Philadelphians to vote on Prison Oversight Committee

Philadelphia City Councilmember Isaiah Thomas (pictured) and Nicolas O’Rourke proposed modifying Philadelphia’s Home Rule Charter to create the Prison Community Oversight Board and Office of Prison Oversight. (Philadelphia City Council)

PHILADELPHIA—In the May 20 primary for the November 4, 2025, judicial and district attorney elections, Philadelphians will have an opportunity to participate in direct democracy through a ballot measure to change the city’s Home Rule Charter— confirming or denying a city council proposal put forward last fall for institutional prison oversight.

Last September, city councilmembers Isaiah Thomas and Nicolas O’Rourke proposed modifying Philadelphia’s Home Rule Charter to create the Prison Community Oversight Board and Office of Prison Oversight. According to Emily Rizzo’s Kensington Voice article from last October, the objectives of the board are to “increase transparency and accountability within the city’s correctional institutions, provide recommendations upon review of Philadelphia Department of Prisons (PDP) policies and practices, access and monitor PDP facilities, databases, and documents, meet with staff and incarcerated people, and develop community education programs.” Like the Citizen Police Oversight Commission, the board would hold monthly public meetings, and it would make recommendations to the Department of Prisons and the Office of Prison Oversight.

As Michaela Althouse wrote for Philly Voice in December, the oversight board would include four members appointed by the mayor, four by the council president, and one by the city controller. None could be employed by the PDP, Sheriff’s Office, or police department while serving on the board. This is presumably intended to prevent biased conditions in favor of the institutional status quo. At least one board member would have to be a formerly incarcerated person, an important inclusion so that the board is better informed about the experience of the incarcerated and can act with that knowledge.

Former Department of Prisons chief Blanche Carney retired in March of last year after a series of deaths and escapes. There were four escapes in six months in 2023, a watchdog group reported inhumane conditions (with ten inmate deaths in 2022), and the correctional officers cast a unanimous “no confidence vote.” Between 2018 and July of last year, 25 people died of drug-related deaths in Philly jails. Twenty-nine people overall died at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, between 2020 and early 2022. In 2024 alone, six people died in custody, down from fourteen in 2023 (including one man who had his insulin withheld from him) and ten in 2022.

The prisons have been operating at just around 50% capacity for an average daily incarcerated population that hovered around 4,500 from January of 2022 until very recently. Over the last six months, that number has dropped to around 3,700, less than half of the number in 2015. Last July, U.S. District Court Judge Gerald A. McHugh “ruled that Philadelphia’s prison system is in contempt of court for failing to follow an agreement” for a lawsuit originally filed in 2020 and settled in 2022. Judge McHugh found it was “virtually undisputed” that the connected issues of understaffing and the time inmates are allowed outside their cells had not been resolved.

Amid these numbers and city council concerns around safety and staffing, the city’s oldest operating penitentiary, the Federal Detention Center, recently designated as a confinement space for ICE detainees, will remain open.

As Metro Philadelphia reported last December, “the Philadelphia Department of Prisons has been plagued by a profound staffing crisis, inmate deaths, violence and jail escapes, among other issues.” Earlier that month, two correctional officers were charged with smuggling contraband cellphones and drugs to inmates. A private defense attorney from New Jersey (and a former Johnston, Rhode Island, police officer) was charged with smuggling contraband into the Detention Center early this March. Also in March, a man dealing with addiction died in jail in part because he was not given the support he was designated to receive during his intake as an “emergency” case.

One concern for activists, legislators, and the working class more broadly is the likelihood of these reforms being intentionally toothless, allowing these organs for oversight to operate as a placating mirage without the ability to make meaningful improvements.

One could argue that an example of this can be seen by looking at the similarly-minded Citizen Police Oversight Commission (CPOC). It has 0.4% of the staff and 0.3% of the budget of the Philadelphia Police Department, seemingly intentionally ill-equipped for the task of overseeing police. For an example of a policy worthy of examination, the current contract between the City of Philadelphia and the Fraternal Order of Police allows police officers 72 hours after firing their gun to give an official statement on why they fired it, and officers have been caught changing stories before, as with the killing of Eddie Irrizarry in 2023. Moreover, CPOC does not have independent investigative authority, and most of its recommendations to PPD are not heeded.

Another model for reform is being experimented with in nearby Chester, through a joint effort between Drexel University and SCI Chester, where one unit has been converted to “Little Scandinavia.” It began in 2020 after professors at Drexel and the University of Oslo collaborated with the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections to study the possibilities for rehabilitation and the effects on incarcerated persons and correctional officers when the aesthetics and rules of the rehabilitative arrangement are revised. As currently staffed, it is highly unlikely that Philadelphia prisons could even trial such ambitious reforms if they wanted to.

The idea of prison oversight in Philadelphia did not spontaneously arise in 2024. Former councilmember Helen Gym introduced legislation to create the Prison Oversight Board in 2022, with councilmember Thomas taking over the issue after Gym left to run for mayor in 2023. Moreover, concern about the staffing, facilities, and treatment of incarcerated people is not limited to Philadelphia proper. All through Pennsylvania, where 244,000 people are incarcerated (and a disproportionate number are Black), there is a call for change.

Philadelphians showed their connection to the broader movement throughout the state in a February rally and march, which included groups like the Human Rights Coalition calling for the closing of SCI Fayette, a prison in southwestern Pennsylvania that has a high rate of cancer induced by a toxic environment. Many see an oversight committee as a step for Philadelphians and working-class people across the country to intervene in the criminal justice system and create more effective rehabilitation.

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CONTRIBUTOR

Kevin Fox Jr.

Freelance writer for games, movies, tech, comedy, and TV.