Thank you. We appreciate it again. The willingness to compromise has been an amazing journey thus far. And we do agree with the multiple layers of bureaucracy. And I think that's part of why we would like to see this board in place so we can kind of remove some of the other bureaucracy that's in place and just have this level of transparency. There's been a number of issues in the prisons over some time, long before you've gotten there. Most of these issues and conditions clearly you didn't create. Clearly, this Council didn't create, but this is where we are. This is what we've inherited. I would like you to communicate to the public as well as to this legislative branch of government what array of healthcare services do you provide and offer to inmates? How often are medical personnel serving patients in the prisons? And what initiatives are you spearheading that curb the spread of diseases throughout the prison? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Thank you for that question, Councilman. So we have a contract with a corporation called YesCare. Our medical and mental health care is contracted to this company. They have -- what's the number -- over 350 full-time medical doctors, nurse-practitioners, psychologists, social workers, nurses and others all licensed and credentialed the same way community offices and hospitals are. Our functional vacancy rate is around 0, which means we're fully staffed and we're able to provide care. All of our facilities are accredited by the National Commission on Correctional Health Care. That's only 600 out of about 7000 jurisdictions. We also have a PHSW. It's our licensed 64-bed psychiatric inpatient hospital. And we also have a medical suite in PHSW that cares for inmates who have chronic conditions that might not allow them to be housed in general population so --
I'm going to respect the time -- COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Sure.
-- Madam Chair, because I do want to do a deeper dive into some of the issues around health care, equity and things of that capacity, more philosophical stuff than tangible things. But I do want to respect the time. So, Madam Chair, if I could be put in the queue for the second round, that'd be deeply appreciated. And again, I just want to say thank you for the partnership, and especially thank you to the Admin around prison oversight. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Yes. Thank you so much, Councilmember Thomas. What I will say is based on the amount of members in the queue I will grant you an additional two minutes so that you're able to get those questions on the record in case we don't have a second round. Okay.
Oh, excellent. Great. I'm sorry. I apologize. So when we look at some of the issues that we're dealing with in the prison, specifically looking at the healthcare and the services, why is it that we contract this stuff out? Why can't we do some of this stuff inhouse as it relates to what we're doing to better service the inmates as well as the prisoners? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: So we put the RFP out. The RFP will go out. I believe this year the contract is up. So there are a limited number of folks that operate in this area. So the major ones, the bigger players who are able to deal with our population, the size of our population, the complexity of our population, it's open for anybody to bid. We could entertain bids from if Temple Health System wanted to bid, if University of Pennsylvania Health System wanted to bid, we'd be open for those models as well. But our staff, our local staff, regardless of the corporation that they're affiliated with, our local staff, the doctors, the nurses, the practitioners all provide excellent health care.
There is a time, and we'll submit more questions in writing, specifically around health care, injuries. We know that there's been significant issues. I don't want to alarm the public as it relates to those numbers because that can be a different issue. I want to shift directions real quick. Prior to your leadership, there have been a lot of tension -- and this will be my last question, Madam Leader. There has been a lot of tension between the leadership in the prison and the unions and the staff. Talk to us about your relationship during your time with staff, with the unions. What problem still exists? Where have you seen some improvements? And how can this legislative branch of government be supportive of that particular issue? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Certainly, so I think, you know, and I'm not focused on the past. I hear the way things were in the past. I'm not concerned with that. I tell everybody that I'm looking forward and I am looking to the future to change things. So I think that my personal relationship with our union officials is very good. We have cooperative and productive labor management meetings. I am accessible to the union officials 24/7. They have my number. They can call me. We resolve issues. We don't necessarily agree on everything, but I do stress to them that they may be their members but they're my employees, and their employee safety is my number one concern. I think how this Council can be helpful to us is a number of ways. So we need more staff. So if Councilmembers can get the message out to their constituents to go to the City's website and apply to become a correctional officer, that would be helpful. We discharge our inmates back into the community, right. It's only 9 miles up the road. They didn't go 10 to Mars or anything, and they're 11 going to be discharged back into 12 the city of Philadelphia 13 communities. So if there are ways that Councilmembers can talk to chambers, talk to labor unions and perhaps have educational or vocational training programs for our inmate population or jobs available for them when they return. We know if somebody has a job, housing, their substance abuse, their health, their mental health under control, the likelihood of them recidivating is very low. So employment is key, so if Councilmembers can be helpful in that regard.
I think you have my word and other Councilmembers' word who are hearing that we will definitely be helpful. I'm hoping that when we do talk to the unions that their sentiment is similar to yours. And as I close out -- COMMISSIONER RESNICK: I hope so.
-- I think that it's important as we close out, and I'm sure another member will ask this, but you clearly have disgruntled people here at today's hearing who are concerned about issues related to the prison. I already asked you one question about health care. As I close out, talk to the members of Council as well as the general public about what type of investigations take place when there's a death in the prison and what type of communication do you require to have with those families? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: So you can count me as one of those disgruntled individuals, Councilman. I'm not happy with the way things are, and progress is too slow for my liking. We are going in the right direction. I think that the staff can feel it. The numbers are going in the right direction. I would just like things to happen quicker. So in that regard, I guess I'm a little disgruntled as well. I want to see progress happen a lot faster. So when a death occurs in the prison, the Philadelphia Police Department come and they do an investigation and our Internal Affairs office opens an investigation. The police department is looking to see if there were any crimes that were committed. Our investigation from Internal Affairs is looking to see if there were any policy violations that occurred that may have caused or contributed to the death. When a death occurs, our Chaplaincy Unit will reach out to next of kin and advise them of the death. The individual's possessions and belongings will be returned to the family members. And I believe we forward the information regarding the medical examiners, because the medical examiner is involved and they come in and do an investigation as well. So we give the family the method and means to contact the ME's office.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Commissioner. The Chair now recognizes our Chair of Public Safety Councilmember Jones.
