying county jails found that about half are overcrowded or at imminent risk of overcrowding, and many counties don't collect basic information about inmates that might help them lower prisoner populations through better management.

"We've seen some need for infrastructure improvement, and of course
there's a better way to manage the existing resources they have," said retired Monroe County commissioner Jim Cadue, the study's program manager.

Some wardens use the inspection reports as a blueprint for improving
their jails. But others complain that the inspections create an unfunded state mandate that hands ammunition to lawyers and can unfairly embarrass their workers.

In August, the County Commissioners Association passed a resolution
asking for the ability to have some other entity perform the
inspections. The resolution described relations between inspectors and
"many" county jails as adversarial.

"We tend to shoot the messenger," said the Corrections Department's
Schlager, formerly a jail warden in three Pennsylvania counties.
"Sometimes when we hear what the realities are, we don't like it."

The Corrections Department has been drafting revisions to the jail
inspection law. Potential changes include giving the department greater authority to evaluate poorly performing jails.

Experts say citizens hold contradictory views about incarceration - they want more offenders locked up and for longer periods, but often balk at paying for it.

"It's nicer to build parks and recreation areas than it is jails," said William J. Laughner, the recently retired warden at Armstrong County Jail, which last year had a perfect inspection score. "And it certainly is expensive to run jails. But if you didn't have them, what would you have? Anarchy."