Inmate accidentally released by Delco criticizes prison conditions and says he will turn himself in this week

Inmate mistakenly released from Delaware County Jail claims he repeatedly told prison officials he should not be released. Daniel Rogers also said: Wide + Freedom In a phone interview on Sunday, he said he intends to turn himself in to the prison this week. He fears the administration will retaliate against him for embarrassing the prison by releasing him early — which he says is their fault, not his.

Readers should consider Wide + Freedom cannot verify many of the claims Rogers makes in this story. This does not mean that the claims are true or false, just that they are not verified.

Rogers first contacted Wide + Freedom by commenting on the original story about his accidental release. Those comments were approved and are therefore available in this story. He provided his email address so we could reach him. He confirmed to our satisfaction his identity as Daniel Rogers.

“When they took me to intake, did the paperwork or booked me in, the guard said something like, 'Oh, you're only here for a weekend?' And I said, 'No.' I said I had been sentenced to 12 to 24 months in the upstate. And he told me, 'No, I'm only here for a weekend for drunk driving.' I said, 'Well, I don't know what's going on here, but I should go upstate.'”

As previously reported, Rogers was charged with driving under the influence in May 2023. The trial lasted over a year. When he was sentenced to a lesser offense as part of a guilty plea, it triggered a probation violation from a previous 2021 case in which Rogers admitted to dealing drugs. (He says he has been sober since October of last year.)

The sentence for driving under the influence was three days and 72 hours after a plea deal. The new sentence for violating probation was 12 to 24 months. The prison somehow didn't know about the longer sentence and released him.

But Rogers, who has been to the George W. Hill Correctional Facility several times over the years, was harshly critical of the current state of the prison. He justified all of his comments with the assumption: “I understand: It is a prison, but the way in which [inmates are] treated is unacceptable.”

“They put me in the cell and they brought me, I guess they give you 'County Blues' [uniforms] as they call them. And I'm a smaller guy, and the ones they gave me were double XL. And they had what I [can] just think [are] Body lice on it – like bugs. You know what I mean? It's crazy.”

He spent the first day and a half in a “reception cell,” a temporary detention unit where new inmates are held until staff classify the prisoners and move them to their new unit.

“There were 15 of us to a cell,” Rogers said, adding later that the cell was only big enough for about 10 people. “There's no toilet. We sleep on the floor. There are cockroaches. It's disgusting.” He said the holding cells have benches but no cots. “If you're not the first person there on the bench, you sleep on the floor.”

Rogers also said his food was often stolen by other inmates and that even when it had not been stolen, the quantities were inadequate, reflecting the findings of a spring visit to the GWHCF by the Pennsylvania Prison Society.

“A child would not be satisfied with these meals,” Rogers said in his telephone interview.

Rogers' complaint is similar to others heard by members of the Pennsylvania Prison Society, a nonprofit organization that works to improve prison conditions. “Eighty-nine percent of the men we interviewed said the prison did not give them enough food. The men we interviewed told us, 'They don't give enough food for a grown man,' 'it's enough food for a five-year-old,' 'not even close,'” were comments the Prison Society heard at the time.

Rogers said he learned on Friday, August 16, about a week after his release, that the prison wanted him back.

“I called my lawyer back and asked her, 'Hey, is there any way I can go to state prison? Is my punishment to go upstate?' And she said, 'No, you have to go to county jail.' That kind of took the wind out of my sails, you know what I mean?”

“I'm trying to contact a lawyer to see if there's another avenue I can take. Because like I said, I'm scared of how I'm being treated. I feel like I'm being put in a hole. [solitary confinement].”

The county declined to respond to requests for comment on Rogers' allegations.

Todd Shepherd is Wide + Freedoms chief investigative journalist. Send him tips to [email protected]or use his encrypted email to [email protected]. @shepherdreports