Women incarcerated in Philadelphia live in a decrepit facility where fights break out over access to functioning phones, corrections officers are nowhere to be found during nighttime emergencies, and temperatures vacillate between freezing in one cell to sweltering in another.

These were some of the Prison Society’s takeaways from our first walkthrough of the jails since Mayor Cherelle Parker took office promising to tackle public safety in Philadelphia. The findings echo problems we have heard continuously during our previous 11 monitoring visits of the city’s jails since 2021. 

Parker’s new administration inherited a humanitarian crisis brought on by staffing shortages, overpopulation, and mismanagement in the jails. Our walkthrough offers another glimpse of what it will take to turn it around.

Sweltering cells, unanswered emergency calls, and hunger

Prison Society staff and volunteers observed conditions where incarcerated women are held at the Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center (PICC) on January 30 and conducted interviews with 79 women. We witnessed, and women reported, overflowing toilets, puddles on walkways, and mold. Most striking was the dysfunctional heating and cooling system in the 36-year-old facility. There were cells where it was so hot that women were in their underwear, even in the middle of winter. Other women, meanwhile, reported that their cells were “freezing.”

Large majorities of the women said that staff are frequently MIA. Roughly two-thirds said that corrections officers are not available on weekends and holidays or during the night. As we have heard time and again on previous walkthroughs, this created situations where there was no one to respond during an emergency.

“We were banging on our doors for 40 minutes when this girl had a seizure in the middle of the night,” said one woman we spoke with.

The women reported that violence erupts frequently. Most had witnessed corrections officers assaulting incarcerated people, including spraying mace and throwing punches. Nearly everyone reported seeing fights between incarcerated women, which often occur when there are disputes over using a limited number of functioning phones during the short time they are allowed out of their cells. Close to half of the women reported not being allowed out of their cells on a daily basis, and a third reported not being allowed out for the court-mandated minimum of three hours per day when they are. The women reported that, in the aggregate, a third of the phones on the housing units we visited did not work.

In addition, almost three-quarters of the women said that they were not provided with enough food to eat and that they were hungry as a result. 

“I was 125 pounds when I came here, I’m now 113,” said one woman. “I wake up at night from hunger pains.”

New commissioner affirms his commitment to change

There were a few areas of improvement since our previous walkthrough of women’s housing units in the jails. Though pests like cockroaches were still common, the women reported that the rodent problem had been exterminated. Hygiene products like toilet paper, soap, feminine pads, and tampons were also provided more frequently. In previous walkthroughs, prison residents said that a black market existed for toilet paper. 

But the serious problems that are the subject of a lawsuit against the city’s jails remain. A court-appointed independent monitor tasked with evaluating the city’s progress on resolving these issues delivered a grim prognosis in her most recent report, in March, which found that the jails are 46% short of a full contingent of security staff. “Health and safety will continue to decline,” she wrote, if things don’t change.

Since the Prison Society’s walkthrough of PICC, Mayor Parker appointed Michael Resnick to serve as the new commissioner of the Philadelphia Department of Prisons, a leader who is capable of confronting the current crisis in the jails. In his response to the Prison Society’s memo to the PDP regarding our walkthrough, which occurred prior to his tenure, Resnick affirmed his commitment to carrying out our recommendations, including improving staff recruitment and retention, working with the courts to reduce the jail population, and making renovations and repairs to facilities. 

We look forward to working with Commissioner Resnick as he continues the difficult work of addressing unsafe and inhumane conditions in Philadelphia jails.