Thank you so much, Madam Chair. And I want to for the record thank Member Thomas for his laser-like focus on focusing on the problems both from the inmate, from the correction officers and the union standpoint and those people that have to deal with that on a daily basis. We visit. We walk through the tiers. We go home. They spend most of their waking hours there, so I want to thank you and your team and the correction officers that do it on a daily basis. What I'd like to do is say just real quick on oversight, and I've had some experience now with selecting people for the oversight of the Police Advisory Oversight Commission. And the most important thing I can say is pick your folk wisely. If they didn't walk a tier, if they didn't advocate on a tier, if they didn't spend time in that facility, if they didn't work in that facility, you got to kind of watch who you put on to make suggestions that affect their daily existence. Now, having said that I'd like to shift back to what my colleague talked about, which is health care. As we put greater demands on the system to clean up hot spots like Kensington and we're asking you to take on a greater role in the corrections aspect, and some of that is people experiencing detox, how are we preparing for folks that may come from that environment, be forced into a situation where they have to take their first detox in your facility? How are we preparing for that? How are we monitoring for that? How do we preserve life so that we don't have situations where people jump from the frying pan literally into the fire and have a shock to their system? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Certainly, Councilman. Thank you for the question. So what we've started to do is as we intake individuals, as they come from whichever law enforcement agency is bringing them to us, usually the Philadelphia Police Department, but not always, will have a nurse come out and triage the individuals as they come through the sally port to determine whether they're medically stable enough to go through our process. If they're not, we reject them. And the law enforcement agency bringing the person needs to take them to the hospital to be assessed and evaluated, treated, if necessary. And when they're discharged, they come back with that paperwork. We'll accept them --
I don't mean to interrupt you. What triggers -- where is the floor of the ceiling to say, no, they need to go to the hospital? How -- COMMISSIONER RESNICK: I'm not a medical professional so I don't want to guess as to what they do. But there's an assessment of an individual's vital signs, their medical condition, their history, if there's any medication that they've been taking, if they've been injured prior to coming to our custody. So -
Is that for every inmate? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Everybody who comes in our door there's an assessment that's made. If the person or the individuals are cleared for acceptance, they'll go through our intake process and then they go to the medical unit where there's a series of indepth questions that are asked. We administer to everybody the Clinical Opiate Withdrawal Test, the COW score scale. And any anybody who registers a positive score on the COW score is immediately started on Subutex for the withdrawal and it's a taper. So while they're with us, we taper them up. They pass through Medical. They're on Subutex if they're in withdrawal. Then they go into intake housing. Everybody --
Is there an isolation period? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Yeah, there's a --
Can you explain how long? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Sure. So when you leave the receiving room, you go into intake housing in CFCF. And everybody who is withdrawing or on the Subutex, we've red armband so we want them to be immediately identifiable to our staff and the medical staff. We've increased rounds on intake housing from the medical staff.
Describe that a little bit. COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Rounds is a nurse who comes onto the unit and she visits the individuals, she talks to them, takes their vitals and makes a medical assessment of their condition. Individuals stay in intake housing to days before 4 that when they're classified and 5 they're assigned their permanent 6 bed. 7
Has 8 there been an increase, influx of 9 individuals needing this type of 10 treatment? And if so, how much? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: I can get you that information. I don't have that readily available and I will tell you, yes, there's been an increase in the number of individuals who we see in that condition. I will add, and I think I mentioned it briefly in the written remarks, that we are in the process of piloting a program where everybody who comes into the facility will be placed on a medical monitoring device. It looks like a big Apple watch and it monitors vital signs. For the first five days, everybody through our doors will be placed on this device. Their vital signs will be monitored. If they have a negative medical event, there will be alerts that go off in the Housing Unit for that officer, in Unit Management and in Medical so there are redundant alerts. So the idea is we will respond almost immediately to medical emergencies.
So my final comment before I pass off, has there been an influx, ebb and flow to this type of phase based on the drugs that are being taken, based on the number of people that we're bringing in? And if so, have we been here before? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: I don't know that we've been here before, Councilman. I think that we're seeing more of our population. We intake about 18,000 to 20,000 individuals a year. So we could probably chart that over the year or the individuals on our substance abuse treatment, so we can provide you with that information. One more point that I'd like to make is because of the incidents and the nature of the drug supply, we've outfitted all of our correctional officers with Narcan. That's a new initiative.
How many deaths did we experience over the last two years? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: In Calendar Year 2024, we had six. One of those was a natural death in the hospital. One of them was a suicide. The investigation is ongoing. But from what I know of it, we could not have responded quicker. And the others are I believe still under investigation. That is down considerably. I think there was a year we had or 18? 4 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: 5 18. 6 COMMISSIONER RESNICK: 7 18 was our high. I will note that 8 our mortality rate is a lot less 9 than the city's mortality rate as a 10 whole, and a large portion of our 11 population, 80%, don't have a 12 primary care physician and have much higher-than-expected medical challenges. 40% of our population of chronic illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension, HIV, Hep C, 36% take medication for behavioral health illness. The comorbidity of substance abuse is about 70% in our population. So we have a very medically fragile population, but our morbidity rate is I believe three or four times lower than the city's as a whole.
The next round, Madam Chair, I'd like to visit Re-entry. I yield the mic.
Thank you so much, Councilmember Jones, our Chair of Public Safety. Thank you very much for your work. I'm going to skip myself for a moment to try to get to each of the colleagues for this round. So the Chair recognizes Councilmember Harrity.
Thank you, my Leader. Hello, everybody. COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Good afternoon.
Just to make sure before I start asking my questions, do you guys manage the Juvenile Detention Center also? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: No, sir.
That's what I thought. Okay. 36 million has been requested for overtime pay in the prisons. What is driving this reliance on overtime pay? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Our post-plan, Councilman, if you take a look at all the positions that we need to fill, have correctional officers working those areas calls for about 1500-and- change officers. Our complement today is about 1050. So while we still need to do things, we don't have the bodies all the time so we use overtime to fill that.
Okay. And can you tell me more about this re-entry trailer and what kind of services will be provided to the released population? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Certainly. So one of the things that I would like us to do is -- and we're in the middle of a total reassessment of that division. We call that division Restorative and Transitional Services. Deputy Commissioner Jaco is in charge of that. That division, that's all of our social workers, our psychologists, our counselors, vocational and educational. We're in the middle of an evaluation top to bottom of that unit and to determine what we are doing right, what we should be doing and any changes that we need to make. I would like to see us do complete needs assessments on individuals as soon as they walk through our door, provide them with the services and treatment that they need and the education that they need according to those evaluations. When they are discharged from our care, all individuals will go to our re-entry center. We will have that staff with our staff, Office of Re-entry Partnership staff and community partners to ensure that when people leave our custody, there are followed-up linkages in the community to continue to provide them with the care, the treatment, therapy, the work that they've started behind the walls. That's the hope.
Yeah, it's good hope. I did have another question. I'm blanking right now. How many total officers are you short, somewhere around 500? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: So we're about 500 off our postplan. We're around 1050 and our post-plan I believe calls for 1576.
