Search Results for: deeney

[Artwork by ALEX FINE] BY JEFF DEENEY Back in the summer of 2011, I wrote about an acquaintance who worked in the The Philadelphia House Of Correction on State Road who was having trouble getting up in the morning and going to work. It seemed like each day brought some unbearable new horror story of violence perpetrated against prisoners by the Corrections Officers (COs) tasked with maintaining order in the facilities. Much of the disorder, the person claimed, on the intensely overcrowded cell blocks was in fact driven by crews of COs that operated like organized crime syndicates. Working with […]

[Artwork by FERNANDO BOTERO] EDITOR’S NOTE: The following first posted to Phawker on July 22nd, 2011 BY JEFF DEENEY A couple months ago I was approached by a person in the midst of a major moral dilemma: This person works inside the Philadelphia Prison System, and claimed to have been witness to massive, systematic and ongoing abuses inside the institution. This person described the common practice among Correctional Officers (COs) of ganging up on troublesome prisoners in their cells and dishing brutal beatdowns to put them in line. The person described an incident where a prisoner was tied to a […]

Illustration by ALEX FINE JEFF DEENEY FOR THE MARSHALL PROJECT: As a social worker, I’ve always been conflicted about the fact that I work in a law enforcement setting. My desk is situated among probation officers (POs), typically in baby blue polo style shirts with “PROBATION” written across the back. Officers from the court system’s warrant squad come and go, dressed in black commando gear, pants tucked into their boots so they don’t trip when they run (they’re basically always running after people.) I see guns in the office, all the time. It’s a controlled environment; people are searched on […]

Via Twitter/photographer unknown BY JEFF DEENEY I grew up in suburban Philadelphia in the 80s. It was a time when working class families were leaving their row homes in a city they considered increasingly black and dangerous in droves for single houses on tree lined streets in nearly all white townships not far away, maybe ten miles, but in many ways worlds apart. By 1985, when the bomb dropped on the MOVE house and it seemed like Philly was death spiraling into apocalypse my parents watched the chaos over dinner in Delaware County marveling at what good fortune we had […]

  THE ATLANTIC: Last year when American Paradigm Schools took over Philadelphia’s infamous, failing John Paul Jones Middle School, they did something a lot of people would find inconceivable. The school was known as “Jones Jail” for its reputation of violence and disorder, and because the building physically resembled a youth correctional facility. Situated in the Kensington section of the city, it drew students from the heart of a desperately poor hub of injection drug users and street level prostitution where gun violence rates are off the charts. But rather than beef up the already heavy security to ensure safety […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece first published in January of 2011. BY JEFF DEENEY Let me begin by assuring anyone reading this from outside the region that the disbelieving moan of “What the fuuuuuck, Philadelphia?!” that reverberated around the world yesterday is being heard loud and clear here in the evermore ironically nicknamed City of Brotherly Love.  Surely, the grand jury report detailing Kermit Gosnell’s filthy West Philly baby abattoir is utterly soul-shattering in and of itself, regardless of your proximity to the events.   But many Philadelphians felt an additional, all-too familiar communal nausea watching the story go viral through the […]

  PHILADELPHIA MAGAZINE: Being White In Philly DEENEY: Let Me Tell You About Being White In Philly

TECHBOOK ONLINE: Standing before the National Coalition of 100 Black Women today, Mayor Michael Nutter exclaimed “Someone has written something in a magazine in Philadelphia and made some pretty disgusting comments about African-Americans — women in particular. Growing increasingly passionate, Mayor Nutter states: “Everyone should be offended that someone would have the audacity that let out of their mind, and into print — such disgusting comments about our people,” adding “When ignorance is out in the marketplace, it affects us all. As a Black man for West Philadelphia, I will not allow anyone to run us down.” MORE PHILLY’S BLACK […]

  BY JEFF DEENEY As a little boy in the late ’70s I lived with my family on 63rd Street in Overbrook in the row home attached to my grandparents’ row home. I never knew my Irish grandparents on my father’s side; their lives were cut short by ill health and alcoholism when my father was a teenager, leaving him and his four older siblings to fend for themselves. But my grandparents on my mother’s side were ever-present, their tiny house a hub of activity on the block where they had spent much of their lives since getting off a […]

  BY JEFF DEENEY FOR THE FIX Camden, New Jersey mother, high on drugs on a late summer night last August, decapitates her own son in a fit of violent psychosis, places his head in the kitchen freezer, calls 911, admits the crime to a dispatcher, and then stabs herself to death before police arrive on the scene. Across town just days later a father, also in a drug-fueled psychosis, steals into his daughters’ bedroom as they sleep and slits both their throats with a knife, killing one and critically injuring the other. The horrific, gory details are splashed across […]