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Dauphin County Commissioner Justin Douglas can be forgiven for not having all the answers to the questions PennLive's Editorial Board asked about conditions in Dauphin County Prison. In fact, he had very few.
Douglas stepped into his new role a little over two months ago and was awarded one of the most challenging jobs of all: overseeing Dauphin County prison. Veteran Commissioners George Hartwick and Mike Pries might have been able to provide more background about conditions at the prison, but they didn't participate in the meeting streamed live to PennLive's Facebook page.
PennLive invited all three commissioners to attend the meeting or advise a time more suitable for their schedules. Hartwick and Pries were unable to provide one.
One Editorial Board member lauded Douglas for his courage in just showing up, but the commissioner dismissed the praise. He was right to do so. Elected official are supposed to answer questions from the public and the media. It's a basic part of their jobs and a hallmark of transparency and honesty in public office.
But we have to give Douglas kudos for his honesty in his first meeting with the Editorial Board since he took office. He made no bones about just how bad things are at the prison, and he didn't pretend to know how to solve problems ranging from cockroach infestations in the kitchen, to young men dying in alarming numbers from mysterious causes.
But just as Douglas did during the election season, he did not shirk his duty as an elected official to step up and take questions, even if he couldn't answer most of them after a few weeks in office.
PennLive's Joshua Vaughn has spent months documenting serious issues at Dauphin County prison, and it's past time the people in positions of authority addressed them. The county spent thousands of dollars to hire John Wetzel, former Secretary of Corrections for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, to identify problems and solutions. The county even hired former Lancaster Police Chief John Bey to oversee Dauphin County corrections. But cockroaches are still flying, and people are still dying.
Thirty-three-year-old Justin Cofield's death on Feb. 23 was the 21st in the prison since January 2019. Cofield was the third person to die at Dauphin County jail since December.
And PennLive reporter Joshua Vaughn reported recently that officials cut off power t o two segregation blocks in the basement of Dauphin County Prison late last year and kept it off for more than two weeks. People inside were in the dark for at least 14 hours each day.
Douglas didn't know who ordered the power cut off, but it allegedly was to stop inmates from using electrical power to smoke drugs. The question is, how do drugs get inside a prison in the first place? Even Douglas conceded it has to be prison staff or vendors who are bringing them in.
So, Douglas also is asking for mandatory screenings of all prison employees. That makes sense.
And to try to assess what's causing so many deaths from apparently natural causes inside the prison, Douglas is calling for a performance audit of PrimeCare Medical, which provides medical services inside the prison.
In fact, he's open to an audit all prison operations to get at the root causes of the prison's dangerous disfunction. That idea came from Dr. Nirmal Joshi on our Editorial Board. It's amazing no one thought of doing that before.
But as Douglas repeatedly reminded the board, he's only one of three commissioners and only one of seven members of the prison board that has ultimate say. He's just one vote. It will take a majority of county officials from both parties working together in Dauphin County government to get anything done. And these days, that seems to be hard to achieve.
Like the families marching outside the prison walls for their loved ones, we're tired of begging officials to cooperate to do the work they're being paid to do. If Dauphin County commissioners and the prison board can't ensure prison operations are sanitary and safe, a higher authority needs to step in. But what authority has the power to do so?
That was another question Commissioner Douglas couldn't answer, but somebody should. The state took control of the City of Harrisburg when it couldn't manage its finances a decade or so ago. The state took control of the Harrisburg School District when the public lost trust in its management.
It may be time for the state to take control to keep more people from dying in Dauphin County prison.
-- PennLive.com