Okay. And you guys brought up about jobs for the inmates getting out of prison. Do you have any partnerships now with any companies or anything like that where you have -- that might be an idea. COMMISSIONER RESNICK: I don't think we have any partnerships with companies now. What we have is our skill center. Our skill center, we are revamping it so we're able to provide vocational education to the population. So we used to have -- they would build an entire house in there so it'd be carpentry and masonry and electric and plumbing, and we would teach those skills. So we're going back to opening the skill center to provide those services, to provide that vocational education. And that's why when I made the comment to Councilman Thomas' question as to what Council can do to be helpful, if there are unions or employers in the City that would be willing to hire ex-offenders, we would like to partner with them --
Help us. We're short jobs right now, right. We'll hire ex-offenders, right. Yeah. So I mean, I get it, I get it. It's kind of funny that, you know, you guys are short. The Sheriff's Office is also short. Part of the Sheriff's Office problem of being short is actually because you guys are short. I worked for the Sheriff's Office and we used to sneak most of our employees from you guys because they're already trained. But thank you. And again, thank you for your commitment. Thank you for coming back to try to get this under control, and look forward to seeing what you can do and how we can be helpful, and would really be curious on how we could actually maybe come up with a program for employment because I agree. I mean, that's the same thing with the addicts out on the street. If you take the housing and the mental health aspect out of the picture, you'll have more succeed. It's the same thing with you. If they continue with their mental health and addiction stuff, and they have a job with stable housing, we'll have more people succeed. And I got to learn a lot about recidivism when I worked in the state for Senator Street. He was on the Sentencing Board. And I remember our first meeting. They were actually going to -- they were voting to give 10% more time to people because of their zip codes. We put a stop to that. It was actually not true at all. They were saying that people were more likely to recidivate if they were from low-income neighborhoods like mine, which actually was not the case. It was actually the opposite. But here or there, I'm glad to see you're there and that we're going to be moving in a steady forward direction. COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Thank you, Councilmember.
Thank you so much, Councilmember Harrity. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Lozada.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Good afternoon. Can you tell me how many -- what's your prison population? What's that number? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Today our population, Councilwoman, is 3678.
And by any chance, do you guys have the breakdown by race? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Breakdown by race, I believe it is about -- DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BEAUFORT: Is she talking about inmate population? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Inmate population. I think the last report that I looked at was from February. I don't know that we had our statistical report completed yet for March. I don't know that it will change much. But it was about 70% African American. Overwhelmingly, our population is male. It's about 92%, 93%. Maybe even a little bit more because our female population is down. And it's generally younger, to 35. 3
8 Thank you. I ask that question 9 because I've consistently been 10 hearing that there are non-English 11 speakers in our prison population 12 and that there are no corrections 13 officers who are able to respond to 14 some of their needs. Some of these 15 individuals suffer from mental 16 health illness or substance abuse, 17 and they and their families are 18 saying that they are not being taken care of appropriately or adequately while they're in the system. And so, I'm just trying to figure out where that's coming from. I want to say that I appreciate all of the changes that you all are making in the right direction because some of the stories that we've heard, at least since I arrived here in 2022, were really scary, right, especially for a population that can't go nowhere, right. They have no choice but to be there. And so, thank you for the changes that you're making. But I want to make sure that as a city we're able to respond to all of those communities that are non-English speakers. And so, of the officers that you have hired how many or do you know how many of them are bilingual or bilingual in other languages? And I don't mean that in just Spanish, right, in other languages as well. COMMISSIONER RESNICK: No, I don't have that figure off the top of my head, Councilwoman, and I know we could provide it. It is self-reported however. So if an individual does not tell our HR that they are bilingual or fluent in another language, we won't capture that. They may be. But the System does uses Language Line so that an inmate who does not speak English or English may not be their first language, they can access Language Line and communicate to staff.
We know the language access line is not the best way to do that, right. I mean, I'm just being really honest. We have challenges with that language access here. And so, if we could consider looking at a better way, right, a more intentional way of being able to communicate with the non-English speaking population, that would be awesome. And then my last question, you were here a few weeks ago. You all mentioned providing some of those wraparound services to inmates as they re-enter into society. Can you tell us for the record what some of those programs are and how successful have these programs been? How are you measuring their success? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Sure. I'll ask Deputy Commissioner Jaco, you want to talk about some of our programs and how we're looking at success. I will tell you, Councilwoman, that the metrics that we had been collecting in the past I was not happy with the method of the data collection and the type of data that we were collecting, because a lot of what we were collecting was we were counting sort of outputs, like how many people went through a program. And that's fine. I want to know did that program have a difference and did it create a better outcome for that individual. So that's the type of data that we will be geared towards collecting going forward to measure our programs, to see whether our programs are actually successful. It's fine to know how many people went through a program, but did that program have the desired effect that we wanted it to, did it change that person in a positive way that they did not come back, they did not recidivate. So I'll let Deputy Commissioner Jaco talk about some of the services we have.
Thank you. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER JACO: Thank you, Commissioner. Afternoon. I'll say that right now as the Commissioner stated, we are currently going through an assessment and we are reviewing all of our services. Wraparound services are not where we need to be. We are depending on our community and our volunteers to come in and help provide those services. So we work with numerous organizations to come in and work. They're providing job readiness. They're working on re-entry plans, on housing, on identifying their needs because each individual is different. And so, they're working with them separately and providing those services knowing that our contracts state that they must provide the wraparound services post-release. So that's what our contracts are looking at, is pre- to post-release coordination of care. When we're talking about the re-entry trailer, that is our focus for wraparound services to ensure that there's a smoother transition. I really believe in the adage that it takes a village, and we all have to come together and work towards that.
Yeah. So in my office we have an individual that comes in -- I'm sorry. Am I over time, Madam Chair?
My last question. We have someone that comes in. We have a provider that comes into our office in the District every week to provide some of those services to folks who are reentering into society. And one of their biggest challenges is housing, right. And so, if you could share with me what percentage of that population as they're coming out face challenges with housing and how successful are you connecting them? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER JACO: Thank you for that question. I don't have the number. I will say it's extremely high. It is a huge need, so much so that we changed a position to focus on rules specifically. Her job duties is for a housing navigation. She is currently assessing the landscape of the housing providers out there, the recovery homes, all of the options within the community, working with the social workers inside. She's working within the two intake facilities so that she can identify individuals as they come in and as they state that they're unhoused or they need further assistance, whether it's transitional, long-term supportive housing. All of the different options, she's able to mark them down, start that as a caseload and then work towards that for their discharge. She just started this month, so it's new. I will say that that's a focus and that's why we pivoted that position and said, this is what we're going to start doing. That's just in concert with the re-entry trailer and everything all of the other efforts that we're doing. So we know it's a need. We don't have those numbers though.
Thank you. Thank you so much, Councilmember Lozada. I'd like to put on the record that Councilmember Jones wanted to speak with the Office of Re-entry Partnerships today. So if they are available for a callback, that would be excellent. Do we have anyone here from the Office of Re-entry Partnerships? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: That's out of the Office of Public Safety I believe, Madam Chair. They're not under the umbrella of the Department of the Prisons.
Right, I'm aware. But I wanted to make sure that I put it on the record that Councilmember Jones would like to ask a question of the Office of Re-entry Partnerships as it relates to inmates that are released from our prison system. And so, we will respectfully request a callback for the Office of Re-entry Partnerships for Councilmember Jones. Okay. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember Driscoll.
