Categories
News and Updates

Solitary Confinement Banned in Allegheny County

by Jaclyn Kurin

On May 18, 2021, Allegheny County became the first county in this nation’s history to abolish solitary confinement by referendum. The ordinance bans Allegheny County Jail (ACJ) from using solitary confinement,1 the restraint chair, chemical agents, and shackles at the jail.

However, as momentous a victory as this is, there are exceptions when solitary confinement can be used at ACJ. Individuals can be placed in emergency short-term solitary confinement when medical and mental health professionals find that temporary commitment is necessary for medical or safety reasons. Healthcare professionals also must state the specific conditions that must be provided to individuals prevent them from experiencing adverse physical or mental health problems while confined. Individuals in temporary confinement are to receive 4 hours of out of cell time daily.

Individuals might also be confined to their cells if the warden locks down the jail, which may occur only if the warden determines a facility-wide lockdown necessary to ensure the safety of persons held in the jail and that less restrictive interventions are insufficient to accomplish those safety goals. During a lockdown, ACJ must ensure individuals have a daily opportunity to leave their cell for hygiene and exercise. Even when one of these exceptions apply, ACJ is prohibited from denying individuals access to food, water, or any basic necessity, appropriate medical care, including emergency medical care.

The ordinance requires the warden to report on a monthly basis to the Jail Oversight Board and post on the jail’s website information concerning the use of temporary solitary confinement and jail lockdowns. The reporting requirements go into effect on July 7th while the substantive provisions banning solitary confinement and the restraint chair begin on December 4th. In order to ensure this ban on solitary confinement brings real and meaningful relief to those subjected to the torture of solitary confinement, we must continue to hold the ACJ accountable to the people’s will. Submit comments and virtually attend Jail Oversight Board hearings by following this link.

QUICK FACTS

What’s Banned at ACJ?
  • Solitary confinement—i.e. holding a person in his cell for more than 20 hours a day.
  • The restraint chair, chemical agents, and shackles.
When Can a Person Be Placed Solitary Confinement?
  • Emergency Use of Short-term Solitary Confinement: An incarcerated person can be placed in temporary solitary confinement only if medical and mental health professionals find it to be necessary for the person’s safety or the security of others. Healthcare professionals also must state which specific conditions are to be provided to the individual to prevent him from experiencing adverse health consequences. Individuals in temporary confinement are to receive at least 4 hours of out of cell time a day.
  • Jail Lockdowns: The warden may lock down the entire jail only if the warden determines it a necessary to ensure the safety of persons held in the jail and that less restrictive interventions are insufficient to accomplish those safety goals.
  • Protective Custody: An individual requesting protective custody may be placed in short-term solitary confinement but for not more than 72 hours, which is sufficient time for ACJ to ensure less restrictive arrangements to keep the person safe.
What Conditions Must ACJ Provide to People in Solitary Confinement?
  • ACJ must provide individuals access to food, water, or any basic necessity, appropriate medical care, including emergency medical care.
  • Temporary Solitary Confinement: ACJ is to allow 4 hours of out of cell time.
  • Facility-wide Lockdown: ACJ is to make every effort to ensure out of cell time for hygiene and exercise.
  • Any conditions that the state or federal constitutions or laws require jails to provide.
How Does a Person Get Out of Solitary Confinement?
  • A person being held in isolation—e.g. temporary solitary confinement or jail lockdown—can file an habeas petition for his release in any court of competent jurisdiction.
What Are ACJ’s Monthly Reporting Requirements?
  • The warden must report to the Jail Oversight Board and post on the ACJ website the dates and reasons for any lockdown of the jail or section of it; the number of times any person has been subjected to temporary solitary confinement, with the duration and reason for each; the number of times the same person has been held in solitary confinement more than once a in month; the age, sex, gender identity, race and ethnicity of each person held in solitary confinement.
Ordinance Effective Dates:
  • The reporting requirement: July 7, 2021
  • The ban on the use of solitary confinement, the restraint chair, chemical agents, and shackles: December 4, 2021

1 “Solitary confinement, meaning the confinement of a detainee or inmate in a cell or other living space for more than 20 hours a day, has devastating and lasting psychological consequences on all persons, but especially for vulnerable populations, including youth and persons with diagnosed or undiagnosed cognitive or emotional disabilities.” Ordinance amending Ch. 205 Allegheny County Jail.

