MEDIA ALERT: Trial in Class Action Challenge to Discrimination Against Incarcerated Women in Berks County Jail Begins Tues (11.12) in Philadelphia

November 8, 2019

CONTACT: Rebecca Susman, rsusman@pailp.org, 412-254-4771

The trial in a groundbreaking case challenging discriminatory treatment of women incarcerated in the Berks County Jail, based solely on their gender, begins Tuesday in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The plaintiffs are challenging Berks County’s policy and practice of providing the lowest-security men in its custody with significantly greater freedoms and privileges than women with the same classification.

Victory, et al. v. Berks County is a class action lawsuit challenging the practice of imprisoning women with the “Trusty” classification in jail cells while housing men with the same classification in a separate “reentry center.”  There, the men enjoy far more time out of their cells, greater access to privileges, better visitation conditions, and easier access to furloughs. Plaintiffs Theresa Victory (now Theresa Bohning), Alice Velazquez-Diaz, and a class consisting of all current and future female Trusty prisoners in the Berks County Jail are represented by The Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project and Dechert LLP.

 The prisoners’ rights organization and co-counsel contend that providing only men with greater freedoms and less restrictive conditions of confinement, and not women with the same classification, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. They seek a permanent injunction ordering Berks County to treat women equally to similarly situated men.

 The case is important because it may decide to what extent prisons and jails need to provide equal housing and access to rehabilitative opportunities to incarcerated women. Women are the most rapidly expanding population in the U.S. prison system yet historically, prisons and jails have often provided inadequate and subpar housing facilities, medical care, and other necessities for incarcerated women.

WHAT: Trial in Victory v. Berks County

WHEN: Tuesday, November 12, 9 a.m. The trial is expected to last four days.

WHERE: James A. Byrne U.S. Courthouse, 601 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106, Courtroom 6B

WHO: U.S. District Court Judge Mark A. Kearney will preside over the trial. The Plaintiffs are represented by lawyers from the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project and the law firm of Dechert LLP. Defendants are represented by The MacMain Law Group. 

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Click HERE for pdf of Media Advisory

Opportunity: Now accepting Legal Internship applications

October 28, 2019

The Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project is currently accepting legal internship applications. Please see below for more information about the position and application process:

SUMMER INTERNSHIP AND SEMESTER EXTERNSHIP OPENINGS

The Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project (PILP) seeks to ensure equal access to justice for indigent institutionalized persons in Pennsylvania. PILP provides civil legal services to over 100,000 persons housed in jails, prisons, state hospitals and state centers. There are three offices, located in Philadelphia, Lewisburg and Pittsburgh, PA. We engage in direct representation, legislative and administrative advocacy, as well as providing institutionalized persons with legal reference materials and referrals. Our litigation is primarily in the federal courts.

PILP’s litigation docket includes cases involving physical and sexual assault, disability rights, transgender rights, women’s issues, freedom of religion, mental health and medical care, and other conditions of confinement. PILP is currently involved in class actions relating to a deteriorating nineteenth century county jail and the placement of individuals with serious mental illness in solitary confinement at one of the most secure federal prisons in the country. Other currently active cases involve women in a county jail who receive less out-of-cell time and access to programming than similarly situated men, a man who was retaliated against for receiving mail from an LGBTQ advocacy organization, denial of transgender healthcare, and denial of disability accommodations to individuals with mobility and visual impairments.

Position Description:

The Philadelphia and Pittsburgh offices of PILP welcome law student interns/externs for full-time summer positions and part-time semester-long positions.

Law student interns will be responsible for legal research and writing, reviewing and answering intake, case development and investigation, assisting with discovery, and other related duties. The intern will be supervised by one of the staff attorneys and taken to client meetings, depositions, and court whenever appropriate. The Pittsburgh office accepts applications for both part-time and full time summer interns.

PILP is unable to offer paid internships. PILP encourages students to seek outside funding through work study, law school, or foundation public interest fellowships or similar programs. PILP has previously been an approved site for credit-based externships at some law schools.

Application Process:

To apply, please submit a cover letter, resume, and writing sample (preferably not from a legal writing course, if possible). Applicants should submit their materials to Matthew A. Feldman, mfeldman@pailp.org (Philadelphia) or Alexandra Morgan-Kurtz, amorgan- kurtz@pailp.org (Pittsburgh). Applicants willing to work in either office should submit their materials in a single email to both offices and note any preference in office. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, with a preferred application deadline of Feb 14, 2020.

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Trans prisoner was pepper-sprayed and says he was invasively searched at Philly’s female jail

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October 23, 2019 | The Philadelphia Inquirer | Pranshu Verma

It started with too many drinks and an argument over who should clean the house. Zack got angry and landed a punch. His boyfriend grabbed a table leg and hit him in the chest. It ended with the cops at their University City apartment and Zack in handcuffs with one big worry.