Thank you, Madam Chair. And, Commissioner, it's been a pleasure working with you since you've been back. Our staff, you know, working well together. Appreciate that. Very encouraged about the numbers of the new employees. We still have a ways to go there. And I will say, I think I can speak for my colleagues, we all have Facebook pages and we announce job openings. So if your office can share with us as you're looking for recruits, you know, we have a big following and we'd be happy to share that on our pages. COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Our recruit coordinator will get in touch with you, Councilmember.
Thank you. Yeah, we'd be happy to do it. We have a lot of constituents looking for work. They come into our offices. Navigating the philly.gov jobs may be easy for some people, but it's not as easy for everyone. So to the extent that we can even use our offices to help people apply, you know, most of us have District offices and we want to participate. I would like to hear as your District Councilperson where the prisons reside and as a family of seven that lives up the road from you, I would like to hear about your perimeter improvements? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Okay. So --
Those that have been completed and those that are contemplated. COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Certainly. Deputy Commissioner Beaufort can talk about some of our upgrades to our perimeter and what we have in store for the future. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BEAUFORT: Good afternoon. So the first thing we did was we addressed the PICC situation, which happened a couple of years ago dealing with that escape. We fortified that perimeter. I don't want to go in detail, but we fortified that perimeter first. The next thing we did was we added perimeter cameras into our entire campus and that is still an ongoing project. So where we did not have cameras regarding the perimeter, we added some with the help of capital projects and public property. So we have cameras on our perimeter based off of State Road and the wooded areas in the back of all of our campus. There is some other things that are coming that I will gladly get to your office. I just don't want to put them in a public forum, but I will gladly get to the office some of the other security enhancements that we have made throughout the jail, throughout the whole campus. The other thing that we added that I can tell you is the way our roving perimeter patrols are now at every facility. We have the roving vans at every facility who stage at the facilities making roving tours. So that is some forward-facing things that the public can see. COMMISSIONER RESNICK: And those perimeter patrols exist 24/7 so they are always out there, always on campus.
You say on campus. Is there any supervision say from Ashburner to a little south of Rhawn. COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Well, Ashburner at the end is where PICC is at the north end of our campus. CFCF would go down Rhawn Street at the south end of our campus. So our vehicles are up and down State Road, are in and out of our drives, are around our driveways, in the front and the back of our buildings. They are very visible to anybody who comes onto the campus or from State Road, you can see those.
Yeah, it's a deterrent. It works. So appreciate that. Just lastly, can you comment have we had any incidents in 2024 post-release? I know a lot of your former inmates get the public transportation on State Road at that shelter across the street. In 2024, have we had any what I would call nearby incidents post-release? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: I do not recall hearing of any. I don't believe we have had any in the year 2024.
Good to hear. I'm good, Madam Chair, Thank you, Commissioner.
Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Driscoll. And I just wanted to put on the record based on the callback request and the reason for the ask I think from myself and Councilmember Jones is under Section 52, which is Philadelphia Department of Prisons under Program Social Services and Re-entry for Class 250 for professional services. This is . It states Office of Re-entry Partnerships and is listed under the Philadelphia Department of Prisons. So I know that we'll get some level of clarification, but I just wanted to put that on the record that I believe that's the reason why Councilmember Jones asked. And I do see questions from a prior year about Re-entry Partnerships as well. So I just wanted to clarify that under the budget detail that we have received from the Budget and Finance Office that Office of Re-entry Partnerships is listed under the detail for the Philadelphia Department of Prisons. COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Correct, Councilwoman. There are certain positions in that office that we do fund.
Okay. All right. Thank you very, very much. The Chair now recognizes Councilmember O'Rourke.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Good afternoon, Commissioner Resnick. COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Councilman, how are you?
Good to see you, sir, as well as Deputy Commissioner Beaufort. Nice to see you all and all of the top brass of the Department of Prisons. Wanted to just -- I think I overheard Member Lozada mentioning some things around housing supports. And I just want to hat-tip my colleague for raising that. Was just having a conversation with some folks who were formerly incarcerated Monday night and hearing things that were important to them, one of them being some of those particular concerns and just grateful to hear that that's widely a concern for many of us. So let me dig in here. We have heard from a number of members questions around health care and that's what I'm going to focus on today. Corizon as they used to be called, YesCare as they are called now, the contracted health care provider for the PDP. I have questions for Dr. Herdman to start. Is Dr. Herdman here? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: He is not here. Unfortunately, he is ill.
Okay. My prayer is that he gets better. I'll put it on the record though to the degree that you can answer them, Commissioner, it'd be great. As I understand it, Dr. Herdman's office is responsible for ensuring YesCare is in compliance with the contract. So my first question would have been does he believe that YesCare is actually meeting its required obligations under that contract? And so, if you have any opinion on that front? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: I would let Dr. Herdman respond to that in writing and provide you a detailed explanation. But from the things that I see and experience, yes, I believe that overall they're complying with the terms of their contract.
It's a bit unfair because he's not here and you have a number of things in your oversight as the Commissioner to which -- COMMISSIONER RESNICK: I'm glad you understand that.
And I want to echo Member Thomas' points around our appreciation towards you in terms of the project that we've been working on over the course of the past year. That having been said, if that is his shared sentiment that it is doing all right, I think that would be a disappointing answer. I got to put this on the record. We've had more than two dozen deaths in custody since 2023. You know that. It's been a decrease, but that is still the case. And they've been sued, YesCare, over 1000 times nationwide for substandard care, nationwide 1000 times this particular organization. In the Remick case, the health care provided that the prisons was found to violate the Constitution. And since 2015, the department inmate population has dropped over 55%. And in that same period the cost of this contract has grown over 60%, so they get more money for, at least based off of what the reports are, substandard care that not only we're raising but as I said, they've been sued over 1000 times across the country. That is a concern. So under the contract, the City can essentially fine YesCare for not meeting its obligations under Appendix G. What I would want to know is has the department sought to fine YesCare for failing to meet its obligations in the contract at any point during at least this Administration? And if so, how often have we done that? When roughly was the last time that we did that? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: So I don't know that the appropriate language is have we sued them. I think under the contract we can impose liquidated damages --
Fine them, fine them. COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Fine them. We can impose liquidated damages or fines for failure to comply with contractual provisions. And I'll defer that to Dr. Herdman, and we'll get the Chair and the Councilman the response. But I will just want to mention or respond to some of the things that you said, Councilman. It's not surprising that they have been sued many times nationwide. They're a huge corporation. They're in lots of jurisdictions. They provide health care to a lot of individuals. If you're going to use the metric that someone gets sued so they don't provide good health care, University of Pennsylvania I think provides excellent health care. They get sued. Temple University, Einstein, Jefferson, same thing. They're in the business of providing health care. Unfortunately, that comes with the territory. They get sued. Just because you're sued, there's no indication of the quality of the health care. I will add that I believe, and I would have to check with the Law Department on this, that the number of suits filed in Philadelphia are low. Additionally, you talked about increased costs to the contract. That's because we ask them to do additional things. Like we've asked them to do increased grounding. We've asked them to do access to care. So they're going to have staff that work with our team to make sure that the inmate population get to their medical appointments. Currently, right now we are below the monitor's set targets for inhouse medical appointments. The numbers that are waiting for inhouse medical appointments is below the monitor's targets. We are making substantial progress in meeting the numbers for external clinic trips. 95% of the people who leave our system are enrolled in medical assistance and they have behavioral health and physical health linkages into the community. So if the only metric is the number of lawsuits that the company endures, I don't know that that is an indictment in the care that we provide locally. But again, I'll have Dr. Herdman respond in detail to your questions.
