Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania Prison Society (PPS)

Budget

$3,083,781 (2024) (funding comes from grants from foundations, private donations, program revenue, and the state government)

Staffing

19 full-time staff members; over 300 volunteers; student interns

The Pennsylvania Prison Society has core professional staff managing operations. Most prison visits are carried out by a network of trained volunteers.

State Prison Profile

Pennsylvania has 23 state prison facilities subject to PPS oversight and incarcerates approximately 41,115 people in state prisons. The state prison system is run by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PADOC). Additionally, PPS is responsible for oversight of 62 county jails.

Authority

Pennsylvania Statutes Title 31, Chapter 35, Subchapter B, Sections 3511-1514

Facility Access: “Authorized members of the Pennsylvania Prison Society” are included in the category of “official visitors,” giving them access to any state prison facility during working hours, seven days a week, and limiting the reasons for which they can be denied entry to a facility.
Private Interviews: As official visitors, PPS representatives can privately interview “any inmate confined in any correctional facility.”
Local Jail Oversight: PPS also conducts oversight of Pennsylvania’s local jails (also called “prisons”)

Activities

PPS works to increase transparency and humanity in Pennsylvania prisons by coordinating volunteer visits to respond to complaints and concerns, proactively monitoring prisons, educating the public and lawmakers about prison conditions, and providing services, including a family support hotline and mentoring programs.

Volunteer Visits: PPS volunteers visit PADOC facilities in response to complaints or concerns raised by incarcerated individuals or other stakeholders. In 2024, PPS responding to more than 14,000 calls, letters, and emails. Most concerns are addressed at the point of contact, with roughly 1/5 of contacts resulting in a prison visit. PPS conducted over 2,500 official visits in 2024. Visits are conducted by over 300 trained volunteer monitors, who are organized into chapters across the state. When volunteers visit facilities, they meet one-on-one with incarcerated individuals to discuss concerns. PPS then brings those concerns to prison staff or outside stakeholders to advocate for solutions.
Proactive Monitoring: PPS started piloting a proactive monitoring program in spring 2021. PPS staff conduct walkthroughs of PADOC facilities to flag potential issues and conduct structured interviews with a random cross-section of incarcerated individuals. In 2024, PPS conducted 15 walkthroughs. PPS also uses surveys sent to incarcerated individuals to proactively collect and track concerns on specific, targeted issues like meal service or family visits.
Support Services: PPS provides various services to support incarcerated people and their families. For example, PPS runs a heavily subsidized bus service from Philadelphia to almost all prisons across the state to facilitate family visits. PPS also runs a mentorship program for men who are returning to Philadelphia from incarceration, offers peer support groups for formerly incarcerated people, and maintains a family support line, which family members of incarcerated individuals can call to get information on facilities, policies, and general questions, as well as direct support.
Education and Advocacy: PPS uses its insight into prison conditions to help keep the public and policymakers informed about corrections issues. In 2021, PPS added a dedicated staff position for this work. In 2024, PPS participated in more than 60 visits to legislators and also offered occasional legislative testimony. keep the public and policymakers well-informed about corrections issues. In 2021, PPS added a dedicated staff position for this work.

Reports

Annual Reports; Monitoring Reports on specific facilities; Survey Reports. Reports are publicly available here.

Monitoring Reports, Survey Reports: Monitoring reports about specific facilities are a product of PPS’s proactive monitoring and highlight facilities with particularly concerning conditions. As part of the same monitoring work, PPS has also conducted large-scale surveys on issues such as COVID-19 conditions, and it surveys incarcerated people about their experiences at county and state correctional facilities on a quarterly basis. Reports based on these visits and survey results are publicly available.
PPS does not generate publicly available reports from its volunteer visits in response to complaints, which are the organization’s main activity.

Organizational History

PPS was founded in 1787 in response to inhumane conditions in Philadelphia’s Walnut Street jail and the practice of public labor as a punishment for incarcerated people. From the organization’s inception, PPS volunteers visited prisons and advocated for prison reform. In 1829, the Pennsylvania Legislature granted PPS official access to all prison facilities in the state. In 2024, PPS secured state general operating funding for the first time and has full-time prison monitoring staff based in all three geographic regions of Pennsylvania. Today, PPS continues to visit county and state prisons across Pennsylvania, support incarcerated individuals and their families, and advocate for safer and more humane prisons.

Special Note

PPS is one of only three non-governmental prison oversight organizations in the United States, along with the Correctional Association of New York and the John Howard Association of Illinois.

Pennsylvania Prison Society (PPS)

Budget

Staffing

State Prison Profile

Authority

Activities

Reports

Organizational History

Special Note

News Stories:

13 Pa. inmates have died in prisons so far this year. Advocates demand reforms and greater transparency

York County grapples with fallout from jail training contractor as Joseph Garcia heads west

What’s wrong with the way Pennsylvania Department of Corrections feeds its 39,000 inmates?

Pennsylvania Prison Society still helping the incarcerated after 200 years