Advocates push for outdoor recreation in new Lancaster County Prison project

Before Lancaster County officials decided in the 1990s to expand the capacity of the prison on East King Street with a set of high-rise towers, prisoners had access to an outdoor recreation space.

It was a football field-sized grass and paved space located behind the prison's circa-1850s castle entrance. Prisoners played basketball, flag football or lifted weights under the open sky, said Robert Bodnar, a former administrator at the prison.

"It was a great 'personal space' and psychological 'aaaagh' to be outdoors," Bodnar said. "Obviously, incarceration can become claustrophobic, and there's no greater mental relief than walking outside and looking at the sky."

The time outside was something prisoners coveted, according to the retired prison administrator, and became a tool to maintain order. "You misbehave and you earn yard restriction," he said.

The new high-rise towers essentially did away with recreation time outdoors, as county officials and designers opted instead to build "urban yards" inside the prison's housing units - enclosed rooms with tall large mesh openings at the ceiling to let in outside air.

"I was never a fan of those indoor yards," Bodnar said.

The county's current plans to build a $400 million-plus new prison on a 78-acre parcel of land in Lancaster Township was an opportunity to reintroduce outdoor recreation for prisoners. But county staff and consultants overseeing designs have opted against it.

Some courtyard spaces have been included in plans for the new prison's medical units, officials have said, but current designs won't give prisoners access to outdoor spaces in their housing units.

Much like the enclosed yards at the East King Street prison, the new prison will have mesh-wire openings to let fresh air course into enclosed recreation rooms, officials have said.

'Difficult decisions'

Local advocates pushing for better conditions for prisoners maintain that's a mistake, arguing that access to the outdoors is necessary for the health of the prison population, many of whom have serious mental and physical health conditions.

Gail Groves Scott, a Lancaster-based public health researcher and volunteer monitor at Pennsylvania Prison Society, is among a group of local residents who have raised the issue to county officials at various times during the county's four-year planning process for the project. And outdoor recreation was high on the wish list for the new prison assembled by the local advocacy group Have a Heart for Persons in the Criminal Justice System.

County officials, including the county commissioners, have said security must remain a priority at the new prison, even as they plan more spaces and design elements meant to foster rehabilitation over punishment.

"Security does not supplant the need for people to have a healthy environment to live in, and fresh air and sunlight on your skin is a healthy thing, and fresh air coming through a window is not the same," Groves Scott said.

Democratic Commissioner Alice Yoder said the design team spent a lot of time reviewing options on the recreation yard spaces and took feedback from local advocates seriously.

The new planned recreation yards will be an improvement over the current ones at the East King Street prison. "They are definitely more open" with window openings that let in more natural light, Yoder said.

Yoder pointed to renderings the prison design team presented in January showing a series of recreation yards jutting out of housing units from the backside of the building.

The image depicts the recreation yards with a closed roof and large windows facing out to the surrounding landscape. The windows would be covered in mesh, Yoder said, to let in fresh air.

Unlike the current facility, which has solid walls and a mesh-wire ceiling that makes the sky visible, the new planned design would offer prisoners views of surrounding trees and outdoor landscape, Yoder said.

"You can imagine the warden and her team and, of course, the consultants, are also balancing safety and appropriate staffing and long-term sustainability," Yoder said.

Groves Scott said she supported those plans, but added, "It seems a little ironic that we're talking about having green colors in the building as opposed to having access to the green outside."

LNP - LancasterOnline reached out to other members of the Lancaster County Prison Board, which includes the commissioners on their thoughts.

President Judge Leonard Brown III said he had no comments on the issue, while District Attorney Heather Adams and Sheriff Chris Leppler did not respond.

In an email, Controller Scott Wiglesworth said he's in favor of making outdoor recreation spaces an add-on to the prison's design.

"A cost estimate should be prepared, and this option can then be added to the list of items we will review in the coming weeks and months," Wiglesworth wrote. "I also agree with the warden's emphasis that, at the end of the day, we are building a correctional facility where security must remain the top priority."

