Source: https://www.clearinghouse.net/detail.php?id=13838&amp;search=
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 04:00:11+00:00

Document:
On April 28, 2008, inmates in the Philadelphia Prison System (PPS) filed a putative class-action complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and state law against the City of Philadelphia and its Commissioner of Corrections. The plaintiffs, represented by the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project and the Disabilities Law Project, asked the court for injunctive and declaratory relief, claiming that PPS subjected inmates to dangerous, unsanitary, severely overcrowded, degrading, and cruel conditions of confinement. Specifically, the plaintiffs claimed that PPS's practice of housing three inmates in cells designed to hold only two--referred to as "triple-celling"--violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution.
On May 14, 2008 the District Attorney of the City and County of Philadelphia filed a motion to intervene, which was granted.
On June 27, 2008, the City of Philadelphia filed a third-party complaint against the Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, and against the Honorable C. Darnell Jones, II, and Louis Presenza, President Judges of the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas and Municipal Court, respectively. At the same time, the City of Philadelphia moved for a preliminary injunction and a motion to dismiss because the prisoners failed to join the Secretary and the judges, or alternatively a motion to join. The prisoners opposed the attempt to join the Secretary and the judges.
On July 28, 2010, Judge Surrick granted the Secretary's and the judges' motion to dismiss the complaint against them and denied the City's motion to dismiss and motion for preliminary injunction as moot. Williams v. City of Philadelphia, 08-1979, 2010 WL 2977485 (E.D. Pa. July 27, 2010).
Complaint." Williams v. City of Philadelphia, 270 F.R.D. 208 (E.D. Pa. 2010).
On April 29, 2011, the parties reached a settlement agreement. Taking into consideration the reduction in the inmate population at the PPS that the defendants had achieved over the past two years, the settlement agreement essentially preserved the status quo and provided for monitoring of the situation by the plaintiffs' counsel for the next two years. The City defendants agreed to continue to implement the programs that haD reduced the inmate population in the PPS and to make reasonable efforts to reduce the triple-celling of inmates. The City defendants also agreed to make reasonable efforts to minimize the use of lockdowns and to provide inmates with medical and social services during lockdowns. Under the settlement, plaintiffs "reserve[d] the right to reinstate the proceedings during the pendency of the Settlement Agreement."
On May 2, 2011, Judge Surrick preliminarily approved the settlement agreement and scheduled a fairness hearing for June 15, 2011. At the fairness hearing, counsel for all of the parties agreed that the Settlement Agreement was fair and reasonable, particularly in light of the steps the City Defendants have taken to reduce the prison population over the past two years.
On August 8, 2011, Judge Surrick approved the settlement agreement. Williams v. City of Philadelphia, CIV.A. 08-1979, 2011 WL 3446954 (E.D. Pa. Aug. 8, 2011) (the approval order) and Williams v. City of Philadelphia, CIV.A. 08-1979, 2011 WL 3471261 (E.D. Pa. Aug. 8, 2011) (opinion explaining the approval).
In the fall of 2012, the plaintiffs moved to reinstate the case, as was their right under the settlement, due to a rising inmate population in the Philadelphia Prison System. (Oddly, this motion does not appear in the PACER docket.) The court granted the motion on December 3, 2012, setting a period of time for discovery and directing the parties to proceed towards trial. After the reinstatement of the complaint, the parties engaged in extensive discovery. A fight over class counsel's access to members of the plaintiff class' mental health records led to an opinion granting such access, on Oct. 22, 2014.
In April 2016, the City of Philadelphia received a MacArthur Foundation funding grant TAT would fund a project aimed at reducing jail population by approximately 30% over a two- to three-year period. Some of the measures funded by the grant include developing and implementing pre-arrest diversion programs for low-risk offenders, reducing cash bail amounts and increasing utilization of community-based alternatives to cash bail, providing continuity of services coordination for individuals with mental illness, and implementing administrative programs to help expedite plea offers and parole petition review.
In light of developments including the MacArthur Foundation initiatives and a significant reduction in the PPS population over 2015, the parties again entered into settlement negotiations in early 2016. The court granted preliminary approval of a proposed settlement hearing on March 16, 2016, and ordered that the city defendants post the notice of class action settlement in every housing unit and in every law library in the Philadelphia Prison System. Approximately 18 inmates housed in the PPS filed objections to the proposed settlement, but most concerned conditions rather than the terms of the settlement. The parties agreed that the settlement was fair and reasonable in a May 5, 2016 fairness hearing, but the court raised a concern monitoring period. The parties submitted a revised settlement agreement extending the monitoring period during which the plaintiffs may reinstate the complaint from one year to two.
Judge Surrick approved the settlement agreement on June 13, 2016. Williams v. City of Philadelphia, CIV.A. 08-1979, 2016 WL 3258377 (E.D. Pa. June 13, 2016). The settlement agreement provided that the defendants would continue making reasonable efforts to implement and operate programs, policies, and procedures designed to reduce the population at the PPS, to reduce the use of lockdowns and restricted movements, and to limit the use of triple-celling for seriously mental ill inmates and ensure that any inmates in triple cells are provide clean cells, adequate bedding, and adequate shower and toilet access. Plaintiffs' counsel had the right to inspect any PPS facilities if the population is significantly higher than that at the time of settlement, and monitored the prison population and use of triple-celling for two years.
As two years have passed since approval of the settlement agreement and no further information appears on the docket, the case is now presumed closed.
Plaintiff Description All persons who are or will in the future be confined in the Philadelphia Prison System, and who are or will in the future be subjected to the conditions of confinement, including triple celling, or placement in dormitories, without minimally adequate security, services or programs as set forth in plaintiffs’ Complaint.

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