Visitation resumes at 5 Pa. state prison facilities

The state Department of Corrections will slowly start phasing in-person visitation back in at five facilities, including SCI-Laurel Highlands, officials said this week.

The decision to allow in-person visits at any particular facility is based upon vaccination rates, the percentage of cases among those incarcerated, and the amount of the virus that’s found in the facility’s wastewater.

There have been no in-person visits at Pennsylvania’s state run prisons and correctional facilities since March 2020.

The schedule for allowing visits is:

• SCI-Laurel Highlands – May 22
• SCI-Waymart – May 27
• SCI-Muncy – May 30
• SCI-Cambridge Springs – May 31
• Quehanna Boot Camp – June 3

Visits must be scheduled online three days in advance, and Secretary of Corrections John Wetzel conceded that time slots will be limited and demand will be high to start. Video visits remain an option.

Visitors will be screened with a covid-19 questionnaire and temperature check, and all incarcerated individuals and all visitors over the age of 2 will be given a disposable face mask. Social distancing will be enforced.

“By design, our mitigation efforts are stronger than what may be in place in the general public because it is critically important to keep covid out of our facilities to the greatest extent possible,” Wetzel said.

The Pennsylvania Prison Society, a nonprofit focused on humane prison and jail conditions, praised the move with some reservations.

“However, (the DOC’s) announcement leaves open the question of when visits will resume in the remaining 19 state prisons, and what specific benchmarks for vaccination and infection rates they need to hit first,” the nonprofit said in a statement.

The DOC did not give a timetable for allowing in-person visits at the other facilities.

Across all state facilities, there were 41 active cases as of Thursday. There have been more than 11,000 cases across the system since the pandemic began. In that same time, 138 incarcerated individuals have died from covid-19. That includes 15 incarcerated at Laurel Highlands.

More incarcerated individuals have been vaccinated than state prison staff: 26,802 incarcerated people are fully vaccinated – about 72% of the statewide prison population. About 3,410, or 21.5% of staff, are fully vaccinated.