After a months-long search, Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato nominated Trevor Wingard, a former deputy secretary with the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, to be the county jail’s next warden Wednesday.
Wingard previously oversaw State Correctional Institute-Somerset and SCI-Laurel Highlands and worked at Allegheny County Jail as interim warden for a period in 2011. According to his resume, Wingard retired from the state DOC in 2022.
TribLive first reported his nomination Monday.
If confirmed, Wingard would be the first person to hold the warden position full-time since permanent warden Orlando Harper retired in September 2023.
On Monday, Wingard met with county officials, jail oversight board members, and criminal justice reform advocates to discuss his candidacy and vision for the facility. Attendees who spoke with WESA were cautiously optimistic about his nomination.
“I think, should he be confirmed, he's going to bring a lot of positive changes to the ACJ,” said oversight board member and activist Muhammad Ali Nasir, who goes by his emcee name, MAN-E.
In a statement announcing her choice, Innamorato said officials were “so impressed with the breadth of Mr. Wingard’s experience in working with an array of corrections facilities and his commitment to creating a safe environment for both staff and incarcerated individuals. The County has made improvements in the last year at the ACJ, and we need a leader that can continue the positive momentum.”
She added that Wingard “has shown he’s open to challenging the status quo and embracing change.”
MAN-E noted that Wingard’s experiences at SCI Laurel Highlands, a facility for incarcerated people with special needs, mental illness, or long-term care requirements, align with county efforts to improve healthcare at ACJ. Healthcare staff have complained of a “toxic” work environment, unresponsive administrators, and long hours since at least 2023. Some said they worry that jail practices put incarcerated people at risk.
In the statement, Wingard said he would shake up the status quo. “My experience has been defined by time with health care in facilities, with excellent staff mentorship and retention programs, with programming for incarcerated individuals that will help them succeed when they leave the facility, and I would bring all of those experiences to leading the ACJ,” the statement quotes him saying.
MAN-E said he felt encouraged by Wingard’s focus on educational and vocational programs. He said Wingard agreed to several changes the oversight board hopes to see at the jail, including lowering the population count and reducing reliance on lockdowns.
“As far as wardens go, he seemed to be pretty progressive,” MAN-E said.
“The thing I think he made most clear is that he wanted to really have open, transparent dialogue,” said Alliance for Police Accountability president and CEO Brandi Fisher.
For oversight board observers, the prospect of new leadership is a welcome change. Relations between Harper and the oversight board were frosty at best and at times even confrontational, though things seemingly improved during former acting Warden Shane Dady’s tenure. (Dady stepped down in November.)
MAN-E said Wingard told meeting attendees that he has watched hours’ worth of the monthly meetings and was knowledgeable about the issues facing the facility, like an ongoing staffing shortage and concerns about living conditions and inadequate healthcare.
“He's aware of the current landscape and culture and he wants to work to fix that. And so far, I think I believe him,” said Man-E.
County councilor Bethany Hallam, an outspoken member of the jail oversight board who was previously incarcerated in the facility herself, said Wingard is “very qualified to be a warden of a jail.”
“I don't have anything bad to say about Trevor,” she said. She was encouraged by Wingard’s commitment to fixing the jail’s intake department, where she said problems like overdoses often occur.
Hallam and Fisher did share one concern: Wingard has spent the majority of his 30-year-long corrections career working in state prisons, where those incarcerated have already been convicted of a crime and are serving long-term sentences.
“Jails and prisons are very different environments,” Hallam said.
Most people incarcerated in ACJ, like other county jails, have yet to be convicted and will stay in the facility for a short period. Prisons can typically offer more programs than jails because inmates are there longer.
“That is going to be an adjustment,” said Fisher.
Hallam and MAN-E voiced some dissatisfaction with the hiring process, and said members of the JOB and search committee should have been more involved
“To my knowledge, nobody has a problem with the candidate. And the only problem we have is with the process,” MAN-E said.
Current acting Warden Jason Beasom is set to depart Jan. 18. Wingard is expected to start Jan. 13.
The county retained POLIHIRE, a Washington, D.C.-based search firm, last May to identify and vet candidates for the warden position. The firm worked with a nine-member search committee selected by Innamorato, including the county’s Housing Authority police chief Mike Vogel, former state Secretary of Corrections John Wetzel, and county leaders in Human Services and other departments.
“The jail has had a lot of problems, but there also has been a lot of progress in the past two years. There is still work to be done,” said Fisher. “I'm hopeful that there's going to be a lot of positive changes over the course of the next year.”
The jail oversight board is expected to consider the nomination at its regular meeting Thursday.
