Op-ed, Press and Sun Bulletin, Binghamton, March 8, 2020, p. A12

There is little doubt now that the coronavirus, COVID-19, will come to Broome County, if it isn’t here already. Are we ready?

It will be a challenge. Broome County ranks 57th in health outcomes among the state’s 62 counties. The County Health division tasked with the surveillance and prevention of communicable diseases has seen its staff cut by 20% and its funding by nearly 30% in the last 10 years. Regional public health centers have closed.

Those most at risk are clear: the elderly, persons with health problems, and the poor. As with the annual flu, they suffer and die the most, especially when institutionalized together. Cluster outbreaks in nursing facilities in China and now Washington state illustrate the danger.

Most vulnerable are those locked in jails and prisons, where the U.S. is the world leader and Broome County has regularly had the state’s highest incarceration rate. What happens when the virus hits the jail, primarily filled with poor persons awaiting trial (and often boarded in from distant federal agencies to make a profit for the county)?

Recent protests, lost lawsuits and federal court rulings have all exposed an excessive death rate and continuous medical failures at the jail. Are there any plans or ability to deal with a health crisis under these conditions? How might suspected cases of COVID-19 be detected? Are there test kits available to check someone with coronavirus-like symptoms? Given the closed confines and packed cells of the jail, is there a plan detailing where those at high risk or diagnosed with COVID-19 might be placed?

How might medical supplies and services be provided to those locked down inside? Will public health workers be able to move in and out of the jail, for the first time? Will persons in life-threatening, respiratory distress be able to be transferred to a hospital? Or are they to be left to die in their double-occupancy cells? Will the UHS doctor who works in the jail continue to move back and forth between the jail and his offices at Wilson hospital?

The lack of planning and denial of basic health services also endangers those who work at or visit the jail. How will the county protect guards, service and medical staff ? And their families and the families of visitors?

Locking down the jail would only serve, as in China, to intensify infection rates inside, and then spread disease into the broader community as guards and service workers move back and forth. It will also create panic, particularly among family members who no longer could contact or see their loved ones. And if lawyers and court officers can’t visit, the whole criminal justice system collapses, condemning those inside to grim futures indeed.

There is an elemental truth here: Our large jail system was built without any link to public health services, and lacks basic evidence-based health care and any effective oversight. For those incarcerated, their families and staff, managing COVID-19 under these conditions will be exceedingly difficult. The failure to plan and provide effective care threatens us all.

Bill Martin teaches at Binghamton University and is a founding member of Justice and Unity for the Southern T ier (JUST).

Make no mistake about it: they are afraid. Very afraid. For the state’s new bail reform bill threatens to undermine what our bloated elected officials have spent decades constructing: the machinery of mass incarceration that siphons funds for health and social services into policing and jailing innocent persons.

The new bail bill is straightforward:  most of those charged with misdemeanor and non-violent crimes will no longer be given high cash bails. Over 70 percent of the persons in the local jail are rotting there because they can’t afford bail.  And many–indeed most by the Sheriff’s and District Attorney’s own accounts–have substance use or mental health problems for which there is little if any treatment in the community. The wealthy among us, of course, don’t have this problem:  they can post the high bails and afford private medical treatment.  They walk free to await trial, while the poor and sick linger in the jail.

The bill comes into effect on January 1.  Sheriff Harder estimates it will free 120 persons from the jail; USA today estimates 150;  Vera Institute, a research group, estimates up to 80% of the 410 or so persons in the jail now might come home.  These numbers are higher than expected.

The prospect before us nevertheless remains that the jail–enlarged at a cost of $7million in 2015 to hold over 600 persons–may soon hold far less than half that amount.  The cost of building and running the jail, not to mention additional policing and court costs, has grown year after year under both Republican and Democrat County Executives:

Rolling back these operations threatens the power base of Sheriffs, Undersheriffs, and Mayors whose powers and influence have grown fat on the institutions of mass incarceration.  State Senator, former County Undersheriff, and current patrolman Frederick J. Akshar II unleashed an inflamed blast yesterday, calling the bill “nothing more but a criminal’s bill of rights”:

“The misguided and overreaching bail reform laws enacted by New York’s One Party Rule will go into effect, handing out new “get-out-of-jail-free” cards for an exceedingly long list of crimes…[1]

At least we know that the Senator plays monopoly, where wealth, as in the bail and political systems, rules.

