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Warden discusses Fayette prison maintenance efforts

By Mike Tony mtony@heraldstandard.Com 3 min read

At an uneventful Fayette County Prison Board meeting that lasted 10 minutes Wednesday, prison Warden Jeffrey Myers indicated that maintenance repair at the 131-year-old prison isn’t entailing anything extraordinary.

“We have just been doing the normals,” Myers said. “We’ve been able to actually do a lot of preventative maintenance that we’ve never really been able to do before because we’re actually keeping up with it now.”

Myers added that work needs done on the annex fence area.

“That needs bolstered up with a little bit more security,” Myers said. “But like I said, other than the normal day-to-day operations, keeping it running, that’s about it.”

Two recent federal lawsuits have alleged inhumane conditions at the county prison.

A stay was issued in October in a suit filed by American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania on behalf of four inmates.

The ACLU of Pennsylvania filed the suit in June 2018 alleging overcrowding, prisoners being routinely exposed to raw sewage from antiquated plumbing, insufficient heating/cooling/ventilation, pest infestations, underfed and malnourished prisoners, inadequate medical facilities, hazardous building infrastructure, scarce outdoor exercise and time out of cells, insufficient clothing and hygiene items and lack of access to legal materials and confidential attorney visits.

During the term of the stay, the county has agreed to provide the ACLU, who brought the suit on behalf of four inmates alleging inhumane conditions at the prison, with various documents and reports in hopes of reaching a settlement.

According to the court filings, the county prison board will provide the ACLU with documents detailing various conditions in the prison, including medical care, housing, bedding, disciplinary procedures and sanitation.

The county must also document certain things like the number of inmates assigned to temporary beds, whether inmates are housed overnight in a basement cell or detoxification area, the ambient temperature in different parts of the prison and what measures are taken if the temperature exceeds 75 degrees.

In a separate suit, a federal judge recently granted attorney Charity Grimm Krupa’s request to file an amended complaint on behalf of three women inmates who claimed they were forced to live in deplorable conditions at the county prison in 2017.

Krupa had asked a judge for permission to pursue a claim that the county failed to adequately hire, train and supervise the current and former prison employees named as defendants in the case.

A judge will hear arguments on Nov. 12 on Grimm Krupa’s motion to compel email-related discovery and award sanctions, a request made after depositions revealed county officials routinely deleted emails.

Myers, who was named warden in 2018, has noted various maintenance efforts at the prison since then, including a lighting upgrade, plumbing work, toilet replacements and a renovated kitchen area, as well as a new tracking mechanism for work orders that he said has allowed officials to keep more diligent track of maintenance.

County officials said last year that the addition of a probation officer at the prison five days a week who sends data to county judges to review and make sentence or other modifications so inmates aren’t incarcerated longer than necessary helped bring down the inmate population, which dipped below 200 for much of last year.

Myers on Wednesday reported that the prison housed 185 men and 37 women, up 13 total inmates from last month’s meeting for a total of 222.

The county commissioners in September approved a contract for the design and construction of a new county prison on the site of the former U.S. Army Reserve Center off Route 21 in Uniontown.

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