PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The Pennsylvania Prison Society, an organization that advocates for the health, safety and dignity of incarcerated people, is sounding the alarm about the rising number of in-custody deaths throughout the commonwealth.
This year alone, there have been six deaths in state prisons and seven deaths in county facilities.
“They were all preventable deaths,” said Claire Richards, executive director of the Pennsylvania Prison Society, “either caused by opioid addiction, withdrawal from opioid addiction, suicide or violence. It’s a striking number to see 13 preventable deaths one quarter into the year.”
According to the Pennsylvania Prison Society’s analysis of state data, the rate of deaths in county jails increased by 60% between 2015 and 2023. In state prisons, that rate fell after spiking during the pandemic, but it is still up 17% from 2015.
Richards said prisons and jails in the commonwealth today look radically different than they did before the pandemic. Due to staffing shortages, she said many inmates are forced to spend most of their days isolated in their cells.
“Twenty-four-hour lockdowns, people not let out of their cells, people not given services, people not allowed visits from families,” she described. “That’s why you have people dying of withdrawal symptoms and intake because there aren’t health care staff watching and caring for them. We don’t have mental health providers and we don’t have engaging programming.”
Prior to the pandemic, Richards said inmates in most Pennsylvania prisons and jails spent the majority of daylight hours out of their cells.
The Pennsylvania Prison Society is calling on facilities to fill the staff shortages and the Legislature to pass Senate Bill 966, which would require more transparency and accurate reporting of all prison deaths in a more timely fashion. Richards said many facilities hide the true numbers from the public.
“We sometimes know more about whether an Amazon package is delayed than whether someone has died in our prisons and jails, and it just shouldn’t be that way,” she added.
KYW Newsradio has reached out to the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections for comment.