[NOTE: The January meeting was held in person and concerned residents were able to come and deliver their comments in person. We are, however, still in a pandemic and JOB meetings are held at a time when many people are still at work... For most people, submitting a comment online is the only way they can participate in these meetings.]
I wasn't sure what to think when Judge Kim Clark announced in December that she was stepping down as Head of the Allegheny County Jail Oversight Board. The Pennsylvania statute concerning county jail oversight boards does allow the President Judge (in this case Judge Clark) to send a designee to sit on the Board in their place, so this is totally legit statutorily speaking. She's allowed to do that, unlike County Executive Rich Fitzgerald. Still, it was an unexpected announcement that caught even her fellow Board members off-guard.
I've often been frustrated by Judge Clark's tendency to change the subject whenever things start to get spicy between Bethany Hallam and one of the Wardens, and I have certainly felt confounded by her willingness to take the Warden at his word no matter how implausible his claims were. But she did seem to earnestly care about conditions at the Jail, at least a little. It's not clear yet if the same can be said of Judge Elliott Howsie who made his first appearance as a current Board member at January's Jail Oversight meeting on Thursday January 6th.
Judge Howsie kicked off the meeting by announcing that Public Comments submitted online will no longer be read during Board meetings. The reason for this sudden change? Public Comments "tend to get us off-track."
Quite a claim!
The Allegheny County Jail is notoriously lacking in transparency. Even members of the Jail Oversight Board struggle to get information from the Jail; in July, for example, former Board member Chelsa Wagner described a "veil of secrecy" preventing the Board from looking into deaths at the Jail. As Board members frequently remind us, most of them have full-time jobs and other obligations in their lives. The Board has said that employees of the Jail "have no place" at meetings and the Warden objects to allowing incarcerated people to read meeting minutes. The flow of information into and out of that Jail is so, so tightly controlled that last I heard incarcerated people were forbidden to show their food to loved ones during video visits because of the possibility of bad press.
One might hope that the Board would take advantage of these monthly meetings to ask as many questions of the Jail administration as possible. The Board is responsible for "the oversight of the health and safekeeping of [incarcerated people]" in ACJ, after all. But other than Councilperson Hallam the Board usually seems happy to keep it moving. The Board is ostensibly in the process of hiring a JOB Liaison, but that may still be months away. In the meantime the Jail may as well be a black box without public input.
In other words I think "public comments get us off track" is a very poor excuse.
Preventing the reading of Public Comments and only allowing in-person input will definitely make the meetings shorter and will definitely allow the Warden to further avoid responsibility. Those are the only two motives I can truly understand here-- not wanting to devote the time and energy, and taking the spotlight off the Warden (and, by extension, the County Executive). Deeply disappointing.
I think it would be worth submitting Public Comments to express any disapproval you may feel about this new policy. We can always hope that Board members will be so irritated by our complaints that they change the policy back.
Here are two big things you can write in about, if you do write in this month--
- Although the Board severed its contract with professional larper Joseph Garcia in September, and expressly prohibited the Jail from acquiring weapons like shotguns to use within the Jail.... a squad of twelve shotgun-carrying COs has been roaming the Jail. The Warden insists he's not violating the Board's decision because the weapons had already been acquired at the time the motion passed. This is absolutely unacceptable and the Board should hear about it.
- The Jail is also violating the Solitary Confinement ban. This is no surprise, as they literally had not even informed COs about the new requirements until the day before the ban was to take effect. However, it does potentially expose them to lawsuits and they are scrambling to cover up.
Yeah it's a real mess out here. Who knows what the February JOB meeting will bring! It's scheduled for Thursday February 3rd at 4pm and it will be streamed live on YouTube, see ya there friend.
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