Inmate-on-inmate assaults have shot up 65 percent at Delaware County’s George W. Hill Correctional Facility from 2022 to 2023, according to statistics released by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections.

That increase in violence also comes as the average monthly population decreased by about 100 inmates per month — down from 1,315 to 1,220 — across the same two-year period. When comparing the number of assaults against the average daily population, the prison is tied for fifth highest in the commonwealth for the total number of assaults.

The total number of assaults — which fall into three categories: inmate on inmate, inmate on staff, and staff on inmate — is at its highest level at any point since 2010, the earliest year for which Broad + Liberty has statistics. (Assaults does not include sexual assaults, which is broken out as a separate category, and appears to be largely inline when compared to GWHCF historical data as well as compared to other prisons in the commonwealth.)

In raw numbers, inmate-on-inmate assaults went from 79 to 131.

What little data has been obtained for 2024 shows the trends aren’t slowing down. Through the first two months of the year there have been 41 total assaults — slightly ahead of the 2023 average of 18 assaults recorded per month. 

The one bright spot in the full, 2023 data set is that inmate-on-staff assaults are trending in the right direction, down about nineteen percent from its highest point in 2021.

The statistics are the first empirical measures backing up the escalating complaints from GWHCF officers claiming that conditions inside the prison were deteriorating and becoming more dangerous after the county took back management of the facility in early 2022. The union representing most of those correctional officers filed a vote of no confidence against Warden Laura Williams last month.

For nearly the three decades prior, the prison had been run by private companies. Until the management shift in 2022, it was the last privately run prison in the commonwealth.

The facility totaled five deaths in 2023. While Broad + Liberty has reported on undercounted deaths at the facility, it appears the tally is correct. All of the undercounted deaths at the prison as noted by Broad + Liberty occurred in 2022 or in 2024.

How the death statistic compares to the previous year depends on whose statistics are used. Broad + Liberty totaled six deaths in the facility in 2022, making the 2023 total a decrease of one.

The prison, however, reported only four deaths in the facility in 2022.

As for the assaults, Noah Barth, prison monitoring director for the Pennsylvania Prison Society, says the county has informed the society it has plans to deploy as many as a hundred surveillance cameras or more throughout the complex.

Barth said that move should be a win-win for the prisoners and the correctional officers — the kind that has been promoted elsewhere in law enforcement.

“Similar to officer-worn body cameras that we’ve seen become more commonplace in policing, static cameras inside of correctional facilities serve a dual purpose of accountability,” Barth told Broad + Liberty. 

“On the one hand, staff members know they’re on camera and so there’s an incentive for them not to break rules or act in a way that would be problematic. On the other hand, it provides them with a certain level of protection against any potential false accusation because for an incarcerated person to say an incident occurred, the facility could easily review camera footage and verify whether that claim was accurate or not.” 

It’s unclear presently how many cameras are already installed.

One other statistic stands out, but is severely lacking in context in order to know what it means for the facility.

The GWHCF totaled eight emergency “disturbances” in 2023. There were sixteen disturbances recorded in all of the county prisons across the entire commonwealth, so half of all disturbances statewide took place at the GWHCF.

But what exactly counts as a disturbance?

One source with intimate knowledge of the prison says a disturbance is usually some kind of larger violent event, such as a riot in a cell block.

But Barth says that definition doesn’t exactly ring true for him based on his own knowledge of events at other prisons.

“I know for example, that there were several large disturbances in the Philadelphia jails that were widely reported on that I don’t see reflected in this [statewide] data,” Barth said. “So it will be important for the county and the state to clarify why Delaware [County] appears to be such an outlier in this area.”

The county did not provide a definition, and declined to respond to numerous other questions about the data.

The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, the agency responsible for collecting and aggregating the data from the county prisons, also did not provide greater clarification. 

“[T]here is no regulatory definition in Title 37, Chapter 95 for ‘disturbance,’” a DOC spokesperson said.

“Deprivatizing” the prison was a major campaign promise for numerous Democrats who ran for county council in the latter half of last decade. Once Democrats secured a majority in 2019, they set to work almost immediately on moving management back to government hands.

The county council voted to make that move in October of 2021. Although the official change of management wouldn’t take place until April 6, 2022, the county installed its own pick for warden, Laura K. Williams, on Jan. 31, 2022.

Numerous sources with intimate knowledge of the prison say Williams had full control of the facility when her tenure started in late January, and the April transfer or power was mostly ceremonial.

Months later in December 2022, the president of the correctional officers union Frank Kwaning  (who had been fired from the prison in the transfer of power) and another correctional officer, Albert Johnson, went before the full county council warning of deteriorating conditions and low morale.

“We are … in fear of our safety on this job,” said Johnson, a correctional officer with more than a decade of experience at the county prison, said at the time. “As of yesterday, two inmates stabbed. There have been more deaths in this prison since the county has come on. We are fearful for our lives with cells that do not lock, from inmates that come out when they want. We get feces, we get urine thrown on us on a daily basis.”

A year later, Kwaning and Johnson returned to the county council with the same complaints, but heightened urgency.

Finally, in May and June of this year, the correctional officers union officially launched a petition and later formally filed a vote of no-confidence against Warden Williams.

Meanwhile, lawsuits have begun to pile up against the prison. The family of a man who was apparently murdered by his cellmate in 2022 recently filed suit. The mother of a man who took his own life has also filed a federal lawsuit. The county faces numerous other lawsuits related to employment matters for the prison. 

Broad + Liberty has made three requests in the last three months to interview either Warden Williams or Councilor Kevin Madden, who chairs the Jail Oversight Board. Those requests have been declined.

Todd Shepherd is Broad + Liberty’s chief investigative reporter. Send him tips at tshepherd@s46680.p831.sites.pressdns.com, or use his encrypted email at shepherdreports@protonmail.com. @shepherdreports