Prisoners’ Rights Advocates File Class Action Lawsuit Against Allegheny County Over Failed Mental Health Care System at ACJ.

September 15, 2020
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: William Lukas, Abolitionist Law Center, (508)-340-6507, wjlukas@alcenter.org
Rebecca Susman, PA Institutional Law Project, rsusman@pailp.org, 412-254-4771

PITTSBURGH – The Abolitionist Law Center (ALC), Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project (PILP), and Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP filed a class action lawsuit today on behalf of people with psychiatric disabilities incarcerated in Allegheny County Jail (ACJ). The lawsuit alleges severe and systemic constitutional violations, as well as violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act, for the jail’s failure to provide adequate mental health care and its discriminatory and brutal treatment of people with psychiatric disabilities.

PILP Statement on the Importance of the US Postal Service

August 25, 2020

The Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project highly values the services provided by the United States Postal Service, and urges it to maintain its operations, without changes to its operations, service, or delivery.

Communication between incarcerated people and their families is a valuable lifeline. People are frequently incarcerated in prisons far away from their loved ones, and mail may be their only means of contact.

PILP and LPP Send Letter to Warden Spaulding Re: Inhumane Treatment and Deplorable Housing Conditions at USP Lewisburg

July 1, 2020. The Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project (PILP) and the Lewisburg Prison Project (LPP) sent an advocacy letter to Warden Spaulding at USP Lewisburg after we received a number of reports that people incarcerated at the federal penitentiary are being treated inhumanely and are being housed in deplorable conditions that also do not adequately protect them from COVID-19 transmission, which will likely have a significant impact on their health and safety, as well as prison staff and the community.

Read the full letter here

PILP Sends Advocacy Letter to Governor Wolf Objecting to His Statement re: COVID-19 in Prisons

June 26, 2020

The Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project sent Governor Wolf an advocacy letter objecting to his statement that people in PA prisons are more secure from COVID-19. Additionally, PILP urged universal testing, lifting the lockdowns, and necessary services.
Read the letter here

Press Release: Partial Agreement Reached in Class Action Lawsuit Requiring Soap, Cleaning Products, and Facemasks in Philadelphia Jails to Address COVID-19 Spread

June 5, 2020

A federal judge approved a consent order on a partial settlement agreement today in a class action civil rights lawsuit filed by the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, and the law firms of Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing, Feinberg & Lin LLP and Dechert LLP on behalf of people currently incarcerated in the Philadelphia Department of Prisons. The lawsuit seeks the immediate implementation of health and safety protocols to protect incarcerated people from COVID-19 in the city’s prisons.

Prison Reform Advocates Reach Agreement With Allegheny County Over Steps to Protect Incarcerated People From COVID-19

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PITTSBURGH – A federal judge approved an order today to resolve a preliminary injunction motion filed by the Abolitionist Law Center, the law firm Dechert LLP, Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania on behalf of three people incarcerated at the Allegheny County Jail seeking changes to the jail’s practices to protect people in the jail from COVID-19. The consent order requires Allegheny County to follow procedures to reduce the risk of COVID-19 in the jail, including housing people newly admitted to the jail separately from the rest of the jail population for two weeks, housing medically vulnerable people in single cells, and requiring jail staff to wear masks during their shifts

Press Release: Eric McGill and Leonttayy Pratt finally freed from solitary confinement after Lebanon County eliminates policy that banned wearing dreadlocks as religious practice.

Mr. McGill and Mr. Pratt have finally been released from solitary confinement. Mr. McGill entered solitary confinement in January 2019 and Mr. Pratt had been held for over four months. They were were both punished solely for refusing to cut off their dreadlocks in compliance with their Rastafarian faith.