Binghamton Mayor Richard David, who has significantly expanded the city’s police force year after year even as crime rates fall, leads a statewide group of Mayors to oppose the bill and related justice reforms.[2] Broome County Sheriff David Harder has done the same with Sheriff Associations.[3] Democrat Congressman Brindisi, looking to the next election, has added his voice to the opposition to reform as well.[4]  

These efforts are not likely to be successful:  communities across the state have rallied to roll back the mass incarceration and mass policing that have unnecessarily jailed tens of thousands in our debtor’s jails and prisons. 

What should we do?  We might follow Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier’s local call to reduce the jail population by at least 70 percent, and plan immediately to reallocate 50% of the jail’s annual budget, at least $15 million, to community-based services and needs.[5]  Providing health and treatment services for our residents, rather than pretending incarceration can solve health problems and the lack of housing and jobs, hasn’t served us well. Its time to move on.  This is a time of opportunity. We should seize it.

************************************

Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier: Key Objectives (November 2019)

• Reduce the jail population by at least 70% by implementing fully the new state law effectively ending cash bail, providing ample community treatment facilities and other substantive alternatives to incarceration, and prioritizing the release of individuals requiring treatment for substance use, disabilities, and mental health issues

• Reduce the jail budget in the coming three years by 50%, and use this annual amount of over $15 million for services to over-incarcerated communities, including mental health services, substance use and recovery facilities, and housing

 • Create an independent, empowered, oversight body for the jail, comprised of independent medical experts, the formerly incarcerated, and impacted community members

***************************

References

[1] WBNG Staff, “‘Get out of Jail for Free,’ Senator Akshar Criticizes New Bail Reform Laws,” WBNG (blog), December 27, 2019, https://wbng.com/2019/12/27/get-out-of-jail-for-free-senator-akshar-criticizes-new-bail-reform-laws/

[2] “New York and New Jersey Limit Cash Bail for Crimes. But There’s One Major Difference,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, accessed December 28, 2019, https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/politics/albany/2019/12/17/ny-and-nj-limit-cash-bail-crimes-but-theres-one-major-difference/2668074001/; Karen DeWitt, “Mayors Join Chorus of Concerns over 2020 Criminal Justice Reforms,” accessed December 28, 2019, https://www.wxxinews.org/post/mayors-join-chorus-concerns-over-2020-criminal-justice-reforms.

[3] “Broome County Sheriff Opposes Bail Elimination Act, but Local Organizations Voice Support Following Jail Deaths – Pipe Dream,” accessed December 4, 2019, https://www.bupipedream.com/news/112897/broome-county-sheriff-opposes-bail-elimination-act-but-local-organizations-voice-support-following-jail-deaths/.

[4] “Brindisi Says He’s Concerned With Changes to Cash Bail,” accessed December 28, 2019, https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/central-ny/politics/2019/11/26/brindisi-says-he-s-concerned-with-changes-to-cash-bail-; Celia Clarke, “Reed, Brindisi Say NY Criminal Justice Reforms Ignore The Rights Of Crime Victims,” WSKG, accessed December 4, 2019, https://wskg.org/news/reed-brindisi-say-ny-criminal-justice-reforms-ignore-the-rights-of-crime-victims/.

[5] Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier, “Objectives and Demands, November 7, 2019,” www.justicest.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Objectives-and-Demands-11-4-19.pdf, accessed December 28, 2019. 

County legislators expected criticism, but the arrest of 10 persons at the Broome County Legislature on November 21^st startled many, including myself.[1]  At issue was a proposal for a new law, which protestors from multiple community organizations called the police “annoy” bill or “censorship” bill.

