Allegheny County’s search for jail warden nears final phase
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Shane Dady had worked for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections for more than two decades when he took over last year as acting warden of the long-troubled Allegheny County Jail.
Even with all of that experience, he was apprehensive.
Dady was familiar with the jail’s reputation: bad, even as correctional facilities go.
Complaints ranged from the use of excessive force to staffing shortages, from a lack of medical and mental health care to a troubling number of deaths in the facility.
Underlying those problems: an administration long accused by critics of not having much interest in what happened at the jail.
“I knew this would be an arduous undertaking coming into this facility,” Dady told TribLive last week.
Now, 14 months later, Dady said things are better, but there’s much left to do. And at the end of this month, it’ll be someone else’s job to fix.
Dady must return to his post with the state, and still no new warden has been hired.
County Executive Sara Innamorato, who inherited ultimate oversight of the jail — and its attendant headaches — when she took office in January, announced in the spring that she hoped a national search would be completed by October.
It’s running behind.
Last week, the administration said its search firm has narrowed the pool of 41 applicants to about a half-dozen semifinalists. The goal is to have a new warden in place by early next year.
“I would have liked to see someone in place prior to me leaving,” Dady said. “This is a tough job, being warden at Allegheny County Jail.”
The county hasn’t said who will run the jail until a permanent warden is hired.
‘Human rights nightmare’
Whoever takes the helm of the 1,800-inmate facility will be faced with balancing the needs of the jail population, the hopes of community advocates and the directives of the jail’s oversight board.
For years, the jail has been the target of federal lawsuits that have accused guards of using excessive force, failing to provide mental health treatment and medical care, and misusing solitary confinement — including against pregnant inmates.
In recent years, the Abolitionist Law Center has sued the jail no fewer than a half-dozen times, including filing two class-action complaints.
Bret Grote, the legal director for the organization, said his staff heard constantly from incarcerated people and their loved ones.
“It was an unbroken, ever- escalating human rights nightmare,” Grote said.
The jail’s self-reported use-of-force statistics, Grote said, were significantly higher than those of any other correctional facility in the state, including Philadelphia’s.
According to the state Department of Corrections, in 2019 — the year Grote’s group sued the jail over inmate discipline — Allegheny County accounted for 15% of all uses of force among the 67 county jails.
Jail staff used a restraint chair — a chair that combative or uncooperative inmates’ arms and legs are strapped into — 339 times, the law center reported. Across the rest of the state that year, that measure was used 1,086 times.
In 2021, following public outcry over statistics like those, Allegheny County voters overwhelmingly passed a referendum prohibiting the use of the restraint chair, chemical agents and solitary confinement in all but emergency settings.
But in the months after the vote, the county entered a $300,000 no-bid contract to provide weapons and military-style training for officers at the jail.
Following investigation into the contractor’s employment history and allegations former Warden Orlando Harper was trying to circumvent the referendum, the Jail Oversight Board canceled the contract.
The jail also reported a high number of in-custody deaths, with 32 dating to 2017, including eight suicides. Families of inmates who were hospitalized or died complained jail officials failed to notify them in a timely manner.
Cadiadra Kendrick fought with jail administrators for more than a year when her son, who has sickle cell disease, was denied his medication.
“If he doesn’t get some of these medications, it can be seriously detrimental to his life,” she said. “They didn’t care.”
At one point during her son’s stay, Kendrick said a doctor at the jail told him he didn’t need to be on any of the medication he had been prescribed before entering the jail.
Repeatedly, Kendrick said, friends of her son at the jail would call her to tell her how sick he was.
“I didn’t know if my son was going to survive another day,” she told TribLive. “A mother’s worst nightmare.”
Kendrick called Harper repeatedly, complained to the county administration and sought help from the Abolitionist Law Center.
Ultimately, her son was transferred back to Cambria County, where he received the medical treatment he needed, Kendrick said.
“When you take possession of a person, and the government is supposed to (be responsible), all I ask for is adequate medical care,” she said. “They couldn’t do that.”
Better climate
Exacerbating the situation was a strained relationship between Harper and some members of the oversight board tasked with monitoring operation and maintenance of the facility.
Board members would often ask him for information at their meetings, and, if Harper didn’t want to provide it, he told them so. The same requests would be made month after month, to no avail.
In recent months — primarily after the Innamorato administration took over, and under Dady — advocates have seen some indications of positive change.
In March, the county and Abolitionist Law Center announced a “momentous” legal settlement in one of the class-action complaints over mental health treatment at the jail.
The settlement, which the parties said would bring “meaningful changes” to the facility — most starting in January — includes improving staffing levels and providing use-of-force and de-escalation training.
Under Dady, the relationship between the warden and Jail Oversight Board has thawed.
Rob Perkins, a member of the board, said that since Dady came on board in September 2023, transparency and communication have improved.
