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Pennsylvania
Political repression plays out state by state — shaped by local institutions, prosecutors, and movements for defense. These are the documented political prisoners and cases the census holds for Pennsylvania.
431Documented
6In custody
377Released
2Awaiting trial
Eras of repression in Pennsylvania
Where Pennsylvania’s entries fall across the census’s historical eras.
1700s 77
1910s 73
1930s 68
2020s 41
1950s 36
1970s 30
Documented cases
431 entries in the census — every one stays in the record, whether the case is open or closed.
P
Patrick Hester
Patrick Hester was convicted of the October 17, 1868 murder of mining superintendent Alexander Rea near Centra...
C
Charles H. Highley
Released
Charles H. Highley was a conscientious objector from Pennsylvania imprisoned during World War I. Court-martial...
J
John Holcroft
Released
John Holcroft was among the western Pennsylvania men taken into federal custody during the suppression of the...
J
Julius Hollis
Released
Julius Hollis was a miner serving twenty months at the Blawnox Workhouse, one of the National Miners' Union st...
T
Thomas Holmes
Released
Thomas Holmes, an eighteen-year-old Young Communist League district organizer at Chester, was arrested in Janu...
E
Edward Horacek
Released
Edward Horacek was one of ten workers arrested in a 1923 Pittsburgh red raid and indicted under Pennsylvania's...
L
Leroy Horlacher
Released
Leroy Horlacher was a conscientious objector from Pennsylvania imprisoned during World War I. Court-martialed...
G
Gerald V. Hoy
Released
Computer scientist from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and longtime member of the Irish-American support mo...
E
Earl M. Humphreys
Released
Earl M. Humphreys was a conscientious objector from Pennsylvania imprisoned during World War I. Court-martiale...
J
John Hunt
John Hunt was a Quaker minister and leader in the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting who was one of the "Virginia Exi...
V
Virginia Lee Hunter
Released
Virginia Lee Hunter joined the Hatfield’s Ferry smokestack protest against the Bush administration’s energy po...
J
John Husy
Released
John Husy was one of twenty men arrested during the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania and marched in c...
E
E. P. Jennings
Released
E. P. Jennings was a Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania printer and civic leader who helped organize the Luzerne Count...
C
Charles Jervis
Released
Charles Jervis (also spelled Jarvis), a Philadelphia Quaker, was one of the "Virginia Exiles" — the roughly tw...
D
Donald Mark Johnson
Released
Donald Mark Johnson, 33, was arrested June 26, 2024 at the University of Pittsburgh Gaza divestment protest fo...
W
William Johnson
Released
William Johnson was one of twenty men arrested during the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania and marche...
B
Barry Jones III
Released
Barry Jones III was detained after Lancaster’s September 2020 protest following Ricardo Muñoz’s death. He left...
O
Owen Jones Jr.
Released
Owen Jones Jr., a Philadelphia Quaker merchant and son of Owen Jones, the last provincial treasurer of Pennsyl...
W
Wasyl Jowchalk
Released
Wasyl Jowchalk appears in the National Civil Liberties Bureau's March 1919 compilation "War-Time Prosecutions...
P
Pete Jugrine
Released
Pete Jugrine was a Black miner serving a year at the Blawnox Workhouse, one of the National Miners' Union stri...
J
John Katkus
Released
John Katkus appears in the National Civil Liberties Bureau's March 1919 compilation "War-Time Prosecutions and...
I
Irvin Katz
Released
Irvin Katz was prosecuted as part of the Philadelphia Nine Smith Act case, in which federal authorities sought...
I
Irving Katz
Released
Irving Katz was one of the nine Philadelphia Communist leaders convicted in 1953 under the Smith Act. On Novem...
T
Thomas Keenan (LOVE Park 2007)
Released
Thomas Keenan, 24, ARA/Antifa member, arrested July 23, 2007 near LOVE Park in Philadelphia during a counter-p...
Institutions in Pennsylvania
Prisons, jails, and detention centers in Pennsylvania that appear in the census’s case files.
Allegheny County WorkhouseBlawnox, Pennsylvania
23 cases
Walnut Street JailPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania
20 cases
Philadelphia GaolPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania
18 cases
Butler County PrisonButler, Pennsylvania
13 cases
United States Penitentiary, LewisburgLewisburg, Pennsylvania
13 cases
FCI AllenwoodWhite Deer, Pennsylvania
12 cases
SCI DallasDallas, Pennsylvania
12 cases
Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas / SCI Pennsylvania state prisonsPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania
9 cases