Editorial: A clear rejection of solitary confinement in Allegheny County Jail
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Tuesday’s election was heavy on ballot questions. The ones that tended to gain the most attention were the two at the top — statewide proposals to fence in the emergency powers of the governor; those amendments passed by a close 53% to 47%. Another amendment that would protect people from denial of rights on basis of race or ethnicity passed by a wider 72% to 28% margin.
Ballot questions occupy an odd place in the way representative democracy works.
In all other aspects of the republic, the process leans hard into the representative aspect. The election process is about picking the people who will make the laws, judge the decisions or execute the day-to-day business of keeping everything running.
That’s how it has to be to keep the process fair and efficient. As the legislators make laws, they open the doors to comments from the people, but they make the calls themselves. Judges never poll the people when delivering a sentence.
But every now and then, though, you hit something where it just has to go back to the source and ask the people directly what they want.
Those are usually things that are prescribed by law — like a constitutional amendment — or a major shift that goes above and beyond the norm.
In Allegheny County, though, another question asked people to make a decision about how people are disciplined. Should wholesale use of solitary confinement be banned at the county jail?
About 70% of voters said yes.
This may seem like a small question — the kind that could be left to the warden, or the oversight board or the county council. There are multiple layers of responsibility that go into deciding what happens behind those locked doors.
But this was a question that wasn’t on the ballot because it had to be. It was there because the people demanded to speak to it.
The Alliance for Police Accountability organized a petition in 2020 to put the issue — which some say is inhumane and causes more problems than it solves — in front of the voters. They needed 27,100 signatures to qualify for a ballot question. They collected 43,000 — 63% more than needed.
Almost four times that many agreed when they voted.
Maybe they agree with criticism of the punishment as both ineffective and damaging. Maybe they are just looking at it from a loss-prevention standpoint — the county is facing a lawsuit from the Abolitionist Law Center for its disproportionate use. In 2019, the jail employed it 339 times compared to 1,086 times across the other 66 counties in Pennsylvania.
The ballot questions don’t get into motivation. They boil it all down to a simple yes or no. And on this issue, the way things are done in a jail responsible for upward of 1,500 people will change not because those in charge took action, but because the people had their say.