When he took over, Dady said, his goal was not “kicking the door in” and leading a massive overhaul. Instead, he set out to make minor changes that could lead to improvement.
Dady has focused on modifying intake procedures and implementing FDA-approved medication treatment for opioid-use disorder for those who need it.
In addition, the jail has hired one psychiatrist and eight therapists and is able to provide additional individual and group therapy sessions.
Dady, who will return as deputy superintendent to the State Correctional Institution at Mercer, also talked about an improved relationship with the Jail Oversight Board, tasked with holding jail staff responsible for decisions being made.
“That’s been challenging at times, but in this warden position, there’s a way to balance it,” Dady said. “You can get to a point where you’re working together. And that will ultimately move this jail forward.”
Even Bethany Hallam, an outspoken member of the board who once served time at the jail, praised the work he has done.
“I think Dady has done a good job in the interim,” she said. “But he is acting and sees his job as it is — as an acting warden.
“In ACJ, we need changes now.”
‘Long-term investment’
In May, the county allocated $55,000 to retain Washington, D.C.-based POLIHIRE, an executive search firm, to lead the effort to find a new warden.
Innamorato also announced the creation of a nine-member search committee to aid the effort.
Several did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Kenyatta Uzzell, founder and chief executive officer for POLIHIRE, did not return multiple messages seeking comment. But in an October email, he updated a member of the search committee on the work completed.
At that point, according to the email, which was obtained by TribLive, he had met with more than 70 people, including advocates, community members, family members of people detained, correctional officers and jail leadership, as well as criminal defense attorneys and the county’s chief public defender, he wrote.
Executive recruitment work requires shoe leather and networking, according to County Manager John Fournier.
“We just need a little more time to make sure we have the right candidates in place,” Fournier said. “This is a long-term investment in the Allegheny County Jail, the people and the culture there.”
Any gap between Dady’s departure and a new warden, Fournier said, will be small.
“It’s a tough labor market for everyone, especially for these executive-level positions both in the private and public sector,” he said. “People are experiencing this all over the country.”
Finalists will be chosen by Innamorato, Fournier and Uzzell. The choice will then be presented to the search committee. The oversight board, by statute, must approve the hire.
No salary has been publicly disclosed, but the last warden made $132,000 annually.
Hallam, who is on the search committee, complained that the panel has not been provided with the names and resumes of semifinalists.
“I don’t want to be given one week to do my due diligence,” she said.
But Fournier said many of the job candidates want confidentiality, and that becomes more difficult to maintain the more people involved.
The priorities for the jail, Fournier said, are safety for those incarcerated, as well as quality medical and mental health care, and human services that help reduce recidivism.
“We have a preference for a candidate who has a very strong vision for what a public health and human services jail looks like and has experience on that front,” Fournier said.
Staffing woes
Hallam said she has spoken with POLIHIRE twice to talk about her goals for a new warden. She hopes to see programming changes as well as an increased effort to boost staffing.
“We need to fix that now,” she said.
The jail has a total staff of 704, including contracted employees. That includes 381 corrections officers.
According to Brian Englert, the corrections officers union president, the jail is short 100 officers, and staff members last month worked an average of 61 hours of overtime.
In addition to costing the county millions of dollars, Hallam said, the huge amounts of overtime are hurting morale.
Part of the problem in hiring, Dady said, is that the jail draws from the same law enforcement pool in Allegheny County as local, city and county police, as well as the sheriff’s office.
“We’re trying to get the same people on board,” Dady said.
The oversight board’s Perkins said he met twice with POLIHIRE’s Uzzell.
“He did more listening than talking,” Perkins said. “I’m optimistic.”
Perkins hopes the next warden will focus on behavioral health because a majority of people at the jail struggle with mental health issues.
In the past, jails were seen as a place to warehouse people, Perkins said, but that’s no longer the only goal.
“It’s an intervention point where we can help stabilize them and return them to the community with continuity of care,” he said.
Since Perkins joined the board earlier this year, he said, staffing for mental health care has increased significantly.
“We’re far better off than where we were,” he said.
Outreach, rapport key
Dady thinks maintaining rapport with staff and inmates is critical. He suggested the new warden get into the housing units and talk to the jail’s population.
“I want to meet people where they’re at and make them feel welcome to approach me,” Dady said. “We’re not looking for a dictator.”
Perkins listed transparency as a key quality for the jail’s boss — with the board, the community, media and family members of those incarcerated.
Bob Houston, a longtime corrections expert based in Nebraska who now serves as a federal court monitor for the Los Angeles County Jail, said the new warden will have to figure out how to balance jail operations with bureaucracy and politics.
That means learning how to split time attending meetings and talking to law enforcement and people in the community.
“They should be all over the county,” Houston said, suggesting a warden ought to spend about 80% of the time on daily operations and 20% out and about.
The community expectation for the jail is “do no harm” to those incarcerated, Houston said.
“They should not come out worse than they came in,” he said. “That’s the very first impact you should have.”