Local legislators at the meeting were however insistent: Broome County needs a law to protect firefighters and EMT workers from being harassed on the job.  The possible penalty for being annoying?  A year in jail and a $5,000 fine. And to top that off, legislators pushed a resolution to support a state bill that would turn such assaults into a special category of a “hate crime”.[2]

But let’s be real and face the evidence. The aim of these bills is simple: to attack rising public criticism of the sheriff, the jail administration, and the local police.  

And these bills don’t appear by chance: they join the growing statewide project by Mayors, District Attorneys, and local representatives[3]–from Sheriff Harder[4]  to newly-elected Democratic representative Brindisi[5]— to undermine the new bail, speedy trial, and discovery laws that come into effect on January 1.

The Broome County annoyance bill fits right in, taking aim at growing protests by multiple community organizations at deaths and abuse in the jails, unaccountable and harsh policing in schools and on our streets, and the long-term diversion of funds from mental health and drug treatment into policing and jailing residents by the thousands.  The new bill would counter this directly by criminalizing anyone who annoys or harasses police.

County legislators struggled to deny this, stressing the aim was to protect “first defenders” and not police.  The Chair of the Legislature Dan Reynolds told the gathered crowd retorted that

“We have been talking about this for a while and one of the reasons it came up was because of firefighters. It was firefighters, paramedics, it wasn’t law enforcement.”[6]

Mention of police or the Sheriff was studiously avoided, even as the room was  packed to capacity with 120+ protestors and surrounded by dozens of fully armed State Police, City Police, and Broome County Sheriffs;  County Sheriff Harder looked on stonily from a chair to the side. Mobile command posts and paddy wagons were parked outside. But this had nothing, the crowd was told, to do with the Sheriff or the police.

There were no such attempts at deception when the bill was introduced at a press conference in October. Reynolds then introduced the bill standing alongside not firefighters or EMT personnel, but next to Binghamton Mayor Richard David and former Broome County Undersheriff, and current part-time patrolman, Senator Akshar. Reynolds at that time was quite clear:  the bill was explicitly modeled after and designed to support Akshar’s Senate bill that would make harassment of police a hate crime.[7] 

Designating the police as an oppressed minority takes a fevered imagination. Hate crime statutes were constructed to address violent acts against members of groups that have historically been discriminated against because of race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender. Defining overwhelming white and male police forces as an oppressed group is wildly Orwellian, especially in Broome County. At the Broome County Jail, the Correctional Officer force is 97.5% white.[8]  Binghamton’s police force has been built along the same lines.  As the Press and Sun-Bulletin has reported, “Among the ranks of the 138-member Binghamton Police Department, 13 officers are women and three are black. If the department reflected the city’s demographics, 69 officers would be women and 21 would be black.”[9] As a Times Union editorial has pointed out,[10] the bill was an obvious response to the Black Lives Matter protest around the state.  Senator Akshar has a growing list of such supports for Sheriffs and Police Chiefs—as in in his effort to expand the other end of the school to prison pipeline[11] by spending $200 million on police for all schools in the state.[12]

The current county bills advance these efforts by making it a crime to “annoy” or “alarm” an officer. There are lots of instances recently of this. Take for instance the person who mouths off at an officer as they get another parking ticket.[13] Now we can give them a $5,000 fine? Are we pleased we can now imprison those who accuse the Sheriff of being responsible for abuse and unnecessary deaths at the jail (as a  Federal judge ruled recently[14])? Give them a year in jail? Arrest students who challenge the beating of youth in the streets by school police?^[15] Or silence by law police officers who accuse the police brass of racism, as in two pending lawsuits by Binghamton officers[16]? Do we fine, arrest, or jail the folks who annoy the Sheriff for calling for his resignation or firing, as has Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier? 

Its absurd. But still the legislators retort with a second line of defense: firefighting and policing are dangerous jobs.  They are. But how dangerous? And where? At the legislative meeting proponents for the bill read a long list of the number of firefighters and EMT staff who were injured on the job across the country.  But no local cases were mentioned.  Not a single instance of the harassment preventing local EMT or firefighters from doing their job could be presented.

