On Sunday night, 11 staff members at Allegheny County became ill due to an unidentified substance or odor. They were all treated and were able to be released from a local hospital, but the county jail remains on lock down this Monday. They are currently interviewing inmates and investigating the situation to come to a conclusion. This is not the first time staff members at institutions in western Pennsylvania to get sick from an unknown substance as well. The prior week 5 employees were hospitalized at Albion Correctional Facility after handling a parole violator who was feeling ill. After investigation they still could not determine what caused it. Due to these incidents, Pennsylvania's Department of Corrections is now taking precautionary measures like keeping the state prisons locked, requiring staff to wear gloves, and not allowing people to visit when under lock down.
I think they are taking a step in the right direction with the precautionary measures to insure nobody else gets ill, but further investigation should be taken to determine the substance causing this.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/03/us/pennsylvania-jail-employee-illnesses/index.html
This is alarming, especially since it is not the first occurrence of this situation in western Pennsylvania. As far as the safety of the employees, I do not believe that they deserve to be harmed as they attempt to keep the community safe. Nevertheless, this just goes to show the negative impacts of dealing with humans in what is America's prison system today.
ReplyDelete(Dillon Quicksall)
ReplyDeleteThis article is appalling, due to the fact that the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections' has thus far been inable to correct such an issue. Even more disturbing is the lack of identification of the substance that caused this incident in the first place, which could peotentially lead to more scenarios like this