Update
Yesterday afternoon, a man incarcerated in a minimum custody facility escaped from the grounds of the Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center, becoming the fourth person to break out of a city jail this year.
The intense media interest in the escape has overshadowed another serious incident that occurred just hours earlier in a Philadelphia jail. Early Thursday morning, an incarcerated person was fatally assaulted by a cellmate at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility, the Philadelphia Department of Prisons reported. While the department has released few other details, we know that the victim, 44-year-old Rocco Carbonaro, was being housed in an intake unit and had been in jail for less than a day when he was killed.
“This death is a predictable tragedy, and if the city doesn’t take significant action, there will be another,” said the Prison Society’s executive director, Claire Shubik-Richards.
Both the escape and the homicide continue a trend of violence, neglect, and dysfunction in Philadelphia jails since the pandemic. The city jail system’s worsening shortage of corrections officers, combined with an increase in the incarcerated population, has allowed these problems to persist. The Department of Prisons is 43 percent short of a full contingent of security staff, according to a recent report filed in federal court.
Carbonaro’s death was the second homicide in Philadelphia jails this year, following the killing of 33-year-old Jamal Collier during a fight at the same facility in March. It also comes less than a week after a 30-year-old incarcerated man was stabbed in another Philadelphia jail, sending him to the hospital. During a seven year period prior to the pandemic, from 2012 to 2019, there were a total of three homicides in the jails.
In May, two incarcerated men broke out of the same jail facility where Thursday’s escape occurred, including one charged with four murders. Their absence went unnoticed for 19 hours, in part because a guard fell asleep during a shift.
Shubik-Richards said that the city must take immediate action by reducing the number of people in custody and increasing the number of corrections officers in its jails. First, it should speed up criminal court proceedings that keep people incarcerated longer than necessary. It should also consider measures like transferring incarcerated people to other jurisdictions and hiring temporary trained corrections officers.
“Otherwise, the city is choosing to maintain the status quo, leaving incarcerated people in danger and putting public safety at risk,” Shubik-Richards said.
