{"id":134235,"date":"2026-03-10T07:39:31","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T07:39:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/134235\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T07:39:31","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T07:39:31","slug":"take-a-look-inside-allegheny-county-jail-without-getting-arrested","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/134235\/","title":{"rendered":"Take a look inside Allegheny County Jail (without getting arrested)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Location:\u00a0Allegheny County Jail, Downtown Pittsburgh<\/p>\n<p>Featured guests:\u00a0Public Information Officer Jesse Geleynse, Female Pod Coordinator Kelsey Gordon, Warden Trevor Wingard, Re-Entry Instructors Richard \u201cMunch\u201d Brown and Kendra Russell, Academic Institute Principal Tony Esoldo, Lead Discharge Coordinator Heather Kisow, dog handlers Sammi, Karri and Katie<\/p>\n<p>3 things that surprised me:<\/p>\n<p>1. I\u2019ve passed Allegheny County Jail hundreds of times, but this was my first time inside the building. It\u2019s huge! There are eight floors, and each has its own mezzanine, so the building is actually 16 floors in addition to the ground level. There\u2019s room inside for 3,000 incarcerated individuals, but there were about 1,700 on the day we visited.<\/p>\n<p>2. The jail partnered with <a href=\"https:\/\/thinkingoutsidethecage.org\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Animal Friends<\/a> in 2025 to launch the TAILS program. Through the program, adoptable dogs are paired with incarcerated people at the jail who help socialize and train the pups. When we visited, Frank (a dalmatian) and Xavier (a husky mix) played with residents in the gym area that\u2019s attached to one of the women\u2019s pods. The dogs sleep in a cell alongside their designated trainer.<\/p>\n<p>3. We also visited the Academic Institute, which is essentially a small high school that\u2019s inside the jail so that high school-aged residents can continue their studies. Principal Esoldo explained that it operates just like any other high school. He toured us though the science, math and social studies classrooms. He says he never has to remind kids to do their homework here \u2014 that they\u2019re all very enthusiastic students and voracious readers.<\/p>\n<p>One thing that didn\u2019t make the final cut:\u00a0Warden Winger told me that there are about 665 county staff at the jail plus another 250 contract workers, so there are about 1,000 people working there in total.<\/p>\n<p>Additional info:\u00a0You can read the Allegheny County Jail blog <a href=\"https:\/\/www.alleghenycounty.us\/Government\/County-Jail\/Jail-News-of-Interest\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>. You can look into adopting a pet from <a href=\"https:\/\/thinkingoutsidethecage.org\/adopt\/dogs\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Animal Friends here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Want more\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/nextpittsburgh.com\/category\/yinzer-backstage-pass\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Yinzer Backstage Pass<\/a>?\u00a0Check out our visit to <a href=\"https:\/\/nextpittsburgh.com\/yinzer-backstage-pass\/peek-into-the-bakery-at-pigeon-bagels\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Pigeon Bagels<\/a> where they\u2019re never done with the bagel-making process.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/nextpittsburgh.com\/yinzer-backstage-pass\/peek-into-the-bakery-at-pigeon-bagels\/\" rel=\"bookmark nofollow noopener\" tabindex=\"-1\" aria-hidden=\"true\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"900\" class=\"attachment-newspack-article-block-landscape-large size-newspack-article-block-landscape-large wp-post-image perfmatters-lazy\" alt=\"Peek into the bakery at Pigeon Bagels\" data-hero-candidate=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Pigeon-B-scaled.jpg\"  data-\/>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\tFebruary 23, 2026February 23, 2026\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/nextpittsburgh.com\/yinzer-backstage-pass\/this-millvale-shop-has-been-making-chocolate-by-hand-for-75-years\/\" rel=\"bookmark nofollow noopener\" tabindex=\"-1\" aria-hidden=\"true\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"900\" class=\"attachment-newspack-article-block-landscape-large size-newspack-article-block-landscape-large wp-post-image perfmatters-lazy\" alt=\"This Millvale shop has been making chocolate by hand for 75 years\" data-hero-candidate=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Yetters-A-scaled.jpg\"  data-\/>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\tFebruary 9, 2026February 9, 2026\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/nextpittsburgh.com\/yinzer-backstage-pass\/how-to-find-the-perfect-robotic-foot-in-pittsburg\/\" rel=\"bookmark nofollow noopener\" tabindex=\"-1\" aria-hidden=\"true\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"900\" class=\"attachment-newspack-article-block-landscape-large size-newspack-article-block-landscape-large wp-post-image perfmatters-lazy\" alt=\"Inside the massive 1930s research campus where Humotech is building the future of prosthetics\" data-hero-candidate=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Humotech-A-scaled.jpg\"  data-\/>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\tJanuary 26, 2026January 27, 2026\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Location:\u00a0Allegheny County Jail, Downtown Pittsburgh Featured guests:\u00a0Public Information Officer Jesse Geleynse, Female Pod Coordinator Kelsey Gordon, Warden Trevor&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134236,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[9647,73,75,74,45956],"class_list":["post-134235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-allegheny-county-jail","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-yinzer-backstage-pass"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}