As a transgender man, he was frightened about being put in a female jail and what the guards might do to him. “I didn’t want to be outed,” he later said.

Zack, who is 34, transitioned in his mid-20s to identify as a man. Now in state prison, he agreed to share his story only if called by his first name.

In November 2016, he was locked up in Riverside Correctional Facility, the city’s only female jail, where, he said, he faced a series of dehumanizing abuses.

Read more →

Board Announces PILP Leadership Change

August 2, 2019

The Board of the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project announced that Angus Love will be stepping down as Executive Director at the end of 2019 after many years of leadership and service. Angus will stay on in a consulting role during 2020 to assist the Project with the transition to a new Executive Director to ensure that the mission to serve clients with nowhere else to turn continues without interruption.

Mike Carroll
Board Chair 

In lawsuit against Berks County detention center, court rules immigrants have right to be free from sexual assault

July 26, 2019 | The Morning Call | Peter Hall

Faced with a federal lawsuit over a guard’s repeated sexual assaults of a Honduran refugee, employees of a Berks County detention center where immigrants are held, have asked a court to throw out the woman’s claims that her constitutional rights had been violated.

Lawyers for the director and employees of the Berks Family Residential Center argued they can’t be held liable for failing to stop what they characterized as a consensual sexual relationship between a guard and an immigration detainee.

In a decision earlier this month that bolsters the right of immigrants being held while their cases are processed, a federal appeals court rejected the county workers’ claims and cleared the way for a trial that could expose the inner workings of the controversial Berks center.

Read more →

PRESS RELEASE: Court rules against Berks ICE facility, finding that immigrant detainees have the constitutional right to be protected from sexual assault by staff.

July 3, 2019
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Rebecca Susman, rsusman@pailp.org, 412-254-4771

The US Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit issued an important ruling in favor of our client, E.D., upholding the constitutional rights of immigrants held at the Berks Residential Family Center and affirming that the laws protecting incarcerated people from abuse also apply to those held within the ICE facility.

The Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project represents E.D., a Honduran woman who, after fleeing violence and sexual assault, was detained at Berks Residential Family Center while seeking asylum with her three-year-old son. E.D. was sexually assaulted by immigration staff member Daniel Sharkey during her detention at the ICE facility. He was ultimately convicted of the institutional sexual assault. Other employees at the immigration detention center were aware of the ongoing harassment and abuse but did not try to intervene or stop the assault. The case, E.D. v Sharkey, is against Daniel Sharkey, as well as other Berks County employees for their failure to protect E.D. from abuse.

Affirming the rights of immigrants in ICE detention, the Court held that constitutional protections against sexual assault do apply to people detained at the Berks ICE facility and, while in custody, they cannot consent to sexual contact with employees. The Court additionally found that supervisors, personnel, and colleagues have a duty to monitor known sexual misconduct between employees and detainees and to intervene. In affirming the opinion of the District Court allowing E.D.’s claims to proceed, the Third Circuit held: "we necessarily address whether immigration detainees are entitled to the same constitutional protections afforded by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as pre-trial detainees. We hold that immigration detainees are entitled to such protections.” (Opinion at 3)

“We are pleased that the Third Circuit has confirmed that immigration detainees have the same constitutional protections as other detainees, including the right to be free of sexual assault from a government employee while confined.” stated Su Ming Yeh, Deputy Director of the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project

Read the 3rd Circuit Opinion here
Full press release here

Federal court upholds detainee's lawsuit against Berks County Residential Center

July 2, 2019 | Reading Eagle | Karen Shuey

The victim of a sexual assault contends the county failed to implement policies to prevent the assault and that staff was indifferent to the assault.

PHILADELPHIA, PA —

The victim of sexual assault at the hands of a Berks County Residential Center employee can move ahead with her lawsuit against the county and several staff members of the facility, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.

The ruling stems from a June 2016 civil suit filed in federal court by the victim — who was 19 when the assault occurred in 2014 — alleging the county failed to implement policies to prevent the assault and that staff members at the facility were deliberately indifferent to the assault.

The county and several staff members named in the suit filed an appeal days before the trial was set to begin in April 2018.

The county asked the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia to dismiss the case while the staff members asked the court to grant them qualified immunity — a legal doctrine that shields government officials from being sued for misconduct unless their actions violate established federal law or constitutional rights.

The appeal was denied by a three-judge panel. U.S. District Judge Luis Felipe Restrepo wrote the opinion.

In the 16-page ruling, the judges affirmed that immigration detainees are entitled to the same constitutional protections afforded to all pretrial detainees by the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. And, because of that finding, the suit against the county and staff members at the facility can proceed.

“… We agree there is enough evidence to support an inference that the defendants knew of the risk facing [the victim], and that their failure to take additional steps to protect her — acting in their capacity as either a coworker or supervisor — could be viewed by a fact finder as the sort of deliberate indifference to a detainee's safety that the Constitution forbids,” Restrepo wrote in the ruling.

Read more →