People who have been incarcerated inside the Blair County Prison say they encountered rodent droppings in food, poor access to medical care, and violence at the aging, overcrowded facility, a review of nearly 80 legal filings from the past year shows.
Officials say many of these issues will be solved when the county moves out of the 157-year-old prison and into a new facility in 2029. The design for the $100 million prison — approved by the prison board but pending a land sale — includes exercise areas for all housing units, larger culinary and medical areas, and medical rooms to house individuals who may need 24/7 observation, as well as expanded support for inmates with mental illnesses. The prison usually houses people who are awaiting trial and serving short-term sentences.
But some allegations laid out in legal filings aren’t directly related to the building’s conditions, including poor medical care by a third-party contractor and limited access to psychiatric and substance use disorder medications.
Blair County Commissioner Laura Burke declined to comment on the active litigation but said commissioners and prison board members always thoroughly investigate any allegations.
Warden Matthew Hale also declined to comment on the litigation, but spoke candidly about the prison’s challenges in an interview.
Since becoming warden in September 2025, Hale told Spotlight PA his biggest challenge is working around the prison’s dated structure. He’s focusing on the things he can control and mitigating the things that he can’t, he said.
The prison’s population in June was around 340, much higher than the 280 to 298 people it would “optimally” support under American Correctional Association standards, according to a feasibility study Blair County commissioned on the facility and options to replace it.
Of the prison’s 11 housing units, fewer than half comply with ACA standards for capacity according to the study, which Spotlight PA obtained through a Right-to-Know request. “Many units are overcrowded to the point of posing safety risks to both staff and inmates,” it says.
Ken Dean, director of the Blair County Prison Re-entry Coalition, likened the interior of the prison, which has thick stone walls, to a medieval castle. The dingy, decrepit space makes incarceration an even more depressing experience, worsening mental health for people housed there, he said.
“In your worst imagination, no matter how bad you think it could be, double that,” Dean said. “That’s how bad it is.”
The prison’s archaic design provides poor sightlines for correctional officers and makes it difficult to prevent fights or attacks among inmates, Hale said. Blair County Prison had 54 cases of inmate-on-inmate assault last year, the fourth highest amount in Pennsylvania, according to “county prison extraordinary occurrence statistics” from the state Department of Corrections.
Eyeing a new facility, Hale noted some improvements are needed to make the prison a space where incarcerated people can truly be rehabilitated. He wants to make incarceration at Blair prison as positive as possible.
“It can either be a thing that we all complain about, or it could be a thing that we sort of agree has to exist and is doing the best it can do to help society,” Hale said.
19th century prison, 21st century population
Blair County Prison was built in 1869, the same year Ulysses S. Grant was sworn in as the 18th president. It was designed to hold 100 beds, but by the late 1970s, incarceration rates surged, and the facility exceeded its capacity, forcing some inmates to be housed outside the county, according to the feasibility study.
Around 1980, the prison received minor upgrades and increased its capacity to 158. By the early 2000s, population pressures persisted, leading to the most recent expansion.
Its prison cells follow the Pennsylvania model design, where two rows of cells are split by a dayroom. It requires correctional officers to constantly pass through the housing unit to observe, which can create blind spots. It wasn’t until the mid-20th century that podular housing units became more popular in U.S. corrections and improved sightlines for staff.
Hale said the old design supports fighting and other illicit activities. It also makes it difficult for correctional officers to investigate wrongdoing, he added.
“We have a whole set of issues that are caused or at least exacerbated by the way that the jail is set up,” he said. “If we had a more modern facility, those issues just wouldn’t exist.”
Of the almost 80 legal filings, two allege excessive use of force from correctional officers, and seven reference violent incidents among people held in the prison.
One man, who was incarcerated for unpaid traffic fines, alleged in a suit that he was beaten in a “suicide risk” cell. Two of the three other inmates in the cell “were mentally and emotionally unstable, had a propensity for violence, and would act out if given any opportunity.”
Spotlight PA is not naming any of the people who brought complaints against the prison, as their attorneys did not respond to requests for comment.
“When he was placed in the suicide risk cell with three inmates, [the man] was justifiably terrified and fearful for his safety,” according to the lawsuit. His “protests, questions, and complaints were deliberately unanswered and unheeded.”
Medical exams show the man suffered many injuries to his face and head, including broken and fractured bones. He underwent several corrective surgeries, according to his suit, along with metal implants and cosmetic work, to repair the damage from the assault.
The man alleged lasting damage from the injuries, including a diminished ability to chew on the right side and PTSD. The lawsuit was settled on Jan. 15 for an undisclosed amount.
Bites, droppings, and stolen food
Rodents have exploited the prison’s damaged plumbing, degraded foundations, and gaps in exterior walls to infiltrate cell blocks in search of food and shelter, several lawsuits allege. Over a dozen lawsuits filed mention mice or rats, noting bites, droppings in food, and chewed pantry items from the prison’s commissary.
“The plaintiff was subject to rats running all over the place,” one suit filed in November 2025 says. “A number of times, he had them in his box [of food], eating the plaintiff’s commissary. He has woken up to them in his bed.”
Another man who was incarcerated at the prison wrote in a complaint filed in October 2025 that he found droppings in food. “I should have never been housed at that location,” he wrote. “It was overcrowded and infested with mice, and [I] got no sleep.”
A third incarcerated person, who worked in the prison’s kitchen, wrote in a complaint filed in November 2025 that he was forced to live with mice and would wake up to them running from cell to cell to steal food.
When he went into the kitchen to work, he would find the rodents eating bread in the dry food storage room, and he was still forced to serve it, he wrote.