Categories
COVID-19 News and Updates

Justice Reform Advocates File Suit Against Allegheny County Judge Over Lack of Public Access to Court

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Andy Hoover, ACLU of PA, media@aclupa.org
William Lukas, Abolitionist Law Center, wjlukas@alcenter.org
Jonathan de Jong, Institute for Constitutional Advocacy & Protection, reachICAP@georgetown.edu

PITTSBURGH – An Allegheny County judge is facing a federal constitutional lawsuit filed today by Abolitionist Law Center after the judge’s refusal to allow virtual access to his court proceedings. Judge Anthony Mariani has repeatedly denied online access to volunteers with ALC’s Court Watch program and has only allowed the public to observe his court’s hearings in person at the county courthouse, despite a directive from both the court administration and the state Supreme Court that judges should provide online access to the public as a COVID-19 mitigation strategy.

Represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University Law Center, ALC argues in its filing that public access to courts is a First Amendment right.

“A public court is not only foundational to democracy, but integral to addressing mass incarceration and keeping judges accountable for their decisions – many of which are racialized and have contributed to apartheid in Allegheny County,” said Autumn Redcross, the director of ALC’s Court Watch program. “In the midst of a year-long global pandemic that has disproportionately devastated Black and brown communities, it is not sufficient to say, ‘the courts are accessible,’ simply because the buildings are open.

“It is unethical to expect community members to risk their health and lives to show up in person to observe an alleged public hearing, when the judge can provide the public with remote access.”

Since January, ALC volunteers have requested access to more than 100 hearings, all of which have been denied by Mariani. Typically, those asking for access receive a form email that states that the public can observe hearings in the judge’s courtroom. But in February, Mariani’s chambers stopped replying to inquiries by ALC’s volunteers as to why they could not have virtual access.

Mariani is the only Allegheny County judge who has refused to grant access to hearings via online video conferencing, in all his cases without exception. In its complaint, ALC notes that nine court employees tested positive for COVID-19 between January 10 and February 10 and that all had visited court facilities, including one member of Mariani’s staff.

“We jump through all the hoops set up by the Fifth Judicial District for safe, remote access, but, instead of access, I get form emails denying me and telling me to attend in person,” said Erica Brusselars, the volunteer coordinator for ALC’s Court Watch program. “Judge Mariani is actively obstructing safe public access to his court. He is impeding transparency in a way that hurts public discourse, hurts our tradition of open courts, discourages an engaged citizenry, and blocks people from seeing our criminal legal system.”

“Courts operate openly, not in secret, and this judge cannot be allowed to escape scrutiny while refusing to implement common sense strategies to prevent the spread of COVID-19,” said Reggie Shuford, executive director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania.

“All courts must be open, and the stakes couldn’t be higher than in criminal court, where judges make critical decisions that impact people’s liberty and freedom,” said Nicolas Riley, senior counsel at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection.

In its filing, ALC is asking the federal court to require virtual access to Mariani’s proceedings, for a ruling that his behavior is in violation of the First Amendment, and for attorneys’ fees and costs.

The lawsuit, Abolitionist Law Center v. Judge Anthony M. Mariani, has been filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. ALC is represented by Witold J. Walczak and Sara J. Rose of the ACLU of Pennsylvania and Nicolas Y. Riley, Robert D. Friedman, and Jennifer Safstrom of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University Law Center.

A copy of the complaint filed today is available for download below and also available at aclupa.org/ALC.

