In June of 2021, lawyers bringing a class action lawsuit against the Philadelphia jails reached a then-unprecedented settlement agreement with the City of Philadelphia, resulting in the payment of $125,000 to two nonprofit bail funds. This week, this same legal team has reached another agreement that will see the City duplicating that payment.
This time, the Philadelphia Bail Fund, working with community partners, plans to coordinate a 48-hour bailout effort in February to free as many people as possible from the Philadelphia jails, especially those who are immunocompromised and at high risk during the pandemic.
“It is disgraceful that our courts continue to jail hundreds of people awaiting trial in these deplorable, life-threatening conditions because they cannot afford to pay for their freedom,” said Malik Neal, Executive Director of the Philadelphia Bail Fund. “We will bring home as many of our neighbors as we can. But we’ll also continue our fight to end practices like cash bail that devastate Black and brown families every single day.”
This latest settlement comes after lawyers for the plaintiffs sought to have the city held in contempt for its failures to provide people incarcerated in the jails with court-ordered out-of-cell time. In exchange for the city’s payment to the bail fund, the plaintiffs are withdrawing their motion for contempt.
The case is still ongoing, and the plaintiffs have filed a motion for preliminary injunction that seeks a more comprehensive court order requiring the city to provide constitutionally-mandated necessary services, like adequate and timely medical and mental health care, protection from violence, access to legal counsel, access to timely legal mail, access to court hearings, and due process in disciplinary proceedings. A court hearing is set for late March on these issues.
In April of 2020, ten incarcerated people filed a federal civil rights class action lawsuit on behalf of everyone incarcerated in the Philadelphia jails over the conditions in the City’s jails. A component of the lawsuit focuses on requiring incarcerated people to be provided with more time out of their cells. When incarcerated people do not get enough time out of their cells, they are unable to shower, make phone calls to loved ones, or get adequate exercise. Prolonged in-cell confinement also has well-known and potentially devastating psychological and physical effects. Staffing shortages have led instances where entire units have gone days without being let out of their cells, people face long delays in receiving medical and mental health care, large number of people are not being brought to their court hearings, and the number of deaths in the Philadelphia jails has also increased.
“After nearly two years of back and forth with the City over the conditions in prisons, we’re seeing that the city, despite their efforts, is unable to make necessary changes to keep people safe,” said Su Ming Yeh, Executive Director of the Philadelphia Institutional Law Project. “We continue to litigate to ensure that all people in the Philadelphia jails are treated humanely.”
The lawsuit, Remick et al. v. City of Philadelphia, 20-cv-1959, was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The plaintiffs are represented by Su Ming Yeh, Matthew A. Feldman, Grace Harris, and Sarah Bleiberg of the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project; David Rudovsky and Susan Lin of Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing, Feinberg & Lin LLP; Nia Holston and Rupalee Rashatwar of the Abolitionist Law Center; and Ben Barnett of Dechert LLP.