Delco weekend prisoners say facility wrongly puts them in general population

Several prisoners sentenced to George W. Hill Correctional Facility (GWHCF) as “weekenders” say they’ve endured vastly different conditions than those imposed on them in court. 

Judges sometimes bestow weekend sentencing in cases when a defendant committed a minor offense and has work or family obligations that straight time could derail. On Sunday, eight men serving repeated weekends at GWHCF signed a letter and emailed it to the jail’s warden, deputy wardens, and all nine members of the Delaware County Jail Oversight Board. 

The letter’s signers recalled being housed over the last eight weekends in the prison’s general population — a far cry from what they say is the routine and what conditions were held out to them when they agreed to weekend sentencing. During that time, they added, the prisoners stayed in Block 8A, an area whose cells are kept under a 22-hour lockdown with one-hour breaks occurring twice daily.

These men, whose names are known to Broad + Liberty, requested and are receiving anonymity because their assertions about the prison, not their own past misdeeds, are the focus of this report. The prisoners all signed the letter, making themselves accountable to the jail officials in that regard. 

Often, the weekenders wrote, they are paired in two-person cells with general-population inmates serving longer sentences for graver crimes. The signers noted they previously stayed in another section, Block 2, but were moved to 8A due to Block 2 needing plumbing and electrical work. They recall hearing last week that prison administrators couldn’t (or wouldn’t) bear the staffing burden of reopening Block 2.

This violates their sentencing agreements and breaches the law, they say. They also fear it could jeopardize a prisoner’s safety or his release date should a more dangerous inmate start a fight.

“For safety, security, and mental health concerns, the weekenders are legally supposed to be separated from the general population,” they wrote. “When some prisoners have the ability to be there for 48 hours at a time, and others will be there for months or longer, there is greater risk for a physical altercation to occur. Separating groups of prisoners during the classification process takes this into account, and this same practice of separation should exist for weekend prisoners.” 

Adding support to those complaints are recently obtained monthly reports of “extraordinary incidents” which show the prison counted 32 assaults in May — the highest number of any single month reaching back to 2015, the earliest year for which data is still available online.

One source with intimate knowledge of the prison said assault data deserves extra context, in that the average person usually thinks of an assault as a crime of one-person on one-person. But the source said in prison, a single incident of assault can oftentimes mean multiple people in one fight, such as a group of four against three.

For example, Broad + Liberty reported in January about a five-on-one knife attack that sent one prisoner to the hospital. That incident would likely only be one assault even though six different inmates were involved.

In the email the prisoners sent to county officials, an addendum raised other concerns, including sewage on the floor and in cells, lack of cups or utensils at meals, and flooding inside sleeping quarters. At one point, prisoners reported, their stay included a period of at least 44 hours without running water. Some release times, they added, were significantly delayed. 

Their letter attests to “greater mental health damage” as a result of their experience. One weekender’s girlfriend, who helped them compose their message, told Broad + Liberty her partner has felt that damage acutely as he struggles with bipolar disorder, panic attacks, and past addiction. 

“The whole point is rehabilitation and making your life better so that this never happens again,” she said. “I can tell you that his mental health has absolutely declined since being back in jail…. Just being in lockdown for 22 hours a day, I can’t even imagine.” 

She cites Pennsylvania’s Reception and Classification Procedures as well as its Population Management Procedures Manual in arguing the conditions her boyfriend has faced aren’t legal. 

One Reception and Classification provision says, “…[T]he unit management staff shall review both of [a cell’s] inmates’ records to determine whether there is an imbalance of power between the inmates that could lead to the victimization of the weaker inmate…. This review shall include [in part]… misconducts, prior violence, prior institutional sexual abuse, and prior convictions for violent offenses.” 

The eight weekenders who wrote to the Jail Oversight Board seek placement back in Block 2 or another open-cell unit separate from the general population. 

Two judges of the Court of Common Pleas, Margaret Amoroso and George Pagano, sit on the oversight panel. Neither they nor the board chair, County Councilman Kevin Madden (D), commented in response to email inquiries. The county public-relations office also did not reply. 

These events come after assaults inside GWHCF reached a new annual high of 217 in 2023, up 29 percent over the preceding year. Over the same time frame, the subcategory of inmate-on-inmate assaults was up 65 percent. And the surge in violent incidents is continuing this year. Data collected for the first five months of this year show the prison is on track to surpass last year’s assault number and is on pace to reach 244 if trends continue.

Warden Laura Williams and spokespersons for the county did not return emails seeking comment on the assault numbers.

Broad + Liberty reporter Todd Shepherd contributed to this story.  

Bradley Vasoli is a writer and media strategist in Pennsylvania.You can follow him on X at @BVasoli.

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