{"id":172808,"date":"2026-04-22T13:29:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T13:29:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/172808\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T13:29:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T13:29:11","slug":"wally-nunn-promises-versus-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/172808\/","title":{"rendered":"Wally Nunn: Promises versus reality"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Four years ago, Delaware County\u2019s Democratic leadership, cheered on by liberal advocacy groups like the Pennsylvania Prison Society, triumphantly wrested control of the George W. Hill Correctional Facility from the private GEO Group. The pitch was pure progressive gospel: Privatization was immoral because profits were being made off human suffering. County control would be more humane, more transparent, and\u2014most importantly\u2014cheaper for taxpayers.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Feasibility studies promised millions in annual savings. The Prison Society itself hailed the early results as a \u201cmajor improvement.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>As Todd Shepherd <a href=\"https:\/\/broadandliberty.com\/2026\/04\/16\/three-years-in-key-conditions-at-delco-prison-have-gotten-worse-state-monitors-show\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">reported last week<\/a>, the February 5, 2026 memorandum on their November 13, 2025 walkthrough reads like an indictment.<\/p>\n<p>According to the Prison Society\u2019s own data, prisoners were better off under private management. In nearly every major category tracked since the county takeover, conditions were better in December 2022 (under GEO private operation) than in November 2025 (under full county control):<\/p>\n<p>Got out of cell every day: 78% \u2192 44%<\/p>\n<p>Officers available at night: 61% \u2192 12%<\/p>\n<p>Officers available on weekends: 55% \u2192 16%<\/p>\n<p>Working payphones on the unit: 87% \u2192 24%<\/p>\n<p>Able to make daily phone calls: 68% \u2192 44%<\/p>\n<p>Successful family visits: 61% \u2192 13%<\/p>\n<p>Witnessed assault by staff: 30% \u2192 58%<\/p>\n<p>Only commissary delivery improved. Almost everything else got significantly worse.<\/p>\n<p>When the monitors arrived at the women\u2019s unit, all five pods were locked down with zero officers present. One man stood in sewage and feces for twelve hours while staff laughed at his broken lock. Ninety-two percent say they don\u2019t get enough food. Seventy-seven percent lack basic hygiene items. The women\u2019s unit was freezing. Phones don\u2019t work. Visits get canceled. Staff assaults are up.<\/p>\n<p>Warden Willie Bonds\u2019 March 2 response is bureaucratic boilerplate: Aramark\u2019s 2,600-calorie meals (portions still too small), daily cleaning supplies (staff don\u2019t distribute them), and a capital plan that ballooned from $28 million to $50 million. Same old excuses.<\/p>\n<p>This is exactly what Todd Shepherd and I warned about for years here at Broad + Liberty. The county didn\u2019t fix the problems \u2014 it replaced a profit motive with a political one. The result? The same failures, plus exploding costs and worsening outcomes.<\/p>\n<p>Delaware County residents deserve better than ideological experiments sold as compassion. The Prison Society\u2019s own numbers just proved the \u201cI told you so.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Wally Nunn is the former Chairman of Delaware County Council.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four years ago, Delaware County\u2019s Democratic leadership, cheered on by liberal advocacy groups like the Pennsylvania Prison Society,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172809,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[212,17820,77519,2258,77520,77521,69,71,70,796],"class_list":{"0":"post-172808","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-delaware-county","9":"tag-delaware-county-council","10":"tag-delaware-county-jail-oversight-board","11":"tag-democrats","12":"tag-george-w-hill-correctional-facility","13":"tag-pennsylvania-prison-society","14":"tag-philadelphia","15":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","16":"tag-philadelphia-news","17":"tag-prison"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172808","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=172808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}