Jail changes notification of relatives for inmates in hospital
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Allegheny County Jail officials have changed the way they contact relatives of hospitalized inmates in an attempt to provide slightly more information after some families publicly criticized the process.
Now, jail medical personnel, rather than a jail chaplain, will notify family members of an inmate’s hospitalization so the medical staff can share an inmate’s status with relatives, jail officials said, although some families doubt the change will be much of an improvement.
“Our health care department will have more knowledge about the medical emergency,” Warden Orlando Harper said last week. Citing federal privacy laws governing medical information, the warden said, “They won’t give out specific information … but they’ll be able to communicate better with the emergency contact.”
The change was made in midApril, Warden Harper said, about two weeks after a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story highlighted the case of inmate Jessica Mayo, 33. Her mother, Linda Brownell, said she received an out-of-the-blue call from a jail chaplain who told her Ms. Mayo was on life support in a Pittsburgh hospital
because of a medical emergency but wouldn’t provide any additional information.
Ms. Brownell flew from New Jersey to Pittsburgh but was not allowed to see her daughter and was unable to get any updates on her medical condition during the next few days.
That should change under the new system, said Laura Williams, Department of Health Services administrator at the jail.
“One of the hopes would be that we can provide updates on status,” she said, adding later, “We would be talking about stability, like: critical, intensive care, conscious, alert, oriented, able to make their own decisions — we would be using terminology such as that without giving away diagnosis or specific medical conditions or treatments.”
The jail will continue to keep secret the hospital where the inmate is being treated and will not allow family members to visit without a court order, Warden Harper said.
“Once an inmate leaves this facility, they are a highsecurity inmate,” he said. “We cannot make [an] exception because of the charges. We don’t know who they might have enemies with, who might try to get them, who might not try to get them. Just because the charges are not that serious doesn’t mean they don’t have other issues in the community.”
Bret Grote, legal director of the Abolitionist Law Center, a nonprofit law firm, said the jail’s policy is based on a worst-case scenario, and he said officials ought to assess each inmate’s risks individually when providing information to family members.
“Fear and speculation are poor basis for public policy,” Mr. Grote said. “They fear unidentified people in custody who fit some stereotype of having homicidal enemies or friends who are going to come in [to the hospital] guns blazing. In Pittsburgh, I can’t think of that happening, at least in the last decade.”
Warden Harper said he was not aware of any such incident, although he said there have been several instances in the past where “multiple family members came up to the hospital angry, mad and upset.”
“That’s not a good situation from a correctional standpoint,” he said.
The process to obtain a court order from an Allegheny County Common Pleas judge is explained to family members in the jail’s first call, he said.
But Ms. Brownell said Tuesday she was never told about the possibility of obtaining a court order, and said if she’d have known, she would have tried to do so. She’s not convinced that a change of which jail department notifies families will ultimately improve families’ experiences.
“I don’t know how much difference that would make,” she said, adding that her daughter, who is now completing a court-ordered drug rehabilitation program, doesn’t remember much about her hospital stay.
Court orders regarding hospital visitations happen rarely — perhaps twice a year — but the process dates back to at least the 1980s, said Allegheny County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Kevin Kraus. Sheriff’s deputies guard hospitalized inmates 24/7.
Typically, an attorney for the inmate would file a motion either with the judge assigned to the case or the motions judge that requests the family be given access to the hospitalized inmate. If the judge signs the order, the family can then coordinate with the sheriff’s office to carry out a visit, Chief Deputy Kraus said.
“We plan a strategy of visitation,” he said. “And there are a lot of things we take into consideration, like the past behavior of the inmate, whether they are violent or not violent, criminal history, likelihood of escape, what he or she is originally charged with — all that factors in.”
The deputies might increase security to facilitate some court-ordered visits, he said. In rare instances, Sheriff William P. Mullen might allow family members to visit a hospitalized inmate even without a court order, he added.
“That would be like they have 24 hours to live and it’s the weekend,” Chief Deputy Kraus said.