Documentary Calls For Improving or Closing Allegheny County Jail

A county that can’t or won’t care for inmates in its jail should work toward closing its lockup entirely, argues a documentary set to be screened by an advocacy group Tuesday. The Allegheny County Jail Health Justice Project will present “No Bars to Healthcare,” a film by James Tedrow, on Tuesday at the Homewood Branch of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, starting at 5 p.m. 

The screening of the half-hour film will be followed by a panel discussion about the health care at the jail, and whether the facility can ultimately be closed. The film focuses largely on Corizon Health, a Tennessee company that ran the jail’s infirmary from September 2013 through August 2015. It features the case of Frank Smart, a 39-year-old man who died in the jail in January 2015. 

In the film his mother, Tomi Harris, 60, of Verona, says he did not get his seizure medication, echoing accusations in a lawsuit filed by Mr. Smart's daughter. "My son goes in the building -- there was no fire, no flood -- and didn't come out,” Ms. Harris says, in one of the film’s poignant moments. 

"My son begged for his medication for over six hours,” but didn’t get it, she says, adding that “no one need die of a seizure." “Corizon was bad. That was a mistake from day one,” Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge David Cashman said in an interview Friday. 

He now chairs the county’s Jail Oversight Board. He was not on the board when Corizon was hired. 

[2019 Update: Judge David Cashman has also resigned from this position in disgrace, but is still in office until 2021] 

“That was an entity that was fueled and energized by money, and they didn’t care,” the judge said.

He said the current health care arrangement, in which the county teams with Allegheny Health Network, is doing better. Corizon did not respond to a request for comment. County Executive Rich Fitzgerald hired Corizon, then opted not to retain the company beyond its initial two-year stint. His office declined comment Friday. 

The documentary acknowledges improvement since Corizon left the jail in 2015, but suggests that problems remain. The film’s closing moments note that the jail saw two deaths in April, including one suicide. There has since been another suicide, in June. The ultimate solution, the documentary contends, is “the elimination of the modern prison system" and replacement with "a more humane and effective system that addresses poverty, police brutality, and mental health."