The Pennsylvania Prison Society, a group that monitor’s the state’s prisons, interviewed nearly 50 prisoners in Philadelphia last year and issued a report that documented the “dangerous and degrading conditions in the Philadelphia prisons.” The report said that prisoners were confined to “rat-infested, caged areas, with insufficient food and insufficient health care for weeks or months at a time while their mental health deteriorates.” Ten prisoners died in 2022, according to the report.
The Philadelphia correctional officers union cast a unanimous “no confidence” vote in Carney last year, asserting the facilities were understaffed and in “chaos.”
Carney, the first woman to serve as prisons commissioner, acknowledged the problems in her letter to prisons staff, saying the pandemic had “caused a tremendous strain on correctional operations worldwide.”