Prison statistics: County reviews data for the first half of 2024

The Lancaster County Jail makes every effort to retain correctional officers and provide them with the best training possible, including de-escalation and crisis intervention training.

The results are visible in day-to-day operations, said Investigator Justin Hackler at the Prison Stat meeting last week. “You can just see the quality of the officers improving,” he said, in the way they apply their experience and the tactics they have learned.

The prison's many programs also help, he said. Inmates look forward to classes and activities and are therefore motivated to avoid fights and other forms of misbehavior that would prevent them from attending classes.

Inmates know that staff and administration care about their well-being, said Warden Cheryl Steberger.

“The environment determines behavior,” said Prison Warden Cheryl Steberger. “When inmates know we care about them … the outcome is better.”

Prison Stat is held regularly and provides an opportunity for county and prison officials, as well as the public, to review and discuss facility data on safety, staffing, recidivism, and more with the goal of improving performance and outcomes.

On Friday, the prison began switching to a new prison management software system called ATIMS. Officials say it will not only make processes more efficient and largely paperless, but will also significantly improve data collection and analysis capabilities.

Last week's Prison Stat presentation, held on August 13, covered January through June. The slides can be found here (PDF) on the county's website. Here are five takeaways:

1. Admissions and mental illness

According to researchers, the United States as a whole suffers from an overlap between mental illness and substance abuse. This is also reflected in the county prison, where the number of inmates with severe mental illness (SMI) continues to rise.

Inmates with SMI now make up about 13% of the prison population, up from 7% to 8% a few years ago, said Deputy Warden Joe Shiffer. Many inmates are admitted with dual diagnoses, he said, with both mental illness and substance abuse disorders. In addition, the severity and intensity of cases are increasing.

The prison's average monthly SMI population increased to 83 in the first half of 2024, up from 76 in 2023. This, in turn, was a sharp increase from an average of 54 in 2021. In May and June, the average was 100.

The majority of inmates at mental illness and substance abuse institutions (MISA) stay less than 100 days. But some stay very long, skewing the average, and longer wait times for admission to state hospitals drive up lengths of stay, said Shiffer and Christina Fluegel, reintegration services coordinator.

Use of violence, assaults and suicides

The county jail documented 104 incidents of use of force by staff in the first six months of 2024. That's a slight increase from 2023, when 82 incidents of use of force occurred during the same period. Hackler noted that different criteria were used prior to 2023, so data from previous years is not a direct comparison to 2023 and 2024.

Generally, most incidents occur in late spring or early summer, when temperatures rise and more inmates enter and leave the building.

Two inmates alone were responsible for eight of the incidents in January, Hackler said. In response to a question from Commissioner Alice Yoder, he said prison staff develop individual plans for inmates who are involved in violence or are considered high-risk. Staff try to be proactive and treatment is a “big part of that,” he said.

Hackler and Steberger expect the county's new correctional facility to use less force. The housing units in the existing building have 100 beds and no air conditioning; the new building will have no more than 64 beds per unit and full air conditioning.

The number of assaults was low in 2023 and will remain low in 2024. Possible reasons for this, according to the Prison Stat report, include more experienced officers and the fact that all inmates now receive their own tablet, eliminating a source of conflict.

As with the use of force, the criteria for data on physical injuries also changed between 2022 and 2023, Hackler said.

There have been zero suicide attempts so far this year – defined as an incident serious enough to require emergency room treatment.

Staff are extremely vigilant, Shiffer said, and would err on the side of caution when making decisions about whether to place people on suicide watch or involve psychiatric treatment.

A rise in prison suicides led to the creation of a task force in 2015, and Parsons and Steberger made prevention one of their top priorities when they took office as commissioner and warden the following year. While there is no way to completely eliminate the risk of suicide, the turnaround is “pretty incredible,” Parsons said.

“It’s huge,” Steberger said.

Contraband

More drugs and weapons were seized in 2024 than in 2023. By June 2024, five weapons were confiscated, compared to four in all of 2023.

Many of the weapons are shafts or parts of fans made from the battery casings of inmates' tablets. The prison could remove these items from the environment, “but we don't want to do that,” Steberger said. Staff are meeting with the tablet manufacturer to discuss a solution, Hackler said.

The prison conducts strip searches and body scanners to detect contraband. Kent Kroehler of the advocacy group Have a Heart asked whether body scanners could be better used in the new prison to reduce or eliminate strip searches. Body scanners don't catch everything, Steberger said, and contraband is a security risk: “I'm not in favor of eliminating strip searches.”

Of the 10 drug trafficking cases this year, six involved drugs taken from the prison's Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) program for substance abuse. The prison continues to evaluate its MAT protocols, Shiffer said, but declined to provide further details.

Officials have previously stated that MAT participants are handcuffed to prevent distraction. Attorney and researcher Gail Groves Scott has criticized the practice and called on the prison to stop it.

The hope is that expanding MAT will reduce drug abuse, Shiffer said, because inmates will be able to participate in the program legally. That's the case in other facilities, too, Steberger said.

Staff deployment and overtime

As of June 30, the prison employed 195 correctional officers, 85% of the assigned number of 229 and 19 more than the post-pandemic low of 176 in 2021.

Overall, we are “well positioned” in terms of staffing, said Deputy Director Miguel Castro. However, while overtime will decrease in 2022 and 2023, it is likely to increase in 2024.

The reason for this is the medical needs of the prison population: guards are making more “medication visits” and taking on more shifts to guard hospitalized inmates.

The move to the new correctional facility should also help here, says Steberger. There will be a fully equipped clinic and its own pharmacy there, so that significantly more medical care will be possible on site.

Recidivism

The prison's New Beginnings program, which prepares participants for life after release, has seen steady enrollment: 80 graduates will graduate in 2023 and nearly 40 in the first half of 2024.

After three years, the recidivism rate among graduates rises to around 65 percent, which is about the average for the state of Pennsylvania. When asked if more support for those returning to school could help, Steberger replied emphatically: “Yes, it could.”

Her team does as much or more to help returnees succeed than any comparable facility, she said, “but I need community resources. … Others have to want to raise their hands and help, too.”