Categories
News and Updates

“Surely Some Revelation is at Hand”: Allegheny County Jail’s Book Ban and the Road to Abolition

by Courtney E. Colligan

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” This past Saturday, NPR All Things Considered Saturday Host Scott Simon mused about the lasting nature and questioning legacy of William Butler Yeats and his poem, “The Second Coming.” Yeats, an Irish poet and dramatist of the 20th century, wrote the poem in response to the catastrophes that plagued the world through 1920. Yet Simons asks a provoking question of Yeats, a provoking question many of us ask about the Great Writers and Artists of the past: Do their politics, their loyalties, their ideas inform their art and by consuming their art, do we consume these ideals? Yeats was a known nationalist. He supported Mussolini, condoned eugenics, and saw promise in authoritarian regimes. Simon muses that, like with all art and literature, we choose how we navigate these relationships between creator and creation.

This quandary plagues many of us who study the Humanities, who ask if by studying Shakespeare or Kipling we further some of the darkness surrounding the works. Or do we let the work speak for itself? Can a piece take on relevance and meaning in the present while also bearing the layers of history? These questions stem from the act of reading, from the act of experiencing art. And with the latest book ban from Allegheny County Jail, incarcerated individuals cannot ask such questions or create their own meaning under the limited purview of the list of “allowed” books. 

On November 18, 2020, Charlie Deitch’s article “Fahrenheit 412” was published in the Pittsburgh Current, laying bare the news of the Allegheny County Jail’s decision to ban physical books for yet-to-be-specified “security reasons.” Yet as Deitch and Juliette Rihl’s piece in Public Source makes clear, the ACJ’s move to tablets speaks to the continuation of a for-profit incarceration system in which physical books fail to bring in the profits. Looking at the pattern of book bans across the U.S.’s prison system, bans arise when prisons partner with telecommunications companies and introduce tablets across the wards. Recent bans in Seattle and West Virginia have been overturned thanks to public pressure.

At the time of publication, ACJ has partnered with the eBook distributor OverDrive, which will supposedly allow those incarcerated to access thousands of free eBooks. However, this effort has several problems:

  1. Not every individual has access to a tablet, depending on their ward.
  2. The wi-fi in the ACJ is notoriously unreliable.
  3. There is a 90-minute time limit while using these apps.

So while the ACJ strives to spin this ban as an act of “care” or praises the “value of education, recreation, and mental health stability” (according to Warden Orlando Harper), the roots of this ban move beyond access to reading materials and unveil the undercurrent of the prison industrial complex and the brutal systemic treatment of incarcerated individuals. 

Due to COVID-19, those at the ACJ are confined to their cells for 23 hours a day. Although this fact is frequently used to describe incarceration’s tortuous detainment, it is worth reflecting on what this long-term solitary confinement truly means. This type of prolonged solitary detention falls under inhumane treatment, according to the United Nations. Mental health, already fragile in such violent conditions, can rapidly decline without access to meaningful acts of communication and activity. Books thus become incredibly valuable in prison, held with care by their readers. 

The Allegheny County Jail’s population is 67% percent Black while only 13.7% of Black people make up the county’s demographics. This statistic shows a drastic over-policing and detaining of the Black population. The Abolitionist Law Center labels this unjust criminalization as “apartheid punishment,” rooted in anti-Black racism. Such racism additionally occurs in the latest book ban and the selection of works accessible on these new tablets. 

ACJ published a list of books currently available through Overdrive.

I have repeatedly searched this list and confidently say that the list is entirely made up of white Euro-American writers.