Cost will be an important factor in finalizing the prison's designs, Wiglesworth wrote. "Some difficult decisions will be necessary in the coming weeks."

Lancaster County Prison Warden Cheryl Steberger, who has been intimately involved in the designs of the new facility, knows the choice is not what some local advocates preferred.

In January, when county officials and the design team presented new renderings of the project to members of the public, Steberger said planners looked hard at the possibility of bringing outdoor recreation back to county prisoners.

But concerns about people trying to smuggle contraband into the outdoor spaces, the higher demand on staff to supervise prisoners in a more open area, even the potential need to mow grass in recreation areas for all of the new facility's 22 planned units, Steberger said, scuttled the idea.

"There's a lot of work and a lot of extra cost that goes into having that," Steberger said in January.

Paul Swartz, chairman of the New Jersey-based USA Architects, which was an unsuccessful bidder for the Lancaster County prison project, said enclosed recreation spaces became more common as jails and prisons had to accommodate a massive population rise.

Larger outdoor spaces became increasingly seen as a security liability, as opposed to spaces inside housing units used by smaller groups of prisoners, Swartz said.

"If a fight or some other disturbance breaks out in an area with several hundred prisoners, "Control of that stuff would be virtually impossible," Swartz said.

The potential for escapes is part of the concern, which became reality in 2023, when Danelo Cavalcante escaped from the Chester County Prison in 2023 by crabwalking up a vestibule in an outdoor yard, leading to a two-week manhunt. Officials after the incident approved plans to enclose the outdoor spaces with concrete walls and a roof to prevent future escapes.

Fenced-in yards open to the sky also draw concerns about contraband being thrown over, and more recently, dropped in by drones, Swartz said.

Residents in Centre County, meanwhile, have urged the county Board of Prison Inspectors to consider adding outdoor recreation. The board commissioned a study last year to look at options and costs of potentially creating outdoor spaces at the county jail after local advocates rallied for it.

Last month, though, Centre County commissioners nixed the idea, saying it would simply be too costly to retrofit new outdoor spaces to their existing facility.

Standards

Advocates, including Groves Scott, have pointed to state and national standards regarding recreation, arguing that they require or at least recommend both outdoor and indoor spaces for prisoners to get exercise.

Under state codes that set minimum standards for county prisons, "Jails shall provide all prisoners at least 2 hours of daily, physical exercise in the open, weather permitting. If the weather is inclement, each inmate shall have 2 hours physical exercise daily indoors," the code states.

The term "in the open" does not necessarily mean outside, county prison officials have said.

"The inspectors observed that each housing unit had access to their own secured recreation area for recreation in the open, weather permitting," said a report written after an inspection of the facility in February 2025.

There is no written definition of "recreation in the open" or "urban recreational area" in the state code, according to Ryan Tarkowski, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections. "As the agency responsible for promulgating and interpreting these regulations, we have defined these terms to mean recreational space that allows for large-muscle exercise with access to natural light and fresh air, regardless of whether they use an 'urban' recreational area design or an external recreational area."

Statewide, about two thirds of county jails are constructed with some form of enclosed recreational area, while one third utilize outside recreational areas, Tarkowski said.

Noah Barth, prison monitoring director at the Pennsylvania Prison Society, has pushed back on that interpretation of the state code.

"I think most people would agree that a room with one large window does not constitute being outdoors, and it's certainly not a yard in the way that we commonly understand it," he said.

Lancaster County prison officials have also promoted the new prison as adhering to standards set by the American Correctional Association, though they have not answered directly whether the enclosed recreational spaces meet those standards.

The ACA standards, meant as a baseline for all correctional facilities, state that jails and prisons should ensure "both outdoor and covered/enclosed exercise areas for general population inmates are provided in sufficient number to ensure each inmate is offered at least one hour of access daily," less than the minimum two hours required by Pennsylvania state regulations. "Use of outdoor areas is preferred, but covered/enclosed areas must be available for use in inclement weather."

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