Thank you. Heard. Perhaps sue-happy folks may be, but I would say that every time a specialty care appointment isn't completed in 60 days, we could fine them $250. And according to the federal monitor, there were actually a total of nearly 600 of these backlog specialty appointments at the end of 2024. That's roughly $150,000 sitting on the table on just one provision of the contract. Though that ain't the point. The point shouldn't necessarily be about the money. It should be about the quality of care that we're providing our neighbors behind the wall. COMMISSIONER RESNICK: And just not to cut you off, Councilman, but a factor in determining whether an inmate gets to go to that external medical appointment is if we have the correctional staff available to go on those trips. We are increasing the numbers of staff. I think we are now at 64% in terms of those external trips meeting those. We have also started using a company called USI. They're used by the United States Marshals and other jurisdictions around the country to do medical guarding in the community. So even though our staffing levels may be low and not permit us to make all of these trips, we will utilize USI to further reduce that backlog. So I can't say that the backlog is all a fault of YesCare's. It is a holistic approach, given that they can't do anything without our staff members.
Perhaps. COMMISSIONER RESNICK: So we're trying to implement things that will increase that number by bringing on USI and having them take out the trips along with our officers and keeping our staff at the jails.
My buzzer done gone off twice and sucked up my time. I'll just say heard. And I appreciate what workarounds you're trying to provide to be able to meet these things, to meet the need. But they've actually lost contracts 14 in recent years over substandard 15 care. So they've lost -- other 16 folks have recognized this is an 17 issue. 18 And so, I think we 19 really ought to raise this up as a 20 real concern. Again, this budget process isn't about one contract at any given point, but this one has really stuck out to us because again, often times people behind the wall are perceived almost as noncitizens. They're forgotten about and the quality of care that they're provided, not just the conditions within the prisons, but the quality of care they're providing for the humanity I think is important. So we have to raise that point. I'll say this. I'll close it by saying that this body has long been committed to ending mass incarceration. And I think that starts with making sure that we do right by those behind bars. Like Mr. Lewis Young, who died last November after going six days without his insulin under YesCare's watch. At the same time, Philadelphia is a union town, yet we are contracting out a huge amount of work, to the point that Councilman Thomas made, to a company that in recent years split itself in half so it could pay pennies on the dollar for the hundreds of lawsuits it faced related to substandard care, deaths in custody and even sexual violence committed by YesCare employees, which is unacceptable to me. Doesn't it make sense to bring this work back to D.C. 47 members who are already doing great work in the City's health centers and are solely focused on people, not profits? I think that it does. That having been said, again I thank you for answering my questions. And I know you and Dr. Herdman, but I appreciate you at least meeting me here in this moment. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Council President.
Thank you very much. Chair recognizes Majority Gilmore Richardson.
Thank you. Thank you so much, Council President. And thank you again, Commissioner Resnick, for your work. And I wanted to notate also that we greatly appreciate, and I'll never forget, the tour that we had of the Philadelphia Department of Prisons with First Deputy Commissioner Beaufort. You probably don't remember this, but I was Chief of Staff for former Councilmember Blondell Reynolds Brown, and you helped us with a tour during our staff retreat. And we thought everything was very well put together for us to really see firsthand what's happening in the prison system. So I wanted to thank you for that on the record and to the entire team. We hear from a lot of individuals, families a lot. We had a lot of constituent cases from families. We do receive some cases from time to time from staff as well obviously regarding staffing concerns. And I just wanted to notate that. Very quickly I just wanted to look at a few things in your detail. So I'm in Section 52 of the FY26 budget detail. I'll start with . That was the Office of Re-entry Partnerships question. We just wanted to receive additional information on the re-entry work, and also how many folks are enrolled in any type of workforce development program currently in the prison system or other certification program, because we know that skill building from a workforce development perspective is really important when we try to connect folks with work upon release? So if you could tell us just how many inmates are currently in a workforce development program or certification program. COMMISSIONER RESNICK: We'll get that information for you, Councilwoman.
Okay. And I did see the information about the CDL, a licensure certification program in your detail and it was studied year-over-year FY25 and '26. But I know you all had mentioned I think it was a year or two ago about a barbering program as well that would give a certification skill to inmates. Is that up and running? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BEAUFORT: No, that's not up and running. We did have someone come down from the state to give us an assessment. But with the transition from the former Deputy Commissioner of RTS and Deputy Commissioner Jaco, we have to redo it.
Okay. Just keep us updated on that because I remember that coming up. It was either last year or the year before. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BEAUFORT: It was last year, yep.
I remember without even looking through the transcript that we talked about that certification program. But again, I just wanted to note for the record I did see the forklift and the other certification. If you all could just notate based on , this is related to the Security and Operations program regarding IOD. It's just 2 million. So it seems plain. If you could talk about the IOD number year-to-date this year thus far? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BEAUFORT: I can get you the exact number. But what I can tell you off the surface our IOD, which was in triple digits last year, is now down to just small, low double digits. So the IODs, they've been coming back to work. And what we have changed is instead of we use two work -- what do we call them -- yeah, work health facilities now. So we now use two. Before there was a backlog of getting folks in for their appointments. So we use the Navy Yard along with another center to get the officers and staff seen.
Okay. And then I want to put three more questions on the record really quickly. You had a noticeable decrease in professional services. I'm specifically referring to Section 52, , again under Security and Operations for Class 200. It was a little more than 2.285 million. And so, I just wanted to put it on the record that I'm notating the significant decrease in asking what it's for and where you are with your minority spend on your professional services contracts since it is a significant portion of the security and operations schedule 200 detail? And then also wanted to ask about your vacancy allowance -- because I heard the bell, your vacancy allowance because I noticed how you moved around some of the positions in the Class 100 earlier in the detail. And I'm specifically referring to Section 2 52, and then Section 52, regarding the vacancy allowance. That will help me figure out that piece of the puzzle. And then finally, how many additional classes do you have forthcoming as far as new employees that will be working? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: So far our goal, Councilwoman, is to put a class in the academy every six weeks. So a class will start -- training is about 12-plus weeks. So midway through their training, another class will start. Once they graduate, soon after that another class will start. So we're looking to do that, replicate that throughout the rest of the year.
