Pittsburgh, Pa. — Jason Porter takes comfort in knowing restraint chairs have been banned from Allegheny County Jail.

He was strapped down in the controversial device for six hours without food or water in 2020 in what was one of more than three hundred uses of a restraint chair at the jail that year.

His experience became another point in a public dataset published online by the state. That data, bolstered by testimony from Porter and others who spoke out about their experiences, helped support a class-action lawsuit against the facility and propel a community organizing campaign that would lead to what appears to be the nation’s first voter-approved ban on restraint chairs in a county jail.

Allegheny residents said the data, which revealed the county was restraining people in chairs at high rates, is instrumental in promoting transparency and accountability, arming people with information to take to jail oversight board meetings, county council or the courtroom.

“We use a lot of this data to dictate the types of reforms that we work towards in Allegheny County,” said Bethany Hallam, who was previously detained at the jail and now serves on county council and the jail’s oversight board.

Four years after the referendum, Allegheny County Jail is still implementing changes and grappling with its effects. Proponents say the measure has removed dangerous “weapons” and proves that a large jail can operate without needing to use restraint chairs. The facility also has new leadership, and an independent monitor recently credited the jail with making “large-scale” reforms.

But critics say the elimination of “tools” has put both officers and detainees at risk. While overall use of force has gone down since the referendum, the use of physical force and stun devices has increased. Now two people are campaigning to bring the restraint chair back.

“Just because you’re incarcerated doesn’t mean you’re not entitled to your human and civil rights,” Porter said. “You deserve to be treated like a human, not an animal.”

Data shows Allegheny County Jail was ‘uniquely bad’

In the years leading up to the referendum, Allegheny County Jail was using restraint chairs hundreds of times a year. Residents say use was often unnecessary and unchecked.

“The use of the restraint chairs were inhumane. We had many reports from people who were incarcerated who said they were strapped down to the chairs for eight hours, urinating on themselves,” said Kyna James, a coalition organizer with the Pittsburgh-based Alliance for Police Accountability who was previously incarcerated at Allegheny County Jail.

The jail reported 314 restraint chair incidents in 2020, which accounted for a quarter of all reported uses statewide and was almost four times more per capita than the statewide average rate for all other jails, according to state data. Meanwhile, in 2019 and 2020, none of the multiple Philadelphia jails (including the state’s largest) reported using a restraint chair at all.

“It shows what the culture of the Allegheny County Jail was,” Hallam said. At the time, the jail also had the highest per capita death rate in the state, she said. “We knew that it was uniquely bad.”

Allegheny County Jail, located in Pittsburgh, is the second most populous in the state, with an average population of 1,700 last year. The facility holds people who are newly arrested, awaiting trial or sentencing, or serving short sentences less than two years.

In Pennsylvania, state code requires all of the more than 60 county jails to report “extraordinary occurrences” — such as deaths, assaults, fires and the use of restraint chairs — to the department of corrections each month “for statistical, analytical and trending purposes.”

While the department does not have any operational or administrative authority over county facilities, it does collect and share the data provided by jails, said Maria Bivens, department spokesperson. Information on annual incident totals, with breakdowns by facility and incident type, are available online going back to 2015.

Each month, counties email the department a spreadsheet of incident totals, and staffers compile the data into another spreadsheet that tracks annual totals, Bivens said. “There are two staff members who work on the reports, in addition to their other primary job responsibilities,” Bivens said.

Some jails do not always submit the monthly reports in a timely manner, Bivens said. If they fail to submit after the department follows up, the jail receives a noncompliance on their next regulatory inspection, Bivens said.

There are always concerns about under-reporting. “They give us what they give us,” Bivens said. State code instructs jails not to report use of a restraint chair for “routine” instances such as transporting someone.

“Some county jails compare their trends of extraordinary occurrence incidents to other similar sized jails in Pennsylvania. Media periodically utilizes the data for various articles regarding the county jails and we have had legislative inquiries regarding the data as well,” Bivens said.

