Information for Current Members

Update about Opportunities to Serve Women in Prison

This year, PLEP will begin teaching about legal and re-entry issues at Riverside Correctional Facility, the only women's facility within the Philadelphia Prison System.

Information about Graterford State Correctional Institution

The Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution at Graterford, also known as SCI-Graterford, is located by the town of Graterford, in Skippack Township, Montgomery County, about 31 miles northwest of Philadelphia. The facility, built in 1929, is Pennsylvania's largest maximum-secuirty prison, holding approximately 3,500 inmates. In 1989, an $80 million construction project was completed that added a new administration building, a 28-bed infirmary, and 372 additional cells.

For more information, see the PA Department of Corrections website: http://www.cor.state.pa.us

Update about SCI-Graterford

In late 2009, Pennsylvania will break ground on a $400 million prison to replace SCI-Graterford. The facility will house 4,000 medium- and maximum-security inmates on state land near the existing prison. Completion is expected within three years. The project is part of an $862 million initiative to add 9,000 beds to the state's prison system. Prisons will be built in Centre and Fayette Counties, and units added to facilities in Crawford, Forest, Indiana, and Northumberland Counties.

SCI-Graterford is overcrowded and described as no longer viable because of its "high costs and operational challenges."

The 1,200 employees currently staffing SCI-Graterford will be employed at the new facility. As of early February 2009, the Department of Corrections had yet to announce what will happen to inmates while the facility is being built.

X-Offenders for Community Empowerment & the Pardon Me Clinic

X-Offenders for Community Empowerment (XCE), sponsor of the Pardon Me Clinic in which PLEP members participate, is an organization founded by ex-offenders in 2000. Its goal is to reduce recidivism through the empowerment of persons released from incarceration to become agents of change in the community, addressing issues threatening family and community life.

Located in North Philadelphia, near Temple University, XCE hosts the Pardon Me Clinic on the second Monday of each month at which ex-offenders receive individual assistance with their pardon applications.

For more information, see XCE's website: http://x-offenders.org