(Inaudible) sorry. Just the vacancy allowance because literally I'm just trying to put the pieces of this puzzle together on and . And I know it's two different facilities. I want to put that on the record I'm aware there's two different facilities, but I just wanted to know your vacancy allowance so that could help me figure out why it's listed this way for Schedule 100? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Sure, we'll get that for you.
Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. President.
You're welcome. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Brooks.
Thank you, Council President. I'm going to skip around. So my first question is last July the department announced that it had opened a nine-bed inpatient unit for people in prison custody at Jefferson Frankford Hospital. But according to the monitor's report from last week, not a single person in a Philadelphia jail was treated in that unit until February of 2025 when the PPD -- I mean, the PDP claimed three people were getting medical treatment there. So how many people have been treated at this unit to date and what kind of care are they getting there? And why did you guys open a medical unit at Jefferson Hospital? Then claim after the unit was opened that Jefferson couldn't offer surgical care the unit was intended to provide? And also, did you guys inquire about what kind of care the hospital could provide while planning to open this unit? Just trying to get clarity around this. COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Thank you for that question, Councilwoman. That was planned well before I got here. And that is correct, the hospital does not provide surgical services. Additionally, we don't determine the location of the hospital an individual goes to. If we have to send an inmate out, we'll call Fire Rescue or our provider will direct which hospital based upon the services, so Fire Rescue determines or our medical providers. We would ideally like to have that unit full, but since that hospital doesn't provide the range of services or a full range of services it's sort of limited. So we have had conversations about continuing the utility of continuing that contract. We have had people there. They will open it for us when we have what, two? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BEAUFORT: Two. COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Two individuals. The hospital will open the unit and staff it with nursing staff and our correctional staff will be there. The point of that unit is every time we have to take an inmate to the hospital and they become what we call an open ward, meaning they're admitted to the hospital, we have two officers on each one of those open wards. So if you have 10 open wards, that's officers. If 18 there's nine in this ward, in the 19 secured ward at the hospital, what 20 do we have over there? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BEAUFORT: Five and one supervisor. COMMISSIONER RESNICK: So it greatly cuts down on our staff burden. But considering that we have had challenges filling it, given the services provided we were questioning the utility of it.
Okay. Thank you for that. And this is another question. We get these questions from the community. So one of the questions is that why when families are visiting incarcerated friends and family, they can't take pictures? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: No, ma'am. We used to have a system where -- DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BEAUFORT: Yes. COMMISSIONER RESNICK: You can discuss that. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BEAUFORT: So pre-COVID we did have a ticketing system where they could take pictures and it was a Polaroid and they would buy a ticket and what have you. Post-COVID when we opened back up slowly inperson visits, that was not something we had a slot for. The objective was to get families into the visiting area and let them see their loved ones. So that's something that will come down the line as we get back into full operations. But that was the reason why. That's a -- COMMISSIONER RESNICK: (Inaudible). DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BEAUFORT: Yeah, it was a whole distancing thing. And we had to cut our numbers on how many people can be in the different jails visiting rooms at one time. So that was the reason why.
So you're planning to reintroduce that -DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BEAUFORT: That is definitely a down-the-line plan to reintroduce the picture-taking back into it. And it won't be as before because it's hard to get Polaroids. There was a Polaroid type of system that we had. Certain supplies you can't get anymore. So we're going to have to rethink how can we do it.
Okay. And I have one final question. I would just go through the whole thing and then you guys can answer it. According to the most recent monitor's report in December 2024, there was an average of 751 backlog appointments. This is some of what Councilmember O'Rourke asked. So the question is how do you plan to tackle these delays due to the plan that is affecting people's health and in some cases, pivoting to untimely deaths? And our examples are Andrew Drury died on March 9th a little over a day after he was transferred to Curran- Fromhold. He was then labeled as an emergency medical case, and a medical examiner determined that his cause of death was from drug intoxication. So we were wondering how three days from Kensington he died from drug intoxication while in custody. And we were wondering was he taken to a hospital or medical treatment during his time in confinement because that happens. And the other example was a Joshua Mister was arrested and held in custody this past Friday after trying to evade SEPTA fare in Kensington. He died by Sunday, and he had been in a hospital but was released. Joseph Gabor was taken in on a Kensington sweep and shortly after he passed away. Amanda Cahill was arrested in a sweep, died a few days later. So there's a pattern of people being arrested in Kensington and then dying in jail not long after. And in the case of Michael McKinnis, he died overnight in an unsupervised jail cell. So what I'm trying to understand is are there new policies and procedures that can be put into place in order to end this pattern of people dying from opioid-related complications in jails? And I know it's short- staffed. I did the tour. I've seen the whole thing, and I'm not kind of placing fault but we have to find a solution. We can't continue having deaths in the prison system around something that we could kind of plan for. COMMISSIONER RESNICK: I appreciate the question, Councilwoman. So I'll answer your first question first with respect to our backlog. As I mentioned, our backlog of onsite medical care is now below the goals set forth by the Federal court Remick monitors. So we are well below those ranges now. So we've met that and we will continue to meet that. How we are meeting that is we have assigned a Major Deputy Warden who's in charge of access to cares. He works with the YesCare team and our custody staff to ensure that people who have medical appointments come out of their units, come off of their housing blocks and are seen in their appointments. So we're ensuring that YesCare is also hiring access to cares individuals who will work with that Major to do that work. We have also tackled our external clinic trips. We've met I believe at 64% of them last month. So that backlog is coming down. The report that you mentioned -- and the problem with these monitor reports is because they look at a snapshot in time. Then several months later they issue their report. The report is historic already because we've already made progress. So the progress that we are making now won't be reported until September because that's just the way the timing of the monitors and the timing of the reports. So the numbers that you see in the reduction of those backlogs will be reported in the monitor's reports come September, but we're doing it now. In addition, as I said we are working with USI to help augment our staff to take inmates out to the community to have their appointments and also to sit on the open wards. That does two things. It allows us to get those trips and those services for the inmate population, but also utilizing USI allows us to keep staff at the jails on housing areas, having those areas open and having the inmates out-of-cell time increase. It allows us to do those two things. So I think that's my answer with respect to how we're tackling the backlog and I think you can see from the numbers that those backlogs are coming down.