Senator Akshar and others counter by repeating that policing, at least, is highly dangerous and is growing more so. Yet let’s be clear: this is false. As reported by many federal sources and prominently in the media,[17] police and sheriff officers do NOT rank in the even the top ten most dangerous jobs.  Akshar and his supporters go further to claim attacks on and deaths of police officers are increasing, making this law necessary.  But this is NOT true either. The numbers and rate of felonious deaths of police have been falling since 1970 as data from the Officer Down Memorial Page and others indicates.[18] In the last ten years in the entire country about 50 officers die each year of accidents, and 50 of felonious assaults; the numbers rise and fall slightly year to year:[19] 

Locally, in the last ten years one officer total has been reported killed in the combined police forces of the City of Binghamton, Broome County, Johnson City, Binghamton University, and Vestal.[20] Contrast these numbers with the number of estimated persons killed by police officers, disproportionately youth of color:  a steady 900-1000 per year.[21]

These disparities, and the resistance of city, county and school board officials to provide any transparency and accountability around policing and the jail, has led to steadily growing community criticism.  It certainly annoys, even harasses, isolated local officials. Progressive Leaders of Tomorrow has in the last several years mightily annoyed the police and the local school board, protesting the harassment, detention, and arrest of Black and Latinx members of the community.  The NAACP has filed a lawsuit.  Justice and Unity for the Southern tier has mounted ever-larger public meetings across the county, and rallies and protests outside the jail and at county meetings.  Families of those who have suffered brutal deaths in the jail have filed lawsuits as well, and are winning them. Truth Pharm has marched as well, rallying community members to demand that those with substance use disorders get access to treatment and not county jail cells.  

Passing new laws won’t legitimize the illegitimate. It is time county legislators turn their efforts to serve the people of the county and not those commanding and benefiting from the machinery of mass incarceration.

Notes

[1] Among the press reports see “Nine Arrested during Protest at Broome County Legislative Chambers against Proposed Law – Pipe Dream,” accessed November 30, 2019, https://www.bupipedream.com/news/112892/nine-arrested-during-protest-at-broome-county-legislative-chambers-against-proposed-law/; Anthony Borrelli, “‘Annoy the Police’: How a Proposed Law Led to Protest, Arrests in Binghamton,” Pressconnects, accessed December 4, 2019, https://www.pressconnects.com/story/news/public-safety/2019/11/22/broome-county-legislature-protesters-arrested-emergency-responder-harassment-protection-law-plot/4269709002/; “Protests Erupt Over Proposed Law to Protect Broome Co. First Responders,” accessed December 4, 2019, https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/central-ny/news/2019/11/22/first-responders-protection-act-broome-county.

[2] “NY State Senate Bill S335,” NY State Senate, January 3, 2019, https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2019/s335.

[3] “New York Law Enforcement Critical of Criminal Justice Reforms,” WGRZ, accessed December 4, 2019, https://www.wgrz.com/article/news/crime/new-york-law-enforcement-critical-of-criminal-justice-reforms/71-1704b66c-737c-49e2-9c7c-e00d8516527c.

[4] “Broome County Sheriff Opposes Bail Elimination Act, but Local Organizations Voice Support Following Jail Deaths – Pipe Dream,” accessed December 4, 2019, https://www.bupipedream.com/news/112897/broome-county-sheriff-opposes-bail-elimination-act-but-local-organizations-voice-support-following-jail-deaths/.

[5] Celia Clarke, “Reed, Brindisi Say NY Criminal Justice Reforms Ignore The Rights Of Crime Victims,” WSKG, accessed December 4, 2019, https://wskg.org/news/reed-brindisi-say-ny-criminal-justice-reforms-ignore-the-rights-of-crime-victims/.

