The recent Associated Press series on Pennsylvania's county prisons documented again the low status jails have occupied historically.

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


Each year, more than 100,000 Pennsylvanians pass through the state’s local jails — some to await trial and others to serve time for everything from misdemeanor drug violations to felonies.

Conditions at the county jails can vary greatly. Some are by-the-book models of cleanliness and safety; others are poorly supervised institutions where lax security and poor sanitation expose prisoners and staff to violence and disease.

These locally funded and managed jails operate with little public scrutiny. They are not required to make public their annual state inspections or the reports they file on unusual occurrences, from inmate beatings to suicides and murders. What’s more, county officials would like to shut out the state’s inspectors.


reports provide a window on a system that has endured a string of recent scandals. They also raise questions about whether systemwide reforms are needed.

Ninety-six percent of the people going into the jails and prisons are coming out, they’re coming back onto the street, and so we as a society have to decide what’s really important.

tougher sentencing laws, particularly in drug cases, are behind the surge in the jail population — which has quadrupled over the last two decades.

We don’t treat, in any meaningful way, this addiction problem, If you have an addiction; going to jail isn’t going to rehabilitate this addiction.