A 45-year-old woman evidently hanged herself in her cell, the second death this year in the city’s troubled jails system
Staffing shortages and other problems have affected the prison department.
A 45-year-old woman evidently hanged herself Thursday morning at the Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center, according to a news release from the Philadelphia Department of Prisons, the second person to die this year while in the department’s custody.
A guard and nurse discovered the woman in her cell around 9 a.m. Thursday while distributing medication.
Jail officials said the woman was lying on her bed with a sheet “attached to the top bunk and the other end around her neck,” the release said.
The woman arrived at the jail on May 21 after being booked on charges including assault.
A spokesperson for the Philadelphia Department of Prisons declined to provide further details to The Inquirer.
On March 8, a 42-year-old man suffered a fatal heart attack just hours after his arrival at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility. The person in that instance, Andrew Drury, had a history of addiction and was labeled an “emergency” case who should have received one-on-one supervision in the hours before he died, records show.
The city’s prison system has been plagued by problems, including a staffing shortage causing prolonged lockdowns and delays in access to services such as medical care.
Last August, a federal judge ordered Philadelphia to pay $25 million after finding the city in contempt of a 2022 settlement agreement in a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of incarcerated people over conditions at the jail.