After years of crisis conditions in Philly jails, an oversight board is on the ballot in May

After years of critical understaffing, violence, and deaths within Philadelphia’s jail complex, voters will decide in May whether to install a prison oversight board to monitor the facilities and make recommendations for reform.

“Oversight is desperately needed,” said City Councilmember Nicolas O’Rourke, describing a visit to the Northeast Philadelphia complex last summer when he observed a man bleeding profusely in his cell. The man had been crying out for help for hours, O’Rourke learned.

Speaking at a news conference Wednesday, he said his message to voters was that they can help fix it: “Let’s meet the low bar of constitutional treatment.”

The measure, one of three questions on the ballot on May 20, is the culmination of a three-year legislative process. Former Councilmember Helen Gym introduced the proposal in 2022 in response to Inquirer reporting on the jails crisis, as well as what she said was a community outcry over prison conditions.

Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, who took over the legislation, said his office has learned important lessons from the city’s troubled Community Police Oversight Commission that will enable the board to operate effectively.

The board would have subpoena power, authority to make unannounced visits to the prisons, and a projected $1.3 million budget. Thomas anticipates it would have four members selected by Council, four by the mayor, and one by the city controller. Other details are yet to be determined.

Prisons Commissioner Michael Resnick, speaking at the department’s City Council budget hearing Wednesday, said he was “not opposed to oversight. … The public has the right to know what it is that we do.”

He added that the prisons, which house 3,500 people awaiting trial or serving short sentences, already have “a lot” of oversight, including from the Pennsylvania Prison Society and the courts.

In fact, jails have been under court oversight for 32 of the last 43 years, noted Tom Innes of the Defender Association of Philadelphia.

The department is currently being monitored by order of a federal judge, who last year found the city in contempt and ordered officials to set aside $25 million to remedy conditions.

The monitor’s most recent report, released in March, noted the city was still not fulfilling its commitments. But the monitor said conditions had improved in the prison, thanks to a modest staffing increase and a nearly 30% decrease in the number of people incarcerated.

Eric Desiderio, president of Local 159 of District Council 33, which represents city correctional officers, said the union is cautiously open to the oversight board, with one condition.

The union, he said, should be able to select one of the board members — “somebody that has correctional experience, that knows the operations and the policies and the procedures, of how things should be ran.”

Six people died in the jails last year, but that was a significant improvement from the pandemic-era death toll.

But Resnick said staffing increases and improved processes are saving lives, including increased medical rounding on housing units, and outfitting newly admitted prisoners with medical monitoring devices.