By Tom Lisi
LNP, Lancaster, Pa.
LANCASTER, Pa. — Some prisoners at Lancaster County Prison refused to eat earlier this week to protest conditions inside their housing unit caused by the ongoing summer heatwave, the warden acknowledged Thursday during a meeting of the county prison board.
Temperatures in Lancaster have hovered in the 90s over the past week, and individuals who have spent time in the prison when temperatures are high say it’s hotter inside prisoners’ cells, where they spend most of their time.
Family members of people incarcerated at the facility have said privately and on social media that they are worried about a variety of heat-related problems their loved ones are describing in phone calls and visits.
Family members who spoke to LNP — LancasterOnline declined to be quoted, saying they worried their loved ones could face retaliation if they spoke publicly.
At Thursday’s prison board meeting, held in a prison room with no air conditioning, Warden Cheryl Steberger said staff are doing what they can to alleviate the conditions caused by the heat.
“I understand loved ones outside having those concerns,” Steberger said.
The warden said “protest” was not a correct word to use to describe a situation that occurred when prisoners in the maximum security unit declined to eat. She said the prisoners thought their unit had air conditioning, but staff were intentionally withholding it.
That is not true, she said, and the issue was resolved when corrections officers told the prisoners that the unit does not have any air conditioning.
Prisoners’ refusal to eat earlier this week is also common, Steberger said.
“That’s just their way of communicating, that’s nothing out of the ordinary,” the warden said Thursday.
No cool water
Steberger also spoke to complaints from loved ones that the running water in parts of the facility were undrinkable due to a high salt content and that prisoners could not get any relief from the heat because there was no cool water for showers.
The prison’s running water can taste salty because of softening treatments applied each Monday to prevent erosion in aging pipes, Steberger said.
Staff have been refilling water in coolers regularly throughout the day, so prisoners have access to cold water, Steberger said. Prisoners have said in the past that those coolers are located in common areas, which are not accessible to them most of the day.
The shower issue is a result of ambient heat from the building that heats water before it reaches housing units, according to Steberger.
Another incident this week in which prisoners in the facility refused to reenter their cells after their time in a common area is not uncommon and lasted only a few minutes, Steberger said.
Prisoners receive a cup of ice twice a day at meals, the warden said, and shorts from the commissary free of charge.
Corrections officers working in non-air conditioned housing blocks also have to contend with the heat. The officers’ labor union negotiated more frequent breaks and regular access to Gatorade and an ice machine, among other amenities, to mitigate the heat during the summer months.
The union at one point requested the county provide IV stations, so officers could recover from spending long periods in the hot housing blocks, according to court records. The labor award they received from arbitrators included additional paid days off to recover from shifts in which temperatures were above 80 degrees, but the IVs were not included.
“Our staff does everything they can to make it reasonable, make it livable,” said Commissioner Josh Parsons, chair of the prison board, which oversees the county prison. “It gets hot, probably has since the 1850s and it continues to.”
‘You’re going to get angry’
County officials have said over the years that making major improvements to the current facility are not cost effective. Since 2022, the commissioners office has overseen the planning of a new county prison likely to cost upwards of $400 million. But the commissioners have yet to commit to a timeline of when construction could start and when the facility may be ready to open.
County officials have proposed contracts with the project’s vendors to last through at least 2028.
The summer heat issues in the prison are longstanding.
Tammy Rosing, an organizer for the anti-poverty advocacy group Put People First PA, spent a few summer weeks in Lancaster County Prison waiting for a hearing on misdemeanor charges back in the mid-2000s, she said.
Rosing said the conditions at the prison back then were dangerously hot and inhumane. The women in her unit stripped down to their underwear as often as they could, and put clothes back on when another prisoner flagged that a supervisor was approaching the cells, she said.
“You’re almost like, ‘Am I going to get through this?’ It’s that bad, so you’re not going to have a desire to eat or care, you’re going to get angry, you’re going to get frustrated,” Rosing said.
Rosing, who advocates for expanded services and opportunities for the poor, didn’t know exactly what officials could do to make conditions adequate at the facility, but she balked at the idea that “‘It is what it is, let people suffer,’” she said.
“I bet you there are folks in the community that would step up and help” if asked, Rosing said.
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