From the prisoners’ perspective

September 8, 2017 | Susan Colón | The Standard-Journal

LEWISBURG — More than 200 people attended an event by the Lewisburg Prison Project and co-hosted by Bucknell University this week.

Rebecca Armstrong, outreach coordinator for the Lewisburg Prison Project, suggested a student/community event that would address the issue of incarceration and mental illness. The freshman book this year was “Just Mercy” by Bryan Stevenson. The book addresses the continued growth of incarceration and correlations due to race and socioeconomic status. Two excerpts from the book are, “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.” and “The opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice.”

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Allegheny County Jail officials decided not to tell family members about inmate's assault

August 3, 2017 | Shelley Bradbury | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

After 20-year-old Keyshawn Givens was beaten so severely in the Allegheny County Jail that he was sent to a hospital on July 25, jail officials decided not to tell his family about the incident.

No one from the jail alerted the inmate’s listed emergency contact, jail Deputy John Williams said in a statement this week, because officials determined the injuries were not serious or life-threatening, and because of security concerns.

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Transgender inmate says prison wrongly halted hormone meds

June 26, 2017 | Terrie Morgan-Besecker | The Times-Tribune

Steven Fritz, 44, of Scranton, received hormone medications while incarcerated at the State Correctional Institution at Houtzdale. She expected to continue the medications when she was incarcerated at the county jail on new theft charges, but the medical staff abruptly stopped the drugs after just three days, she said.

Joseph D’Arienzo, spokesman for the county, declined to discuss the case, citing medical privacy laws. He confirmed the county has no policy regarding hormone treatment for transgenders.

The prison’s denial of treatment is at odds with the state Department of Corrections’ policy regarding hormone treatment for transgenders and likely violates Fritz’s constitutional rights, which could lead to a lawsuit, attorneys for a transgender advocacy group and prisoners rights group said.

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Who’s Next: Law; Meet 12 Pittsburghers shaping the legal community

June 15, 2017 | Sarah Anne Hughes and MK Slaby | The Incline

From energy to entertainment to the environment and more, our seventh Who’s Next class is filled with young legal experts working across Pittsburgh.

One works for the Pennsylvania Innocence Project. Another works to protect constitutional rights of those who are incarcerated. Others have opened their own firms. And multiple started in other careers before going to law school.

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Lawsuit: Mentally ill inmates are being mistreated

June 13, 2017 | Marcia Moore | The Daily Item

Seriously mentally ill inmates at the U.S. penitentiary at Lewisburg are being given word games and Sudoku puzzles instead of treatment and medication, according to a class action lawsuit filed against the federal bureau of prisons.

The suit, filed by the DC Prisoner’s Project of the Washington Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, claims prisoners received minimal interaction with counselors, often just a minute or two each week and through cell doors.

Men with lifetime histories of schizophrenia, paranoia, bipolar disorder, depression and other serious mental conditions often receive no treatments at all and are held in cells, often with another inmate, for 23 hours or more a day. Instead of treatment, the suit alleges, these inmates receive Sudoku puzzles, word games and coloring pages.

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Federal penitentiary inmates down by 500

February 4, 2017 | Marcia Moore | The Daily Item

Due to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons' plans to limit the time inmates can spend in the SMU program, the Lewisburg Penitentiary now houses about 500 fewer inmates. Dave Sprout, a paralegal with the Lewisburg Prison Project, believes that this change will lower the number of violent incidents that take place due to the amount of cell space this change frees up. 

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In Allegheny County Jail, pregnant inmates have been held in solitary confinement for infractions such as having one too many pairs of shoes

December 23, 2016 | Matt Stroud | Medium

The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, along with The Abolitionist Law Center, PA Institutional Law Project, and Reed Smith filed a lawsuit on behalf of five pregnant women who spent as many as 22 days in ACJ’s Disciplinary Housing Unit for transgressions such as storing envelopes in a library book, and possessing three pairs of shoes instead of two. One of the women named in the lawsuit told Rewire that she was placed into the DHU — a euphemism the county uses for solitary confinement — because she kept her physician-prescribed medications in her cell, apparently against the jail’s policy. Once in the hole, she said she felt “like I was going to be in there forever.” When she filed a written grievance with the warden about being placed into solitary, she noted that she was going through a high-risk pregnancy — a detail that one would imagine the jail’s primary overseer might take seriously. A reply was scribbled at the bottom of the form: “If this is a problem don’t come to jail.”

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Prison Project points to abuse at USP

December 1, 2016 | Matt Farrand | Standard-Journal

Allegations of abuse at USP Lewisburg are still a common occurrence since the new security protocols were instilled in 2009.  The prison uses hard restraints that cut off the inmates' circulation as well as other unnecessary punishments.  David Sprout, a paralegal and member of the Lewisburg Prison Project, believes that some of the actions of the penitentiary can be seen as torture.

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