MORE ATTENTION SHOULD BE PAID TO COUNTY PRISONS

The recent Associated Press series on Pennsylvania's county prisons
documented again the low status jails have occupied historically in
the hierarchy of correctional solutions to public safety at the local level.

The "gaol," transplanted to the American soil from an English model,
has been shown throughout history to be characterized by acute and
chronic overcrowding, understaffing, unhealthy and unsanitary
conditions and, most importantly, underfunding.

That the articles illustrated great variation in these attributes in
Pennsylvania county prisons is no surprise given the low priority
county tax revenues, local politicians and the general public have
traditionally given to supporting prisons.

My research on county jails in New York state from 1920 to 1960,
utilizing New York State Commission of Correction inspection records
and statistics for that period, showed that communities enlarged
their jails only when there were extreme overcrowding pressures
(immigrant population swells or federal prisoners from the Volstead
Act) or (rarely for this time period) court interventions.

The typical "Band-Aid" solution was to use outside cell space such as
hallways, gymnasiums and even chapels to address chronic overcrowding
situations. Because of the lack of local county funding, jails were
often expanded in the short term by building annexes or dormitories.

Rarely did local county governments respond to the New York State
Commission of Correction's threats (as the state's regulatory agency
from 1922) to close down local facilities.

In fact, one large urban county jail continued to ignore the
commission's calls for improvements for a period of 65 years -- until
the old jail burned and a new one had to be built.

Across all states, new jails have been built and old jails enlarged
through the infusion of state funding from bonding initiatives. Yet,
in Pennsylvania and throughout the United States, it is
criminal-justice policies that have placed the most pressure on
county jails and their administrators and staff.

The war on drugs and accompanying mandatory minimum-sentencing laws,
fueled by media and political "lock 'em up and throw away the key"
campaigns of the past 25 years, have filled our county jails and
state prison systems with substance abusers and parole violators and
more women than ever in the history of our country.

As 2006 begins, prisons large and small, rural and urban, struggle to
house and separate, feed and clothe, program and habilitate pretrial
and sentenced, local, state and federal detainees and inmates, while
balancing public safety and inmate and staff security and safety,
using a model that has largely never worked.

Yet the failure of many of Pennsylvania's county prisons to meet
inspection standards is not the real story.

Here in Pennsylvania, the birthplace of national model institutions
of freedom, the struggle to establish legitimate federal, state and
local government order and authority resulted in the creation of
penal institutions that were, by 18th century standards, benign and
reformative.

The Walnut Street Jail and the Eastern State Penitentiary came to
exemplify a new nation's efforts to punish under the protection of law.

Unfortunately, over time, these well-intentioned institutions were
stripped of their reformative intent. Over time, punishment as the
denial of individual liberty has come to focus primarily on the most
marginal of Americans -- the under-educated, the under-employed,
minorities and immigrants, the mentally ill, homeless and the addicted.

Indeed, the United States leads all other democratic nations in its
rate of incarcerating marginal people.

Building more high-tech prisons in Pennsylvania will not address the
critical issues of who is in our jails, the high rate of jail
recidivism, and what resources our communities can offer to prisoners
who return to their home communities each day.

This is Pennsylvania's real "brain drain."