Pennsylvania County
Jail Addresses
By: Sandra Feigley
Cofounder/Publisher

Pennsylvania loves to lock-up its citizens. In addition to many dozens of state prisons, many jails for children and countless local jails and lockups, Pennsylvania has over 70 county jails. They may be called "prisons," "correctional facilities," or "rectums." It all amounts to about the same thing. They are the places where accused persons are detained for relatively short periods and where persons do sentences of less than two years and where convicted persons await transportation to a state prison.

Most Pennsylvania county prisons are in very bad condition. Thanks to the inept county government, Dauphin County Prison is a horror of death, abuse, assault, disease and squalor. The Philadelphia County prisons are close behind. They are run by black thugs and gangs and mismanaged by a lazy staff.

Many county jails are very old. Twelve Pennsylvania county jails, over 15% of the total in the state, were actually built in the 1800s.

    • Juniata County Jail, built 1833! (while Andrew Jackson was president! before the first wagon train to California!)
    • Schuylkill, built 1851 (10 years before the Civil War!)
    • Lancaster, built 1852
    • Vanango, built 1853
    • Union, built 1855
    • Potter, built 1869
    • Northampton, built 1871
    • Northumberland, built 1876
    • Columbia, built 1877
    • Elk, built 1885
    • Luzerne, built 1887
    • Fayette, built 1889.

The following is our listing of County jails with addresses, phone numbers and county or prison website links where they are available.


Reprinted by permission of Matt Matteo
from the book
Chicken Soup for the Prisoner's Soul
by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen and Tom Lagana

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