Prisons commissioner to retire amid tumultuous time in Philly jails

Philadelphia Department of Prisons Commissioner Blanche Carney informed jail staff Monday that she will be retiring next week.

Carney has overseen a system that – since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic back in 2020 – has faced a significant shortage of correctional officers. And over the past year, four inmates were able to escape from PDP’s jail campus along State Road.

In a letter obtained by Metro, Carney, who was appointed in 2016, told employees she submitted her retirement March 8, and her last official day will be Friday, April 5.

COVID-19, she wrote, “caused a tremendous strain on correctional operations, worldwide, with far reaching impacts on the workforce who stand duty inside PDP’s facilities and the incarcerated population committed to our custody.”

“It was challenging, to say the least, and I remained steadfast through the course, leading PDP through and out of the pandemic,” Carney continued.

PDP Communications Director John Mitchell confirmed Carney’s impending retirement.

New Mayor Cherelle Parker, in a statement Wednesday afternoon, said Carney “led the system under times of great stress and duress.”

“There will be no shortage of second-guessing her performance,” she added. “However, I have a great deal of respect for the job the Commissioner has done.”

Parker went on to say that her administration is “committed to making every change needed to implement a well-run prison system” and that she expects to name Carney’s replacement soon.

In May, AFSCME Local 159, the District Council 33 union representing city correctional officers, called on then Mayor Jim Kenney to fire Carney, citing unsafe working conditions. Days later, two incarcerated men – one of whom was charged with killing four people – escaped from the Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center.

Eric Desiderio, who was elected Local 159’s president last week, said Carney’s resignation was expected, as Parker fills out her cabinet and names new department heads. He said the administration has been interviewing candidates in recent weeks, and that he expects a replacement to be announced in the coming days.

“We’re looking for fairness,” Desiderio, who previously served as the union’s vice president, told Metro. “We’re looking for somebody to bring the morale back. We’re looking for somebody that we can work with, that we can share ideas with and not being one-sided.”

Carney joined PDP in 1995 as a social worker and rose through the ranks before being selected by Kenney to lead the department eight years ago, at the start of his first term.

The first half of her tenure as commissioner, she noted in the message to staff, was marked by a reduction in the jail population. The number of people incarcerated in city prisons went from more than 8,000 in 2015 to about 4,700 this year, a drop of 42%, according to a city report issued last month.

Some prison advocates – and Carney herself – have said the population needs to decrease even more to abide by the terms of a class action settlement stemming from a civil rights lawsuit filed by inmates.

Cathleen Beltz, who was appointed by the court to monitor whether PDP is abiding by the agreement, wrote in her October report that inmates continue to be exposed to “profound and clearly observable” trauma that is “certain to have lifelong effects for many.”

The report documented a 40% vacancy rate among all PDP employees, with more than 800 vacant correctional officer positions. Desiderio said the department has a continuous hiring window; interested applicants can go to phila.gov/jobs for further information, including to apply.

Beltz is due to file another report on the conditions inside the prison by the end of the week.