With the respect to the cases that you've mentioned, as I'm sure you can understand I can't talk about open investigations. But what I will say is we have done a number of things at the Prison System. As I said, anybody who comes in and scores a positive score on the COWS assessment is immediately started on our medical- assisted treatment. We've red-armband everybody in substance abuse treatment so they're easily identified by our staff and medical staff on the housing units. We've increased medical rounding on those housing units and we are undertaking a pilot program to outfit all newly-admitted inmates with medical monitoring devices that will monitor their vital signs. And we will get alerts, redundant alerts in different places if an inmate is having a medical incident and we will be able to respond immediately.
I'm glad you guys are taking steps in the right direction. And to the last -- something that you mentioned about the hiring policy. What does it look like? You said you want a class every six weeks. How is that going with recruitment? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: So that's going amazingly well. We've hired -- Mr. Robinson is our recruiting coordinator, the handsome man in the blue suit right there. He works with our community partners. He works with Council staff. He works with schools, businesses. He goes all around the area to job fairs. We have the ability to hire outside of the city of Philadelphia so we're recruiting in other areas as well. Mr. Robinson also works with the Whalls Group, which was the recruiting firm that we've associated with who has expertise in law enforcement and corrections to work with our background unit to expedite the cases. So what you're seeing is we've had classes of 30 and then 40 and then 50 and now it's 74, so we keep increasing the numbers in the class and the frequency of the classes.
And what does the retention look like? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Our retention rate is down to single digits. I think it's been running between 2% and 3%. We're trying to do a lot for our staff to make them feel valued, to make them invest in their personal well- being, their professional well- being. We've changed where we do our training. It's now in a updated state-of-the-art facility. We opened a wellness center for our staff. They can use that facility to work out, to do cardio. We've appointed a wellness director who will be providing classes that staff say that they want to have, whether it be weight loss, smoking cessation, healthier eating, just things that staff have an interest in to keep them on the payroll.
Thank you so much for that. COMMISSIONER RESNICK: You're welcome.
Thank you. The Chair recognizes Councilmember Landau, then Councilmember Lozada and Councilmember Young.
Thank you. Thank you so much. First, thanks for being here. Council President, I hope you heard that they have an exercise room, a cardio room and a variety of other things so maybe we'll get that -- no. 2
I walked right into that. Okay. I have three questions for you. And the first I want to start with because you were talking about recruitment, training your new classes for weeks. I 12 wanted to talk about how much you're investing into de-escalation practices and other kind of restorative practices or different kinds of justice to make sure that we can resolve conflicts without it getting out of control. COMMISSIONER RESNICK: So that is part of our use-of-force training. We did have a large class of crisis intervention training, train the trainer. I forget how many months ago that was. That was brought on board, so our staff now have been trained to do that training. So we have individuals who have already been trained, deployed in the facilities. And our staff at the Training Academy are certified to do that training. So we rolled that training out with the new classes. Obviously, the CIT training is I think 40 hours. It's an entire week. We rolled that training -- we incorporated it into the new cadet training when we're talking about use of force. We have I think about 12 weeks almost, our training. One of the things that I would like to see is our academy increase. I know that doesn't sound intuitive because it takes longer to get people in. But I think if we train people, we provide them more training, we prepare them for what it is the job we expect them to do, right. I don't want to short-change training and then people get inside the jails and say, I didn't expect this, you didn't prepare me for this. And after we've made that investment in recruiting and hiring and training, they leave. So I want to make sure people are adequately prepared. And it's a debate amongst the people in this room with me about increasing the length of our training. But ultimately, I would like to get us there.
Thank you. Two more questions. One is I was unclear, we allocated money -- you requested last year money for body worn cameras. Did you purchase them? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: No, we did not.
And is the intention to purchase them this year? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Yes, it is.
For all staff? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Ultimately, through the life of the plan, yes, for all staff. I think the initial rollout with DC Beaufort and DC Nash is we would put them in the receiving room and our special management areas first, areas where we know we traditionally have more issues, more uses of force to protect both staff and inmates. So those are the areas where we will roll it out first, and then as we move on into the outyears, general population areas.
And is the intention that you would -- I'm the head of the Tech Committee. Is the intention you would store that data, that footage, with the police department's footage or you would have your own storage for that? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: I think it's our own storage. We would piggyback off of the systems, the same vendors, but it would be our storage.
And then the last question is do you have an intention of using drones in the prisons? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: We have four drones currently. They would be tethered to the buildings. They would be up essentially hours a day weather- 22 permitting and providing realtime 23 monitoring of the external 24 facility.
That's great. Thank you very much. I'm good for now.
Thank you, Member Lozada. Chair recognizes Councilmember Quetcy Lozada.
Thank you, Council President. I just want to get these two questions on the record. They're not related, but want to make sure that I'm able to respond to folks who have made inquiries. Number one is how much are incarcerated individuals getting paid for work detail? Number two, according to your testimony there was an average rate of 120 daily out-of-service cells in 2024. What is that number now? And then when we last spoke, 60% of the population was substance-abuse dependent. Has that number gone up, stayed the same or has it got down? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: I'll address your last question first, Councilwoman. I think if you said 60%, my records show it's 70. So if that's the case, it went up. With respect to inmate pay, I believe we're paying $2 a day. And our out-of-cell numbers, I am not sure what --
You said $2 a day? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BEAUFORT: Yes, it's $2 a day for our general work. And then our specialty work within our industries area, they actually get paid by the hour based on the craft. Some of it is $0.45 an hour and some of it is I think $0.55 an hour. But general work which is general cleaning, food service, that's $2 a day. It actually went up. It used to be $1.50. As of last year it was $1.50 a day and we asked for the increase, which it went up to $2 a day. The out-of-work cells that you see, we are actually in a capital project. We have some cell doors that are mechanical in nature that we had to change all of the motors and all of the sliders. They don't open up like a regular door do. These actually slide. So that project is ongoing. So that's the out-of-cell numbers that you see. But it's down to only 60 now.
And I'm sorry. I didn't hear your substance abuse number. COMMISSIONER RESNICK: 70%.
It went up. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I just wanted to get all three of those on the record. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you and good afternoon. Just a few questions just about the workplace environment there up at our prisons. Can you tell us is there a difference in pay between officers who work 12 hours versus officers who work 8 hours? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Yes, Councilman.
Why is there a difference in that pay? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: The way our contract works is we go before a panel of arbitrators. The Union makes a proposal, the City makes a proposal and three arbitrators craft a contract for us.
But their rate is the same or is the rate different? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BEAUFORT: The rate is the same.
The rate is the same? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BEAUFORT: Yes, the rate is the same based off of their years of service.
So even if I'm working a 12-hour day or an 8-hour day, I still get that same rate? DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BEAUFORT: So if I'm a 10-year officer and you're a 10-year officer, we both have the same flat rate. But you chose to stay at your 8-hour post five days a week with weekends of holidays off and I chose to do the 12-hour post. I'm getting extra money because, one, I'm doing four hours more. And based off of that arbitration, they got a little more money in their differential. So that's what you see the difference at.
