04/06/2021
“Upon my father’s return, I was shocked by the change in his appearance. His arms and back were a series of scars and discolored blotches.”
My father, Leodus Jones, was a businessman, community activist, and leader in the prison reform movement in Philadelphia. He was also a human guinea pig who endured both mental and physical assaults at the hands of a prominent dermatologist and prestigious university, while incarcerated in the Philadelphia Prison System in the 1960s. The experience proved catastrophic both for him and my family.
My father’s subsequent commitment to inform the public about the city jail’s experimentation program and improve conditions in Philadelphia’s prison system led him to testify before Congress about the rampant medical abuses that occur behind bars. It also led him to file lawsuits against those who had grown comfortable using our nation’s cellblocks as an endless pool for test subjects for scientific research.
Some Philly jail locks can be easily disabled, staff warn, as violence continues Samantha Melamed, The Philadelphia Inquirer
On March 12, two prisoners at the Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center “breached” their cell doors and they and their cellmates all dived into a brawl that resulted in minor injuries, according to an internal report obtained by The Inquirer. Staff pepper-sprayed them and returned them to their cells where one of the men broke out of his cell again, an hour later, to fight a different prisoner.
The lock mechanism was one of many concerns cited by staff, prisoners, and advocates at a heated City Council hearing Monday regarding the state of the city jails in the pandemic. They also warned of deteriorating building conditions, inadequate staffing, scant protections against the spread of the coronavirus, and a lack of contact tracing when staff are infected all as the jail population has risen to its highest point since the pand