In 2020, three public interest law firms filed a federal class action lawsuit on behalf of people with psychiatric disabilities at Allegheny County Jail, alleging the facility violated the Fourteenth Amendment and Americans with Disabilities Act in failing to provide adequate mental health care and with its “harmful imposition of solitary confinement and excessive use of force,” including restraining people in chairs for eight hours. Court filings pointed to state data.

“The restraint chair is used for nearly any issue: following a use of force incident; in lieu of mental health care for someone experiencing thoughts of self-harm; in response to an attempt at self-harm; as a consequence for non-compliance with an order; and sometimes for no identifiable reason at all, but in a purely punitive and vindictive manner,” the complaint said.

At the time of the lawsuit, the vast majority of people at the jail were Black, had a serious mental illness or psychiatric disability, and were presumed innocent, meaning that they were not convicted of a crime or serving a sentence, according to court filings.

One mentally ill man had, since 2015, been restrained in a chair “approximately 20 times or more, including one instance of being strapped to the chair for 28 hours,” according to the complaint. In 2020, another man was “punched, tased, and choked while he was strapped in the restraint chair,” the suit said.

Hallam, the county councilperson, said she has seen “multiple people” restrained in chairs at the jail with spit hoods over their heads, both while she was detained there and later during surprise inspections as an elected official. She said the restraint only caused people’s mental health to deteriorate. “It’s torture,” she said.

Brian Englert, president of the Allegheny County Prison Employees Independent Union, said staff abused restraint chairs without any consequences. “We had one or two staff members that would leave people in the chair as punishment,” he said.

Illinois Answers reached a man at the phone number listed to the then-warden, who said he did not want to comment.

The warden had a “very authoritarian” way of administering the jail, causing turnover and hostility, said John Kenstowicz, a licensed social worker who has been advocating for the union.

“We realized that this is not a practice that we can allow to have here — that no sort of limitations on its use would solve the problem,” Hallam said. “We had to ban it completely.”

The nation’s first referendum to ban restraint chairs

Residents involved in the referendum campaign say the initiative was built on years of criminal justice reform efforts and came about through an organic grassroots movement bolstered by the ongoing class-action lawsuit, the public data and testimonies, and the election of a key advocate to county council.

In 2019, Hallam ran for county council and beat out a two-decade incumbent to become the youngest official elected countywide and, in 2020, the first formerly incarcerated person to sit on the county’s jail oversight board, a nine-person body that meets monthly.

The board is responsible for operating the jail and overseeing residents’ health and safety. The public meetings are in-person and streamed online, and documents — including the warden’s monthly report, meeting minutes, surprise inspections and more — are posted online. 

Hallam said she encouraged people who had been incarcerated to attend and speak out during public comment, including people who had been restrained in chairs. “People started talking about it in a way that things in the jail were never talked about before,” Hallam said.

At the time, nationwide protests over the killing of George Floyd and other Black Americans at the hands of law enforcement were also spurring conversations about criminal justice reform across the U.S.

In late 2020, a coalition in Allegheny County launched a campaign to get a referendum on the ballot to limit solitary confinement and ban the use of restraint chairs, leg shackles and chemical agents. The push involved dozens of organizations, including public interest law firms and social justice groups, and hundreds of people, including volunteers and paid canvassers, organizers said.

Some of the people working on the petition had been held in solitary confinement or restrained in a chair or leg shackles, said Tanisha Long, a community organizer with the Abolitionist Law Center, a Pittsburgh-based nonprofit law firm.

The groups led a massive educational and petitioning campaign, door-knocking in the snow and showing up at community events, Hallam said. Over the course of seven weeks from late 2020 to early 2021, the coalition collected more than 40,000 signatures to secure the ballot measure — well beyond the 27,000 required.

During the campaign, it was helpful to point to data, said James, the organizer with the Alliance for Police Accountability. But hearing stories from people directly affected was even more important. She said they held several town halls featuring people who had been restrained.