Aside from the fact of the complexities of race, ethnicity, and how we label writers of color (I.e., if one were to argue that by having Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote on the list that this proves a writer of color and therefore absolves the ACJ of white-washing literature), the books listed feed into the theory of the Classics as rehabilitative. There is a lengthy history of allowing Dickens, Aeschylus, Hemingway, and Whitman into prisons – writers who those running the prisons assume to preach strong societal values and make an individual learnéd. While one could readily argue for the subversive nature of some of these writers, the issue with these now-available books is that they contribute to the idea of using art to produce a civilizing effect. By offering access to a reading list composed almost entirely of “Classics” (many which are conveniently also out of copyright) with the idea of using art solely as a rehabilitative tool, the prison provides an outdated, white Euro-American perspective on what it means to be a “good citizen.” But returning to the idea that consuming art prompts difficult and productive questions, how can one empathize, critique, question, or even genuinely enjoy these questions without works that reflect their experiences, identities, and livelihoods?

The lack of representation on the list of available books privileges the white Classics and de-emphasizes the importance of valuable BIPOC literature.


I don’t ask such questions with the expectation of an answer from a system that thrives off of the 19th-century notion of punishment and quasi-rehabilitation, but rather to highlight the space books and art occupy in our psyche. The banning of books holds a powerful place in the public sphere, harkening back to the burning of books in Nazi Germany, the suppression of literature by the Irish Free State, or banning literary works in the Soviet Union. Frequent book bans occur in schools and other institutions in the United States, with Catcher in the RyeBelovedTo Kill a MockingbirdThe Color Purple, and Native Son appearing on lists of challenged and banned titles. (Notably, these books also do not appear on ACJ’s available titles list.) The cruel and profit-motivated removal of literature from detention centers offers an entry point to explore the interconnected issues of racism, injustice, and legalized torture in the ACJ. At ALC Court Watch, we call on the public to get involved with the fight for abolition by first helping to  put public pressure on the latest moves at the ACJ.

The book ban’s eventual overturning starts us on the path towards abolition, but the ban is just the first step of many in a complete dismantling of the prison system as we know it. 


Courtney E. Colligan is a PhD Candidate in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Courtney’s areas of study include performances of social justice, Early Modern theatre and performance, queer theory, and museum studies. She has worked for GirlGov, Pitt’s Archives and Special Collections, and is co-founder of the Archive Theatre Project. 

Categories
News and Updates

Allegheny County Jail

Allegheny County Courthouse and Jail building 2nd floor blueprint

Mass incarceration and the adverse collateral consequences of criminal prosecutions and convictions are deeply entrenched in Allegheny County, PA.

More than 80% of those held in the Allegheny County Jail (ACJ) are not serving a sentence for a criminal conviction but instead are held pre-trial or on alleged probation violations.

More than half of those held in ACJ are being held pending resolution of probation violations, which are often technical violations that do not involve a new charge.

The County has a higher incarceration rate of Black people than the national average.

While only 13% of the County population is Black, approximately 50% of those held in ACJ are Black.


Exterior shot of Allegheny County Jail and courthouse in a red filter with black dots

MAY 20 – SNAPSHOT

Lack of Testing in ACJ Will Fuel the Second Wave

District and common pleas courts feed and maintain the Allegheny County Jail (ACJ) population. People detained there become subject to the care of the county, their health and wellness jeopardized by the negligence of elected and anointed officials. ACJ governance is refusing to adopt a platform for universal  COVID-19 testing and is now reporting data as if the jail is coronavirus free.

Here is what’s been recorded: 

The  ACJ population1668
Number of individuals tested65
Number of Negative results35
Number of Pending result2
Number of Positive results38
*1 hospitalized
Number of COVID-19 positive people who have recovered or been released from ACJ28
Number of COVID-19 positive people remaining at the ACJ0
MAY 20, 2020 via https://www.alleghenycounty.us/jail/index.aspx

Throughout the nation, jails and prisons are reporting staggering numbers of COVID-19 outbreaks. Philadelphia County Jails were found to have 75% of their population testing positive for coronavirus, and will now integrate universal testing at their jails.