[6] “Nine Arrested during Protest at Broome County Legislative Chambers against Proposed Law – Pipe Dream,” accessed November 30, 2019, https://www.bupipedream.com/news/112892/nine-arrested-during-protest-at-broome-county-legislative-chambers-against-proposed-law/.

[7] Amy Hogan, “Broome Legislature Proposals Aim To Protect Police, First Responders, From Harassment On The Job,” accessed November 30, 2019, http://www.wicz.com/story/41228658/broome-legislature-proposals-aim-to-protect-police-first-responders-from-harassment-on-the-job.

[8] “Whose White at the BC Jail? We Don’t Know? – JUST Talk,” accessed December 4, 2019, https://justtalk.blog/index.php/2018/09/14/whose-white-at-the-bc-jail-we-dont-know/.

[9] Anthony Borrelli, “DIVERSITY IN THE RANKS: City Boosts Police Recruiting,” Pressconnects, accessed December 4, 2019, https://www.pressconnects.com/story/news/public-safety/2016/09/27/diversity-ranks-city-boosts-police-recruiting/90918278/.

[10] “Editorial: Don’t Dilute Hate Crime Laws,” Times Union, May 20, 2019, https://www.timesunion.com/opinion/article/Editorial-Don-t-dilute-hate-crime-laws-13858014.php.

[11] “The Binghamton School to Prison Pipeline – JUST Talk,” accessed November 30, 2019, https://justtalk.blog/index.php/2019/01/25/the-binghamton-school-to-prison-pipeline/.

[12] “Broome’s Schools & the Cost of Fear – JUST Talk,” accessed November 30, 2019, https://justtalk.blog/index.php/2019/05/04/broomes-schools-and-the-cost-of-fear/. Akshar has a raft of such proposals to support more policing even as crime rates fall everywhere—as in in his effort to expand the other end of the school to prison pipeline[12] by spending $200 million on police for all schools in the state.[12]

[13] “Police Watch: October 14, 2019 – Pipe Dream,” accessed December 4, 2019, https://www.bupipedream.com/news/110945/police-watch-october-14-2019/.

[14] web October 15 and 2019 at 1:29 Pm, “Harder Falls, Salladin Barton Vindicated – JUST Talk,” accessed December 4, 2019, https://justtalk.blog/index.php/2019/08/29/harder-falls-salladin-barton-vindicated/.

[15] Ashley Biviano, “Binghamton High School Student Says Staff Assaulted Him, Used Racial Slur,” Pressconnects, accessed December 4, 2019, https://www.pressconnects.com/story/news/local/2018/09/28/black-student-assaulted-bhs-staff-leaving-wrong-doors/1334218002/.

[16] Amy Hogan, “A Second Binghamton Police Officer Files Racial Discrimination Complaint Against City, Police Chief,” accessed December 4, 2019, http://www.wicz.com/story/41370581/a-second-binghamton-police-officer-files-racial-discrimination-complaint-against-city-police-chief.

[17] Samuel Stebbins Stockdale Evan Comen and Charles, “Workplace Fatalities: 25 Most Dangerous Jobs in America,” USA TODAY, accessed November 30, 2019, http://247wallst.com/special-report/2018/01/02/25-most-dangerous-jobs-in-america.

[18]

Dennis Bratland – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54678050

[19] Niall McCarthy, “The Number Of U.S. Police Officers Killed In The Line Of Duty Increased Last Year [Infographic],” Forbes, accessed November 30, 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2019/05/08/the-number-of-u-s-police-officers-killed-in-the-line-of-duty-increased-last-year-infographic/.

[20] “New York Line of Duty Deaths,” The Officer Down Memorial Page (ODMP), accessed November 30, 2019, https://www.odmp.org/search/browse.

[21] “Fatal Force: 2018 Police Shootings Database,” Washington Post, accessed November 30, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/police-shootings-2018/.

References

Biviano, Ashley. “Binghamton High School Student Says Staff Assaulted Him, Used Racial Slur.” Pressconnects. Accessed December 4, 2019. https://www.pressconnects.com/story/news/local/2018/09/28/black-student-assaulted-bhs-staff-leaving-wrong-doors/1334218002/.

