The city's shuttered Holmesburg Prison will be available during the Democratic National Convention to hold arrested protesters if necessary.
Shawn Hawes, spokeswoman for the city's prisons system, said the facility is being readied on an if-needed basis for the convention, July 25 to 28.
"If we had to activate Holmesburg, that would be out of necessity for a mass-arrest kind of processing situation," she said. "We're always ready to open whenever necessary, so, like the city, we're hoping for the best, preparing just in case."
Hawes was quick to say that the portion of the prison to be used is the recently renovated gymnasium - currently available for overflow when the city's jails are over capacity - not the cell blocks where horror movies have been filmed.
Gonna lock some hippies up, because that's what you do.