Lawyers sue again over prison overcrowding in Philadelphia

The Philadelphia prison population hit a record high of more than 9,300 inmates earlier this month, and the jail system is now so overcrowded that more than 2,000 of them are confined three to a cell, according to a class-action lawsuit filed this week.

The lawsuit said the practice of triple celling has been expanded to deal with the record high numbers - even though a federal judge last year warned that keeping three inmates in cells built for two was "not tenable as a permanent cure" for overcrowding.

Without a third bunk in the cell, the third inmate is required to sleep in a plastic shell, called a "blue boat," on the floor, the suit stated.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of 11 named inmates, as well as other prisoners in the system, by civil-rights lawyer David Rudovsky, the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, and several other lawyers. Named as defendants were the City and Prison Commissioner Louis Giorla.

City Solicitor Shelley R. Smith said yesterday that an array of efforts have been under way to try to ease the overcrowding. But she called it a situation where "demand far exceeds supply" of available cells.

"We're looking at every option that we can," said Smith, including more electronic monitoring and having more city prisoners housed in other jails.

"This particular lawsuit was something we were hoping to avoid," she said.

Jonathan H. Feinberg, one of the lawyers for the inmates, said that while he remained hopeful that both sides could "work on some solutions," it might well take judicial intervention to resolve the lawsuit.

"Our concern is that our clients are being detained in unconstitutional conditions," he said.

The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick, who presided over the 2006 lawsuit that focused on overcrowding - back when the total population was about 8,900.

In a January 2007 ruling in that case, Surrick warned against the practice of triple celling and said the city's approach to the problem was like putting a "Band-Aid on a wound that requires major surgery." He said triple celling was "not tenable" as a long-term solution.

The total population yesterday was 9,284 prisoners, including about 400 inmates already being housed in other facilities in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, according to prison spokesman Robert Eskind.

The city went through an era of prison litigation, starting in 1971, that put the city prisons under federal court oversight and resulted in periodic court-ordered prisoner releases to relieve overcrowding. Judicial oversight ended in 2000, when there were about 6,900 inmates in the system.

This week's lawsuit, filed Monday, said triple celling and housing inmates in overcrowded dormitories had resulted in "system-wide unconstitutional conditions of confinement" with an increased risk of violence, spread of disease and poor sanitation.