Borrelli, Anthony. “‘Annoy the Police’: How a Proposed Law Led to Protest, Arrests in Binghamton.” Pressconnects. Accessed December 4, 2019. https://www.pressconnects.com/story/news/public-safety/2019/11/22/broome-county-legislature-protesters-arrested-emergency-responder-harassment-protection-law-plot/4269709002/.

———. “DIVERSITY IN THE RANKS: City Boosts Police Recruiting.” Pressconnects. Accessed December 4, 2019. https://www.pressconnects.com/story/news/public-safety/2016/09/27/diversity-ranks-city-boosts-police-recruiting/90918278/.

“Broome County Sheriff Opposes Bail Elimination Act, but Local Organizations Voice Support Following Jail Deaths – Pipe Dream.” Accessed December 4, 2019. https://www.bupipedream.com/news/112897/broome-county-sheriff-opposes-bail-elimination-act-but-local-organizations-voice-support-following-jail-deaths/.

“Broome’s Schools & the Cost of Fear – JUST Talk.” Accessed November 30, 2019. https://justtalk.blog/index.php/2019/05/04/broomes-schools-and-the-cost-of-fear/.

Clarke, Celia. “Reed, Brindisi Say NY Criminal Justice Reforms Ignore The Rights Of Crime Victims.” WSKG. Accessed December 4, 2019. https://wskg.org/news/reed-brindisi-say-ny-criminal-justice-reforms-ignore-the-rights-of-crime-victims/.

Times Union. “Editorial: Don’t Dilute Hate Crime Laws,” May 20, 2019. https://www.timesunion.com/opinion/article/Editorial-Don-t-dilute-hate-crime-laws-13858014.php.

Washington Post. “Fatal Force: 2018 Police Shootings Database.” Accessed November 30, 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/police-shootings-2018/.

Hogan, Amy. “A Second Binghamton Police Officer Files Racial Discrimination Complaint Against City, Police Chief.” Accessed December 4, 2019. http://www.wicz.com/story/41370581/a-second-binghamton-police-officer-files-racial-discrimination-complaint-against-city-police-chief.

———. “Broome Legislature Proposals Aim To Protect Police, First Responders, From Harassment On The Job.” Accessed November 30, 2019. http://www.wicz.com/story/41228658/broome-legislature-proposals-aim-to-protect-police-first-responders-from-harassment-on-the-job.

McCarthy, Niall. “The Number Of U.S. Police Officers Killed In The Line Of Duty Increased Last Year [Infographic].” Forbes. Accessed November 30, 2019. https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2019/05/08/the-number-of-u-s-police-officers-killed-in-the-line-of-duty-increased-last-year-infographic/.

WGRZ. “New York Law Enforcement Critical of Criminal Justice Reforms.” Accessed December 4, 2019. https://www.wgrz.com/article/news/crime/new-york-law-enforcement-critical-of-criminal-justice-reforms/71-1704b66c-737c-49e2-9c7c-e00d8516527c.

The Officer Down Memorial Page (ODMP). “New York Line of Duty Deaths.” Accessed November 30, 2019. https://www.odmp.org/search/browse.

“Nine Arrested during Protest at Broome County Legislative Chambers against Proposed Law – Pipe Dream.” Accessed November 30, 2019. https://www.bupipedream.com/news/112892/nine-arrested-during-protest-at-broome-county-legislative-chambers-against-proposed-law/.

NY State Senate. “NY State Senate Bill S335,” January 3, 2019. https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2019/s335.

October 15, web, and 2019 at 1:29 Pm. “Harder Falls, Salladin Barton Vindicated – JUST Talk.” Accessed December 4, 2019. https://justtalk.blog/index.php/2019/08/29/harder-falls-salladin-barton-vindicated/.

“Police Watch: October 14, 2019 – Pipe Dream.” Accessed December 4, 2019. https://www.bupipedream.com/news/110945/police-watch-october-14-2019/.

