The members of Delaware County Council joined DelcoCPR’s November general organizing meeting to provide an update on the deprivatization process. Councilmember Kevin Madden took the lead due to his focus on George W. Hill Correctional Facility as Chair of the Delaware County Jail Oversight Board (CJOB).
Councilmember Madden said, “It would be great if we could snap our fingers and fast forward to a jail under county control, but it is a significant process.” He emphasized that the transition to public management is a complicated process that Council wants to handle safely and responsibly. There are three key players who will coordinate the transition back to public management:
Warden at George W. Hill Correctional Facility: this is a county position. The current warden, Donna Mellon, will be stepping down at the end of the year. An interim warden will be appointed soon.
Transition Manager hired by the county
Outside Consultant: the County received 3 responses to the RFQ and are evaluating final proposals now, with a decision to be made in December.
Phases of Deprivatization
Analysis: Council needs to know the financial implications for the 2022 budget.
Transition: Expected to take 6 months
Post-transition Support
Expected Timeline
The current contract with GEO Group includes a clause allowing the county to give 180 days notice that they will be ending the contract. Council expects this to happen by the end of March after the analysis of the financials is complete. At this point they don’t expect issues with COVID to hinder the timeline.
Potential Roadblocks
Delaware County has a residency requirement for employees. Currently, many prison employees do not live in the county.
Councilmember Christine Reuther noted that the timeline could be delayed because there is a lot they need to learn about the capital costs of the prison.
There are vacant positions, especially in medical, that will need to be filled.
An unreasonable deadline could reduce the quality of the consultant’s work.
We had about 40 participants in the virtual meeting, including Christopher Welsh and Lee Awbrey from the Delaware County Public Defender’s Office. Mr. Welsh said that his plan is to have a point person on staff as a “prison services coordinator” who can help address individual issues with residents at the facility.
Additional Updates:
Prison administrators coordinated a voting campaign for the 2020 election. The Deputy Warden assisted prisoners with ballots and then they were taken to a county ballot drop box. Members of our leadership team who spoke with staff at the facility say that the staff did a “really great job” helping everyone access the program.
A new assistant warden was hired as facilities manager.
The number of prisoners at George W. Hill has increased to approx. 1,200 (compared to 960 back in May). 90% are pretrial while about 10% are serving a county sentence.
The lower prison population early this year allowed flexibility for quarantining in empty cell blocks; however, that has become more difficult as more people have been incarcerated over the past two months. At the same time, COVID cases at the prison have surged, with 17 prisoners testing positive as of December 1st.
A corrections officer died from COVID-19 on November 29th after being ill for several weeks, and another corrections officer has reportedly been hospitalized with COVID.