Pennsylvania Department of Corrections
state agency in Pennsylvania, U.S
The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PADOC) is the Pennsylvania state agency that is responsible for the confinement, care, and rehabilitation of approximately 37,000 inmates at state correctional facilities funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The agency is headquartered in Hampden Township, Cumberland County in Greater Harrisburg, near Mechanicsburg.
In October 2017, then Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf signed a "memorandum of understanding" that allows the PADOC and the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole to share like resources and eliminate duplicative efforts. All parole supervision now falls under the jurisdiction of the PADOC; while parole release decisions remain under the jurisdiction of the PA Board of Probation and Parole. The two agencies remain separate. Following passage of the 2021-2022 Pennsylvania budget, the merger was official and permanent.
There are currently 23 state correctional institutions, one motivational boot camp, one central training academy, 14 community corrections centers, 22 parole field offices, and the DOC contracts with approximately 40 contractors across the Commonwealth that provide transitional services. The DOC employs more than 16,000 individuals, and PADOC's population report is available on its website at www.cor.pa.gov.
History
Pennsylvania's history closely intertwines with penology. William Penn initially abolished capital punishment for all crimes except murder, and established other rehabilitation reforms which were considered radical at the time.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Pennsylvania Department of Corrections” is state agency in Pennsylvania, U.S. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Pennsylvania, Department and Corrections, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7163705. VIAF identifies the subject as 155998215. The Library of Congress control number is n85036557. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2017, 2021 and 2022.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pennsylvania Department of Corrections” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.