Porter said he spoke with journalists about his experience. In 2020, jail staff restrained him after he refused to close the slot of his cell door. “The situation did not call for those extreme measures,” said Porter, 29. “It’s uncomfortable. The cuffs were pretty tight.”

Come May 2021, nearly 169,000 people (approximately 70% of voters) approved the measure. At the same time, city residents also voted to affirm a referendum banning no-knock warrants, in the wake of the 2020 killing of Breonna Taylor by Louisville police.

Illinois Answers could not identify other referendums banning restraint chairs in a county jail. Researchers with Ballotpedia, a nonprofit encyclopedia of American politics, searched their database of local ballot measures and concluded “Allegheny County appears to be the only one.” The organization noted, however, that it has a “limited scope.”

The measure faced quick backlash after it passed. 

That July, the correctional officers union filed a charge with the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board alleging the ordinance would cause “a dramatic increase in the potential for serious injury to the officers and the inmates due to emboldening inmate non-compliance, making care, custody and control of the inmates more difficult.”

The hearing examiner dismissed the charge. He found that employers have a right to “direct personnel” through a use of force policy and that “the record does not support a finding that the change in policy caused or may lead to a dramatic increase for serious personal injury.”

The jail said it officially stopped using restraint chairs at the end of 2021 and removed the devices from the facility.

‘As with any change, it can be challenging’

In the years since the referendum, implementing the resulting ordinance has been difficult, but the situation is improving, particularly with a new county executive and warden, residents said. 

Proponents herald the ban as a success. “I saw firsthand the effects of the restraint chair, and those effects aren’t happening anymore. And it’s undeniable that the reason is because we banned it,” Hallam said. “There was no other way to trust the jail to just do better with it.”

But critics cite ongoing safety concerns and point to a rise in use of physical force and stun devices. “When you take away the tools the other jails have, like OC [pepper spray] and the restraint chair, we’re either gonna go hands-on more or we’re gonna use the taser more,” Englert, the union president, said in a February oversight board meeting.

Allegheny County Jail has not used a restraint chair since 2021, according to state data through the end of last year. In the meantime, incidents involving physical use of force and stun devices increased, but total use of force incidents remained well below levels seen in the years immediately before the referendum. Staff have also been using other forms of “non-lethal” force, including shields, inert rounds, batons and pepperballs, data from 2024 shows. 

Shortly after the referendum passed, the jail came under fire for the training and tools staff were using as alternatives to prohibited devices. The jail contracted a controversial company that trains officers on military-style “special operations” tactics, but the oversight board quickly voted to ban the training.

During a tour of the jail in July 2022, Dr. Terry Kupers, an expert in correctional mental health, noted the “remarkable” absence of restraint chairs but said officers were now using “long guns that loudly shoot rubber or wooden blocks.”

“So while they may have complied with the express prohibition on the use of the restraint chair, they have replaced it with another practice designed to intimidate,” Kupers wrote in an expert report filed in the class-action case.

The following year, in 2023, the county’s warden and executive, who had each served since 2012, stepped down. The county then elected a progressive new executive, Sara Innamorato, who ran on jail reform as part of her platform. She launched a yearlong search for a new warden and engaged community advocates in the process.

In the meantime, as interim wardens oversaw the jail, the class action lawsuit reached a settlement agreement last year. The county committed to hiring additional mental health staff, providing training on de-escalation and use of force, and undergoing regular monitoring, among other provisions.

An independent court-appointed monitor recently released a report finding the jail has been mostly complying with the agreement. “Staff have done a commendable job in making large-scale changes,” she wrote.

One psychiatrist who works at the jail noted a “much better” working environment, with “a more supportive administration, better communication, less yelling and greater patience on the part of Correctional Staff, and no interference in his ability to make clinical decisions,” the report said.

The report, however, also raised concerns about use of force and solitary confinement. “I have not been able to verify for myself that mental health staff are intervening to prevent or cease harmful, unnecessary force,” the monitor wrote.

