PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Understaffing at Philadelphia prisons continues to present problems but advocates and officials disagree about how bad the situation is. Demonstrators rallied outside City Hall on Wednesday as the prisons commissioner testified at City Council budget hearings.
Advocates, like John Thompson of the Human Rights Coalition, described conditions inside Philadelphia’s prisons as unsafe and unsanitary.
“The rats and the roaches and the mice, just running — we’re talking about during the day, we’re not even talking about at night — running all through the prison,” Thompson said.
Blanche Carney, commissioner of the Philadelphia Prisons Department, painted a different picture — one not quite so dire. She acknowledged that prisons are struggling with staff shortages, but she said they are making due.
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“In the cases where there is just no staff or a small number, we have staff touring both units,” she said. “And that is nationwide. This is not unique to Philadelphia.”
Carney says her department is continually hiring people, adding that suspending the residency requirement has helped. She projects full staffing levels by September.
The prisons are under court-appointed monitoring as part of a settlement, reached last month, in which the City of Philadelphia agreed to pay hiring and retention bonuses for correctional officers and grant inmates more out-of-cell time.
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