Allegheny County insists on a test-less methodology shown in their failure to pass a motion for universal testing.  By Wednesday this week, only 65 out of the 1665 detained individuals have been tested for coronavirus. This constitutes a %.04 testing rate of the people detained at ACJ; less than ½ of 1% of the ACJ population has been tested. 3 new tests have been given this week.

The county jail is not a vacuum, but has workers, staff services, PO’s and CO’s, etc., filing through on a regular basis. Long and short term destined people are vulnerable to unsanitary conditions and contracting the virus. Rather than moving decisively forward with an interest in our public health that aims to overcome the current crisis and divert the threat of a second wave, authorities are failing to protect lives by testing widely.

We support Councilperson Bethany Hallam’s motion for universal testing for county-run facilities and urge the council committee, under the leadership of Councilperson Olivia “Liv” Bennet, to test all people under county care.

Categories
COVID-19

He ought to be the last

by Autumn Redcross

Richard Lenhart was 49 years old when he died last weekend at the Allegheny County Jail (ACJ). Authorities deny that his death was related to COVID-19, nor that it appeared “suspicious,” though this information is impossible to assess, since the jail has not announced the cause of death. What is not questioned, however, is the fact that Lenhart died in custody. He was said to be unresponsive when called for dinner at the ACJ.

Lenhart was charged with burglary, trespassing, receiving stolen property, access device fraud, theft, and traffic violations on August 28th, 2019. Failing to post bail, he was forced to stay nearly a month until his bail was reduced to $0. Lenhart returned to the courts on March 4th and was sentenced to six-twelve months in jail, plus two years’ probation. He was ordered to pay $5,000 in fines and fees.

Lenhart had served almost two months, about four months away from probation. In proceedings lead by Judge Alexander Bickett, Lenhart had taken a plea deal that included a Justice Related Services plan and mental health evaluation. JRS seeks to provide an array of behavioral, mental and physical health services rather than incarceration resulting in over-population of both jails and prison. However, Lenhart didn’t make it that far.

ACJ officials do not believe Lenhart’s death to be “suspicious” nor related to the coronavirus. “The jail continues to follow the guidance of the Allegheny County Health Department as it relates to the safety of employees and inmates during the COVID-19 pandemic,” wrote Warden Orlando Harper. However, at last count, there were three positive COVID-19 cases among the inmate population of ACJ.

The Warden and County officials have failed to prioritize public health and safety by refusing to release enough people which could have radically altered conditions of confinement within the ACJ. This wholly underscores the relationship of this pandemic has with mass incarceration and deaths en masse. At this moment, one inevitably leads to another. These are not mutually exclusive. Moreover, the fact that this man died in custody, leaves no space for suspicion – he died in the hands of the ACJ.

Lenhart’s crimes amounted to a trip to Walmart in a car he stole from a mechanic’s servicing bay, the purchase of electronics with cash taken from a chamber of commerce office and the failed attempt to purchase both soda and lottery tickets with a stolen credit card. He did not make use of two Chuckie Cheese coins among the stash he had made off with before he was stopped and arrested by the police last summer. 

On the day of his death, Lenhart was one among few inmates serving a sentence. The ACJ, jails people pre-trial, on probation detainers, parole violations, violations of court orders and detainers from other jurisdictions. In other words, a jail is designed to hold people until their matter can be brought before the court and is never a place for people to die.

Population count at the ACJ reflects a 26% decrease since the original declaration of judicial emergency in tandem with the state’s response to COVID-19. The remaining 1,753 people currently held at the Allegheny County Jail each have their own story and account of what happened to lead them there. Their stories intersect with that of a justice system that applies the punitive measure of revoking liberty as a means of social control and punishment – even to the point of death.

COVID-19 related or not, the loss of Richard Lenhart’s life represents the implicit, ongoing harm and ultimate violence designed by the justice system and the ACJ. No one should die in jail. Lenhart was the first to fall during this pandemic and he ought to be the last!

#wegrieve

#letthevulnerablego

#onedeathisonetoomany


Sources