November JOB Recap

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TL;DR-- The Jail is supposed to be in compliance with the Solitary Confinement ballot initiative by December 5th, but it seems almost impossible that they will be able to pull it off. 


20-minute edit of the meeting:



More Details...

This month's meeting took place Thursday November 4th, 2021 at 4pm and was streamed live over Microsoft Teams. The public portion of the meeting lasted a little under two hours, after which point the Board continued its meeting in a private executive session.


Nov 4 JOB_Agenda by Allegheny JOB Watch


Roll Call

Present:

Absent:


Presentation

Erin Dalton, the Director of Allegheny County Department of Human Services (DHS), gave a brief presentation on a pandemic relief program for young adults who have been through the child welfare system. Young adults between the ages of 18 and 26 who are "Chaffee eligible" were able to receive $$$ from DHS. This included 66 young adults who were incarcerated at ACJ.

Summary:

Throughout the pandemic, the Jail has operated on a "23-and-one" lockdown. This means that people incarcerated at ACJ are currently only guaranteed ONE hour per day out of their cells. The ballot initiative defines solitary confinement as "the confinement of a detainee or inmate in a cell or other living space for more than 20 hours a day" so everyone in the entire Jail has been in solitary confinement since March 2020. The Jail administration is always cagey about why they continue to operate on 23-and-one when the majority of jails are on far less restrictive schedules, but it's probably due largely to staffing issues. 

The Jail is perpetually understaffed and it's quite likely that they will lose even more staff in the very near future. As employees of Allegheny County, Jail staff are subject to the vaccine mandate taking effect on December 1st and Deputy Warden Laura Williams reported that as of this meeting only 388 of the Jail's 609 employees were fully vaccinated. It is unclear how many staff plan to get vaccinated in the next few weeks and it is even less clear what the Jail plans to do when they lose their unvaccinated employees. 

It just doesn't seem possible that the Jail will be able to provide everyone 4+ hours out of cell each day and with even fewer staff the one hour per day out of cell may be a stretch. I'm concerned that the Jail is heading towards serious crisis.


And here's the full video of the November meeting:




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