“We was subject to treatment that is cruel and unusual and punished for it,” he wrote. “The living condition we endure will be in my nightmares for years to come.”
Hale said that when he took over as warden, there was an ongoing issue with mice, but steps were already being taken to address it.
“Since then, we have increased our efforts further by implementing a sanitation plan and changing our pest control services,” Hale said in an email. “These efforts have had a big impact on improving the issue, and while we have not eliminated the issue completely, we have seen results and generally only have issues in high-risk [for mice] areas.”
Medical care allegedly denied
Of the 51 lawsuits and 27 motions to join a class-action lawsuit, filed between July 2025 and mid-April of this year, 11 list PrimeCare as a co-defendant. The company specializes in medical, mental health, and dental services for correctional facilities.
Blair County commissioners voted last week to award a three-year contract to Armor Health, which will take over when PrimeCare’s contract expires July 31. Hale told Spotlight PA prior to the vote that the search for a new provider was not connected to the lawsuits.
One complaint alleges a 53-year-old man did not receive a diagnostic workup despite experiencing respiratory symptoms, including shortness of breath; instead, he was given Mucinex.
Two weeks later, he was taken to UPMC Altoona, intubated, and found to have a widespread lung infection, the lawsuit says. He stayed in the hospital’s ICU for 34 days, then spent another 52 in intensive inpatient rehab.
The complaint alleges the man now has chronic nerve pain, a persistent cough, and shortness of breath, and that he uses a cane, walker, and scooter. His wife had to take unpaid leave to care for her husband, according to the complaint, and now outsources tasks her husband previously handled. The lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed amount.
A separate legal filing says a 42-year-old woman miscarried twins while incarcerated at the facility. The woman allegedly informed prison staff her pregnancy was high-risk and that she was spotting, but wasn’t taken to the hospital until she began bleeding more.
Back at the prison, the woman allegedly alerted medical staff that her bleeding worsened, but she was told to lie down and that there was nothing they could do. She found out that the fetuses died when she was taken back to UPMC Altoona, and then passed them separately at the prison.
“I was then taken to my cell as nothing happened!” the woman wrote in her filing. Her case was closed after court mail was returned from the prison as undelivered.
PrimeCare is also accused in at least two lawsuits of withholding or denying mental health medication.
One man said his history of mental illness was ignored and that PrimeCare staff would not administer trazodone, used to treat depression, because it wasn’t permitted in the facility.
Another man alleged that staff would not provide Depakote, which is used to treat bipolar disorder, for several days in a row. In the legal filing, he said he was told his unit was “burnt,” referring to someone on a bottom tier throwing feces on a nurse.
“Mental health doesn’t have the proper treatment, which has also affected my pain and suffering, and now being in Blair County Prison has traumatized me,” the man said in the filing.
That case was closed after court mail was returned from the prison as undelivered.
A spokesperson for PrimeCare told Spotlight PA that every person receives a full medical intake within four hours of incarceration. Anyone with a chronic condition is seen by a medical provider every 90 days, and any person who has a non-urgent medical request will be seen within 24 hours of submitting it, they wrote. Existing medications are verified during the intake process, and newly prescribed medications are given to patients within 12 hours, the spokesperson added.
Is a new prison enough?
Blair isn’t the only county building a new facility to replace a prison beyond saving.
Lancaster plans to replace its 175-year-old facility with a new one. Fayette built a new prison following lawsuits about inhumane conditions, while Northumberland had to take action more than a decade ago after a fire destroyed its century-plus-old building.
“Pennsylvania is long inhabited, and we incarcerate at high rates,” said Noah Barth, prison monitoring director of the Pennsylvania Prison Society. “So, we have a lot of aging infrastructure.”
Many Re-entry Coalition volunteers want to host programs inside Blair County Prison, but there aren’t many meeting spaces.
Dean, the coalition director, hopes that with the new building, the added space will allow people to attend programs consistently. He also hopes that increased contact will allow his organization to reach people as soon as they get admitted rather than near their release.
The prison itself offers some programming, including parenting classes, drug/alcohol treatment and education, and GED classes.
But due to the existing layout, there’s just one room for these services, and it’s a full-time job just coordinating which group is using the space, said County Commissioner Burke — not to mention scheduling, and transporting inmates in and out of it, she added. In the new proposed design, there will be at least three programming rooms and a multipurpose space for each housing unit.
While the stakeholders in Blair County agree on the necessity of a new prison, not everyone thinks rebuilding alone will address the prison’s conditions.
Carol Taylor, president of Indivisible Blair, a grassroots organization that works to promote progressive candidates and policies, works in mental health and substance use disorder care.
In her work, she’s seen people end up back in prison for minor infractions of probation or parole, and get sucked into a cycle in which they spend more time in prison than in a rehab facility.
She is hopeful about the prison expanding mental health and substance use services, but wants to see that care provided in the community, not in carceral settings.
“They don’t have functional support in the community,” Taylor said of people who need this care. “And yet, what we do with them is put them in prison, making them even less functional. You can’t help people by incarcerating them.”
The $100 million new prison design has been approved by the Blair County Prison Board, but county officials estimate it won’t be completed until early 2029.
In the meantime, the Blair County Board of Commissioners is trying to introduce more rehabilitative measures, like ankle monitor use for home release and a work-release program, which is still under review. With limited parking spaces available, inmates can’t keep their cars at the prison, stalling progress for a work-release program. They’re forced to rely on someone for pickup and drop-off.
“We want people to be making better decisions,” Burke said. “We want to empower them to move on with their lives and not be stuck in this cycle of incarceration.”