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CONTACT: 215-564-4775, media@prisonsociety.org
PHILADELPHIA - Less than three weeks before Pennsylvania’s primary election, a new survey of the commonwealth’s county jails finds that many have not implemented best practices to encourage voting by people who are incarcerated.
The semi-annual survey was conducted and published by the Pennsylvania Prison Society, which acts as a monitor for the commonwealth’s prisons and jails, advocating for the health, safety, and dignity of people in custody.
Forty five of 60 county jails responded. Among them, only eight have a ballot drop box in the facility, a best practice recommended by Pennsylvania’s Department of State to ensure a secure chain of custody of mail ballots submitted by incarcerated people. The survey also found that less than half of the respondents allow outside groups to conduct voter education and registration, though most of the jails have a designated staff person to help people with voting.
"Voting is a basic right. It's incumbent upon county facilities to enable incarcerated voters access to the ballot,” said Claire Shubik-Richards, executive director of the Pa. Prison Society. “The Department of State's guidance is clear and relatively easy to follow in a correctional setting, and yet, many counties appear unaware and unprepared.
“We hope by bringing attention to the issue and the solutions, more counties will follow the lead of places like Dauphin and Monroe, where secure ballot drop boxes are provided and the jails work with outside voting rights groups."
There are more than 20,000 people incarcerated in county jails across the commonwealth, and many of them are eligible to vote under Pennsylvania law. Only people currently serving a term of incarceration for a felony conviction and those convicted of violating the election code in the last four years are forbidden from voting.
A majority of people in Pennsylvania’s county jails are being held pre-trial or serving a sentence for a misdemeanor conviction and, thus, are eligible to vote.
The survey also found significant staffing problems in the jails. Nearly half of those responding have a vacancy rate of full-time security positions of at least ten percent. Eight of them have a vacancy rate of at least 25 percent.
“Facility safety and community safety depends on staffing,” Shubik-Richards said. “Jails that rely on overworked staff covering for vacant positions have higher rates of violence and higher rates of escape.”
The Prison Society says this reflects a larger national trend in corrections. Earlier this month, a new report titled Safe Inside found that, across the country, there are 13% less corrections officers in state prisons than there were in 2020 while the incarcerated population has increased by two percent. Meanwhile, assaults against staff have increased 77% and assaults against incarcerated people have increased 54% since 2019.
“Millions of people have a loved one working or incarcerated in a state prison,” the report stated. “How they return home, whether from a shift or a sentence, affects everyone’s well-being.”
The results of the Prison Society’s survey are available in a spreadsheet at this link. County-by-county data can also be viewed using an interactive map on the organization’s website.
