Allegheny County officials said that they are refining the way the jail tracks people in segregated housing after they were criticized last week for not following last year’s referendum banning solitary confinement.

On Jan. 5, Warden Orlando Harper submitted a report in which he listed 294 people in segregation. On that report, which showed many people spending days, weeks or the entire month in segregation, the reason listed was “safety.”

On Thursday, advocates for those at the jail sent a letter to the Jail Oversight Board accusing the facility of violating the referendum. When the issue was raised at the monthly board meeting that evening, Harper said that he was in compliance with the referendum, and that no one was being held in solitary confinement.

Instead, he said the jail was using segregation. After additional criticism, and accusations that he was mincing words, Harper said in a news release and during an interview Tuesday that he is not circumventing the ban.

Harper said that when he was asked to provide further clarification for the reasons segregation was being used, he should have done so.

“Safety was the term selected to define those persons when a better description would have been more appropriate,” Harper said.

He said that, instead of 294, in reality, the number of people on the segregation report should have been 87.

The other people who were included, Harper said, were those ordered into isolation or quarantine because of covid-19, or those who chose not to leave their cells when offered recreation time.

County solicitor Andy Szefi said during an interview on Tuesday that the December report was the first one following the referendum effective date, and jail staff had only five days to complete it.

“There does need to be refinement to tell a more complete story of where, when and why there was segregation,” Szefi said.

According to the county news release, there were 174 positive covid cases in the facility on Tuesday out of a jail population of 1,590. Eleven housing units were on isolation status, and three were on quarantine status. Nineteen employees are positive and 16 others are in quarantine, the county said.

During Tuesday’s interview, Harper also addressed allegations that the jail is violating a motion passed in September in which oversight board members sought to ban less-lethal weapons. On Thursday, Harper admitted that officers were using “special delivery devices,” which look like shotguns. He said at the meeting that he was not in violation of the motion because the jail didn’t bring the weapons in, and instead already had them.

On Tuesday, during the interview, he clarified his comments.

Harper said that four corrections officers in the jail are trained to carry the “special delivery systems,” and that the jail has had the weapons since 2018.

“We want to be clear, this isn’t every guard in the jail carrying these,” Szefi said. “It’s four people.”

He said that the weapons are there for use in an emergency. The motion, Szefi said, was specifically written to address a training program Harper was looking to implement through a company known as Corrections Special Applications Unit.

“No, we don’t think that’s a violation of the motion,” Szefi said. “We think they’re necessary, and if the Jail Oversight Board took a real, hard look, they’d see the necessity of that.”

Harper said that the officers who carry the weapons also carry a medical bag and taser and are involved in cell searches and searches in common areas.

“These COs patrol to ensure the safety of everybody in the facility,” Harper said.

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