In September 2024, activists burst into an auditorium in a Philadelphia library, interrupting a panel discussion on mass incarceration featuring Philadelphia Department of Prisons Commissioner, Michael Resnick. “One, two, three, four, open up the prison doors!” they shouted in unison.

One woman held up a cutout of a black tombstone. “You took my cousin’s life!” another person shouted, as Resnick watched from his seat on stage. “They all called for help. Nobody came…PDP killed her!”

[Editor’s note: This story was first published by Bolts, and is republished with permission.]

Earlier that month, Amanda Cahill, 31, died in her cell at the Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center, a City jail. Women who were jailed near her told reporters that Cahill was screaming for help for over an hour. The women say they banged on their cell doors pleading for medical attention, but nobody responded. The Medical Examiner determined that she died of drug intoxication.

A week after Cahill’s death, a guard at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility in Northeast Philadelphia found 61-year-old Michael McKinnis dead when he arrived at his cell to serve him breakfast. McKinnis, who was on medications for liver disease, was left alone for eight hours overnight, a symptom of chronic staffing shortages at the facility.

This past March, another man, Andrew Drury, 42, died at the same jail from a heart attack due to drug withdrawal. An intake worker at the jail flagged Drury as an “emergency” case but he never received a full health evaluation, despite having been hospitalized multiple times for withdrawal-related complications when he was incarcerated at the same jail the previous fall.

Cahill, McKinnis and Drury’s deaths point to problems with staffing, medical care and dangerous conditions that have plagued Philadelphia’s troubled jails for decades. These problems have persisted despite decades of attempts at oversight, from federal court monitoring over the jail for 32 out of the past 43 years to a Prison Advisory Board that the City created in 2014 to monitor conditions and offer guidance.

Local officials and advocates are now asking Philadelphia residents to approve a new system of oversight for the City’s deadly jails, which are run by the Philadelphia Department of Prisons, or PDP. On May 20, Philadelphia voters will decide Question 3, a proposed amendment to the City’s Charter that would create the Philadelphia Prison Community Oversight Board, and a new City Office of Prison Oversight to support the board’s work.

Why do we need a Prison Community Oversight Board?

The board would be empowered with a dedicated City fund (at least 0.45 percent of the PDP’s budget, or an estimated $1.3 million) and the authority to subpoena records and make unannounced visits to Philadelphia jails. The board would also be required to investigate the jails and hold monthly public meetings with the City’s jail commissioner to share its findings and make recommendations to improve conditions and treatment for the more than 3,300 people incarcerated in the City’s jails.

Isaiah Thomas, a City Councilmember who co-sponsored legislation to put the question before voters, told Bolts in a statement that “years of neglect have left Philly’s prisons in chaos,” and the oversight board would create “real, tangible accountability.”

Proponents of the ballot measure say that it would fill a hole left by previous attempts at supervision of the jails. Problems with conditions date back to at least 1971, when a class action lawsuit by prisoners alleged that Philadelphia’s jails violated constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment. A panel of judges ultimately put the City’s jail facilities under federal supervision after ruling that it locked people away in “a cruel, degrading and disgusting place, likely to bring out the worst in a man.”

Other class-action lawsuits alleging similar treatment in the following decades prompted other periods of federal court monitoring, but problems continued. In 2014, the City created PDP as a separate agency via ballot measure and installed a Prison Advisory Board within it to help with oversight. The seven-person board had limited investigative powers, met infrequently and was not independent.

Officials dissolved that board in 2023 after months of reporting by The Philadelphia Inquirer on deaths inside the City’s jails and inaction by board members. Sara Jacobson, executive director of the Public Defender Association of Pennsylvania who had served on the advisory board, called it a “farce” when she resigned from it months earlier, noting that the board didn’t meet with prisoners and their families, did not work with community groups, didn’t provide recommendations to PDP, and didn’t have full independence.

“Without that, and without leadership on the board willing to take action, the Prison Advisory Board appears to exist only to say that an advisory board exists and to endorse the prison administration’s choices by its existence,” Jacobson wrote in an Inquirer op-ed. “Particularly in this time of crisis, our prisons need more.”

Last December, City officials approved legislation that put a new, more robust oversight structure on the ballot. This board would have more investigative powers to uncover issues at the jail than the previous advisory board, hold regular public meetings, and operate fully independent from PDP. The oversight board would be made up of nine members — four appointed by the mayor, four by the City Council president, and one by the City Controller. One member must be formerly incarcerated.

Resnick, the City Prisons Commissioner, testified against the bill, arguing that the agency does not need additional oversight. When asked for Resnick’s stance on the board, his spokesperson, John Mitchell, told Bolts in an email, “In speaking with the commissioner, my sense [sic] … that he would not likely be inclined to address something that has not yet happened.”

Noah Barth, monitoring director for the Pennsylvania Prison Society, an organization that advocates for incarcerated people, said recent problems in the City’s lockups make the need for an oversight board even more dire.

“Philadelphia prisons, given their recent history, really need a fully enabled, fully empowered public oversight mechanism,” said Barth.

Covid exacerbated problems that already plagued Philadelphia jails, such as staffing shortages that had already resulted in lockdowns that kept prisoners confined to their cells, sometimes for days at a time. Hundreds of corrections officers retired or quit after the pandemic hit, worsening the staffing crunch. In 2020, prisoners filed a class action lawsuit — the seventh class action lawsuit against PDP since 1971 — over dangerous conditions, ultimately leading to a 2022 settlement that again resulted in federal court monitoring and required that City officials fully staff the City’s jails.

PDP has failed to comply, however. Last summer, a federal judge held the City in contempt after finding that 42 percent of positions remained vacant. The judge ordered officials to pay a $25 million fine into a fund dedicated to boosting recruitment.

Problems with staffing have persisted. In March, the federal court monitor released its most recent report, finding a 34 percent staffing vacancy, with 41 percent of officer positions still unfilled. The monitor also noted that prisoners were not receiving adequate medical care due to staffing shortages. “Conditions remain unhealthy and dangerous for incarcerated people,” the report reads.

Advocates are working to raise voter awareness of problems at the jails and the upcoming ballot measure by door knocking and holding in-person events to discuss the need for an oversight board. If passed, Thomas, the Councilmember, would negotiate additional details about the board to create legislation that would need to be approved by Council again, according to his spokesperson.

“There’s a big push to raise awareness about the fact this measure is coming to vote, and it’s important,” said Barth of the Pennsylvania Prison Society. The last municipal primary, in 2021, saw just an 18 percent voter turnout.

Advocates are hopeful that the oversight board will finally improve conditions.

“What we really need is this independence, so that people can get a glaring light on what happens inside the jail,” said Thomas Innes, director of Prison Advocacy at the Defender Association of Philadelphia. “And that can only happen with an independent board with the ability to get into the jail whenever the board wants to get into jail to investigate, to see what’s going on in this day and age to get copies of any surveillance video that they want and records that they want in order to to make the community comfortable about what’s happening behind those walls.”

Lauren Gill is a staff writer for Bolts, where this piece originally ran.

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