The city first had been fined $1,000 a day starting in May 1989 for failing to increase staff and programs and to make physical improvements at prisons. The fines were increased to $5,000 a day in January.
"The only way we can bring them into compliance is sanctions," Jonathan Lewis, 40, a housing unit representative, said in an interview yesterday from the Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center. "I would like to see it (go)
from $20,000 to $50,000 a day."
Ann Schwartzman, associate executive director of the Pennsylvania Prison Society, said: "That's predominantly how we feel. . . . I don't think the courts have been taken very seriously for a long time. And this might help that situation and force the city's hand."
The city has said it intended to appeal the court order.
The fines - which start immediately - also constitute one more potential blow to the city's already precarious financial situation. The fines came on the heels of a court ruling made public Thursday that could result in the city being forced to refund $25 million in new real estate transfer taxes that the courts ruled were enacted improperly.
In the prison ruling, Judges Eugene H. Clarke Jr., Armand Della Porta and William J. Manfredi also ordered that the city forfeit the bulk of the $1,163,000 in fines collected as of last Tuesday.
They ordered that $116,300 of the fines be returned to the city because there had been improvements in medical care and in hiring more cooks and social workers.
But they ruled that $1,046,700 be forfeited - with $100,000 of that going to the prison Inmate Welfare Funds, and the rest to job, drug and education programs in the prisons.
David Rudovsky, an attorney for the inmates, said the $100,000 would double the amount of money in the four funds. Each of the city's four prisons has a welfare fund, he said.
Rudovsky said the funds, which are usually filled with proceeds from prison commissaries, are used by inmates - within certain guidelines - to buy recreational materials and things like typewriters and law books.
Inmate Lewis said he was glad to have more money in the funds but complained that prison administrations mishandled the money.
"We approve the money to be spent for one thing, and the adminstration spends it on something else," he said. He said, for example, that inmates might approve an expenditure for typewriters "and we come to find out that
. . . (we got) pencils."
"There's something wrong," he said.