Okay. Thank you. Can you tell us about I know we have this shortage, but can you tell us about the standards that you have when doing recruitment? Because my office has gotten information that standards have extremely and drastically lowered, which created some of the issue with retention because some of the folks who are applying may not be strong enough, right, or have that mentality to work there in that type of environment. I mean, I was told that there was folks who were close to 400 pounds who were applying, folks who don't speak English who are applying without any assistance and folks who are in their 70s, right, who are applying for these jobs. So could you talk to us about some of the standards? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Sure. So I don't know that -- well, you need to speak English to be able to work at the Philadelphia Department of Prisons and there is a physicality portion of the training, so you need to pass all of the academy training and part of that is physical fitness.
But were they lowered was the question. Were those different standards lowered in order to allow some more folks to be hired to kind of fill those jobs? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: DC Beaufort can address that. I believe that some of the standards were relaxed just to get larger applicant pools. But again, like I said those applicants could apply, but you still have to pass all the training. But DC Beaufort can speak to that. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BEAUFORT: Yes, Councilman. As you know when we were in our crisis mode two, three years ago and we were putting out job announcements, we were getting nothing. If we put out a job announcement and let it run for the standard two weeks, we may have gotten 200 people that applied. Once we vetted them the way we normally do, we wouldn't get anyone. So we had to try to lower some standards as to get a bigger applicant pool. So what did that entail? Well, there used to be a written test, a written civil service test to become a correctional officer. That test is nonexistent right now. We did have to relax some of the weight requirement because we were not getting anyone for this particular field, this particular profession. So we did have to relax it. But what do we do on the backend? So on the backend our training academy, so to make sure that the person can pass the basic skills while in the training academy, they had to pass their physical fitness requirements, their weapons requirements, their testing requirements. And if they didn't meet any of those requirements, then of course they didn't make it past their probationary period, but that's where we're at right now.
Can you talk to us about the air exchange that happens? There are a lot of inmates who smoke whatever they smoke in jail, right. It's not just cigarettes and marijuana. It's other chemicals that they're smoking and that is affecting the correctional officers as well who inhale these things. So can you tell us about the air exchange at the Prison System and what can be done to protect some of the correctional officers? COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Sure. DC Beaufort can talk to you about the system for air exchanges. But let me just address the fact of the portion about contraband. So I did mention earlier that we've acquired machines in our mailrooms that will check all the incoming mail to determine if it's been adultered with any substances. If it's legal mail, we let the inmate and the sender -- because it might not always be a legitimate law firm -- know that the mail has been confiscated and it's returned or destroyed and the inmate is notified. Other mail, if it's adultered, if there's any problem with it, the inmate's notified and it's destroyed. We have as I said increased our canine unit, and we have a unit specially assigned to detect and interdict contraband. We have an Entry Procedures Unit now that checks all staff, all contractors, all visitors coming into the facility. So we're making a huge push and a huge concerted effort to reduce the amount of contraband available and then make the environment safer. But in the incidents where inmates are smoking, which they shouldn't be, DC Beaufort can talk to you about the process of air exchanges. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BEAUFORT: Yeah. So the facilities -- three of the major facilities, CFCF, RCF and PICC which are air-conditioned jails, have a system where when they start smelling smoke, the staff smell smoke, they make the call to the shift commander and maintenance and then the maintenance team can reverse the air, in which case they let fresh air come in from outside which will vacuum out some of the bad air. It's not a perfect system, but that's what we do. The second thing is wherever the area is we start the search process. The search process, the housing area that was smelling the smoke, we need to do a search on that area to see if we can find the contraband. Now, most of the time they know we're starting the search process, the flushing of the stuff goes, you know, commences. That's how the air exchange process works. Now, at the Detention Center, partial of the Detention Center is air-conditioned. The dormitory side which will be air-conditioned shortly, is fresh air coming in through the windows. The Detention Center is all window- made. So of course we open the windows. We use big fans there to try to get the smoke out of the area. But I want to be clear with something. It's not like you're walking through a plume of smoke. That is not the case, but the smell is the smell. Okay. And we encourage staff the minute you smell something, say something. Don't let it permeate in the air too long. Say something immediately so we can start the process.
Thank you. And I only ask that question because I know again it's not just like marijuana or cigarettes. People are smoking K2, smoking chemicals, whatever chemicals they get their hands on. And so, that affects the air quality for everyone in there, right. And so, just want to make sure that these systems in place are actually working to clear the air because, I mean, someone died because of that, right, an officer died because of that right. So we just want to make sure that these things are clear.
Thank you. The Chair recognizes Majority Leader Richardson.
Thank you. Thank you so much, Council President. I just wanted to put on the record I have this written on my sheet for thank yous and I neglected to say it in my transition. But I wanted to thank David Robinson for all of his work in helping really deep touchpoints in the community that help us reach out to folks who wouldn't typically be interested in being a part of this work. So I wanted to say thank you to David Robinson. And like I said, I had it written down on my paper and just was going back down memory lane thinking about that last visit and just how great you were to our team, First Deputy Commissioner Beaufort. So thank you, David Robinson. And I also just wanted to state for the record based on Councilmember Young's question because I was reviewing this in the detail as well on Section 52, under Schedule 100 regarding the 13 amount of full-time positions, and 14 that was another reason why I asked 15 about the vacancy allowance because 16 of the FY26 budgeted positions. 17 And then overtime which we know is 18 around 34 million. And the shift 19 and stress differential, so is that 20 one in the same or it's just listed 21 under the same pot of money, the shift and the stress. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BEAUFORT: Yes. It's listed under the same code, yes.
Okay. And I got that off of the same page with the IOD questions. So when he brought it up, I just wanted to make sure I got that on the record. But thank you very, very much. And thank you, Council President.
Thank you very much. Any other questions or comments from members of the Committee? Member Harrity? (No response.)
Okay. Well, thank you very much for your testimony. Continue to keep moving forward the progress that you're making. COMMISSIONER RESNICK: Thank you. DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BEAUFORT: Thank you.
The Chair recognizes Councilmember Gilmore Richardson for a motion on the public hearing and meeting on the bills and resolutions before the Committee today stand in recess until April 15, 2025 at 10:00 a.m.
It has been moved and properly seconded that the public hearing and meeting on the bills and resolution before the Committee today stand in recess until Tuesday, April 15th at 10:00 a.m. All those in favor will signify by saying aye. (Aye.)
The ayes have it and the motion carries. This Committee will stand in recess until Tuesday, April 15th at 10:00 a.m. Thank you very much everyone for being here. (Committee of the Whole concluded at 3:40 p.m.) C E R T I F I C A T I O N I, hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence noted are contained fully and accurately in the stenographic notes taken by me in the foregoing matter, and that this is a correct transcript of the same. __________________________________ TANEHA CARROLL