In Dauphin County, the safe treatment of inmates at the prison is overseen by a board of inspectors.
The inspectors are seven elected officials from the county: the sheriff, controller, district attorney, president judge and three county commissioners.
But Rep. Patty Kim, D-Harrisburg, wants to change that to give more direct power to community members in overseeing conditions at the prison.
A series of deaths at the prison and a recent COVID-19 outbreak behind bars have magnified concerns by community members who say they can’t get information about their loved ones and prompted weekly protests outside the prison.
Kim held a news conference Monday to announce a proposed bill that would amend the state’s law to create county prison oversight boards with residents as members for all third-class counties.
Under the current statute, only Allegheny County, a second-class county, has that kind of community oversight. Allegheny County Prison has an oversight board with six county elected officials and three residents.
Kim’s proposal— which would apply to Dauphin County and 11 others including Cumberland, Lancaster and York—would increase community participation in number and weight. She would like to see an equal number of county officials and community residents on oversight boards with four members each.
The eight-member boards would oversee operations and maintenance of each prison, the safe upkeep of inmates and have the power to launch investigations.
The board also would make two unannounced visits each year to the prison to interview inmates outside of the presence of the warden and his agents to determine the conditions in the prison and publish a public report.
As it stands, the oversight board in Allegheny County has investigative power and makes unannounced visits with public reports. But the board of inspectors in third-class counties like Dauphin County do not.
Instead, boards in third-class counties have monthly meetings and are supposed to “provide for the safekeeping, discipline and employment of inmates and the government and management of the correctional institution,” according to the law.
“County jail oversight boards are an important part of ensuring that our prison population is taken care of and moving towards rehabilitation and away from unnecessary punishment,” Kim said. “Our current laws lack the transparency and accountability needed to have a truly successful oversight board. We need more civil -servant driven, citizen board members to be given a chance rather than county officials, or individuals that hold public office.”
Kim said she was still drafting her proposal and would like public input as her office finalizes the details, including how the citizen members would be selected. She said one of the members would be a representative of the Pennsylvania Prison Society, a group that has worked to ensure humane prison and jail conditions since 1787.
Kim said she planned to reach out to representatives from other third-class counties to get their input, and hopefully support for the bill. She would like to introduce the bill by the end of the month.
Dauphin County recently announced a community advisory committee for the prison, and its members include Brandon Flood, the state’s Board of Pardons secretary who also is president of a non-profit to help ex-offenders. But that committee has no authority, only the ear of county administrators, Kim explained.
Her goal is to combine the two existing boards: the board of inspectors with the advisory committee to create an oversight board.
“We need to bring everyone together at the same table, at the same level,” she said.
Kim noted the current county prison leadership is extremely cooperative and have launched important reforms, but she said those leaders may not always be in those roles, so an oversight board needs to be codified into law.
Flood said he’s heard from residents that they don’t have faith in fair and impartial investigations at the prison under the current oversight model.
“Whether that’s real or not, I can’t say,” he said. " A lot of time it comes down to perception is reality. If the community perceives that there is no integrity with the process… then that’s something we need to look at.”
As a previous inmate at the Dauphin County prison, Flood said he could speak firsthand about the prior culture of brutality there. The new leadership is changing that, he said.
“What we’re not trying to do is subvert the process,” Flood said, “But what we are trying to do is ensure that this entire community is represented and the way that the board currently stands, you can’t put it any other way, it’s very county-official heavy. For me, myself I find that to be problematic.”
Kevin Maxson, who was one of the first activists to draw attention to problems inside the prison, attended Kim’s news conference Monday and said he had concerns that Kim’s proposal wouldn’t go far enough to deal with the true issues at the prison.
He said he would like to see even more community members on the proposed oversight board who represent different parts of the county. He also said it’s important to choose people with experience at the prison who truly know what’s going on behind those closed doors.
John Hargreaves, of the Pa. Prison Society, said his organization believes that residents should be involved in prisons.
“These are our tax dollars being spent at county prisons,” he said. “We are paying to confine these people. Upon release, they return to our neighborhoods, community and society.
“How they are treated while they are locked up will affect their behavior and their behavior will be reflected in their communities when they return,” he said. “This review board can ensure they are treated fairly.”
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