In January, the jail oversight board approved the county executive’s choice for warden: Trevor Wingard. He previously served as interim warden of Allegheny County Jail more than a decade ago and later as a deputy secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections.

Jail reform advocates expressed optimism about Wingard, saying he has been transparent and communicative. After a recent death at the facility, Hallam said she received “more information” from Wingard than at any other comparable time in the past five years. Residents have also applauded the improved tenor of oversight board meetings.

In his annual report, titled “Turning the Page,” Wingard acknowledged his short tenure but touted increased staffing levels and retention rates among new hires, as well as promotions of mental health officials. In the April board meeting, Wingard said the jail had recently onboarded 25 officers, calling it the “biggest class” in about five years, as well as 17 medical staff.

The jail has also pursued other creative initiatives, including changing the colors of detainees’ uniforms from red to green (thought to be more calming), implementing a program that pays detainees $125 a month (drawn from a fund used by detainees to purchase products inside the jail) and exploring a program that would bring dogs into the facility.

“A lot of these things all happened around similar times,” Hallam said, so there are “a lot of variables” contributing to changing trends.

Wingard declined requests for an interview. In a brief conversation with Illinois Answers at the April board meeting, he said he didn’t want to weigh in on restraint chairs because the referendum was before his time.

In a statement provided by the jail, Wingard said the “removal of the restraint chair as a correctional tool” has prompted the facility to conduct new training on mental health first aid, verbal de-escalation and crisis response and intervention.

“As with any change, it can be challenging for employees who are used to performing their jobs in a certain manner, and that’s why implementing this additional training is important,” he said.

Englert, the union president, doesn’t think de-escalation training is enough. In recent months, he and Kenstowicz, the union advocate, have been speaking out at board meetings to call for the jail to reintroduce restraint chairs for two purposes: medical assessments and transport.

Englert said eliminating the chairs altogether endangers staff and detainees because, instead of using a chair to transport someone, multiple officers must now physically hold and move them. “If we have somebody who’s fighting us, we carry them down the hall. That’s dangerous. We’re not trained on how to carry people,” Englert said.

Englert said, after the referendum, the jail installed padded cells, where staff place people who are at risk of suicide. But he said he views the padded cells as worse and “demoralizing.” The rooms, historically found in psychiatric hospitals, feature padded surfaces and aim to reduce the risk of self-harm.

It’s also been difficult for medical staff to safely examine detainees without a restraint chair, especially if the detainee is suspected to be on drugs, said Kenstowicz, who has been interviewing people at the jail and other correctional institutions for decades.

“We need to just get on somebody’s level and calm them down, especially if they’re coming in on street drugs,” Englert said, adding, “Many uses of force could have been prevented by using the restraint chair for safe transport and de-escalation of new arrests instead of getting into altercations when they don’t want to comply with pat searches.”

In a statement to county council in March, Kenstowicz said officers are experiencing “harsh consequences because of the ban” and noted that “constant exposure to potential violence has a major effect” on officers’ health, wellbeing and, ultimately, life expectancy.

“Consistently, they are being put into situations where they are set up to fail, and allowing their essential tools to be stripped away is an example of that,” said a woman who identified herself as Sara Bosco at the February board meeting.

Both Englert and Kenstowicz acknowledged jail staff previously abused restraint chairs, but they say officers “have learned a lesson” and won’t abuse them again. In the February meeting, Englert turned to the board, gestured to Wingard and said things would be different this time: “I can see accountability written all over his face.”

Hallam said she’s “not concerned” about the push to bring back restraint chairs, noting it would require a majority vote of county council and a supermajority to override a veto from the county executive. “People wanted this,” Hallam said. “I think it’s very harmful to try to overturn an act of democracy.”

Porter, for his part, still has flashbacks of his restraint years ago. It’s hard for him to talk about it sometimes. But he finds solace in knowing no one else will be strapped down in Allegheny County Jail.

“It’s obsolete,” he said. “And, just knowing that, it is a little bit of relief.”