“Protests Erupt Over Proposed Law to Protect Broome Co. First Responders.” Accessed December 4, 2019. https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/central-ny/news/2019/11/22/first-responders-protection-act-broome-county.

Stockdale, Samuel Stebbins, Evan Comen and Charles. “Workplace Fatalities: 25 Most Dangerous Jobs in America.” USA TODAY. Accessed November 30, 2019. http://247wallst.com/special-report/2018/01/02/25-most-dangerous-jobs-in-america.

“The Binghamton School to Prison Pipeline – JUST Talk.” Accessed November 30, 2019. https://justtalk.blog/index.php/2019/01/25/the-binghamton-school-to-prison-pipeline/.

“Whose White at the BC Jail? We Don’t Know? – JUST Talk.” Accessed December 4, 2019. https://justtalk.blog/index.php/2018/09/14/whose-white-at-the-bc-jail-we-dont-know/.

Big brother watching you?  No, it’s Binghamton’s and Broome County’s finest, dropping cameras and license plate readers all over the county.  They will collect the place, day, time, and direction of your travel along with a picture of your car and often its inhabitants.  Private companies like the one used by the City of Binghamton are used to store the data and make it accessible to police and intelligence agencies all over the country—and even private buyers.  One vendor alone claims to have over 6 billion records while adding 120 more records a month.

Other cities from New Hampshire to Michigan to California have begun to ban the use of license plate readers and the facial recognition cameras as violations of constitutional rights. Meanwhile local elected official and public authorities, including university and college officials, are moving full speed ahead.  Launched by Binghamton Mayor David in 2017, these efforts have accelerated recently.  Attempts to discover the use of the data by local media have been stonewalled.

• 

We should not be silent. The case against yet more unsupervised and unaccountable state surveillance has been made by many, from concerned technology experts, through the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, to conservatives who fear mass state surveillance.  Whatever your persuasion, the facts are simple:  this technology can track us, our loved ones, and every move across the city, minute by minute.  They can paint an intimate portrait your life and protected First Amendment-protected activity. They will track and record your movements to health centers, immigration clinics, trade shows, LGBTQ bars, union halls, rallies, protests, or centers of religious worship.  They watch and track our students, unknown to them and us. And the abuses are already happening:  A Washington, D.C. police lieutenant pleaded guilty to extortion after blackmailing the owners of vehicles parked near a gay bar.^[45] The Los Angeles Police Department proposed sending letters to the home addresses of all vehicles that enter areas of high prostitution. In New York City police officers drove down a street and electronically recorded the license plate numbers of everyone parked near a mosque.

They are most often deployed in low-income communities and communities of color, and are  criminally unreliable in mis-identifying persons of color and women as men. The drive to create a national database of our every movement nevertheless advances:  the Department of Homeland Security has proposed a federal database to combine all recorded data and images.

And don’t’ be fooled into thinking we give up our privacy rights and identities in order to advance “public safety” and catch “criminals”; they catch us by the millions instead.  For the best estimate is that less than 0.2 percent of plate scans, the most accurate and deployed use by police, are linked to criminal activity or vehicle registration issues.

What can we do? We can do what residents of cities from New Hampshire to Indiana to California have done:  stop our public authorities, from police to city and education authorities, from using these machines against us.  Take two beginning steps:

One, participate in the crowdsourced map of license plate and surveillance cameras in our area. Go to this map to record new cameras and help us build a public record of what we face. https://www.arcgis.com/apps/CrowdsourceReporter/index.html?appid=e556da80848b402f9a70cf7d54a95e64

Two, sign the Stop Secret Surveillance in the Southern Tier petition at this site: https://campaigns.organizefor.org/petitions/stop-secret-surveillance-in-the-souther-tier

August 28, 2019

County Sheriff David Harder can hide no more.  The chickens can, it turns out, come home to roost.

For years Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier (JUST) and allied community organizations have been documenting, publicizing, and protesting medical abuse and deaths at the Broome County Jail.  In 2017 over a dozen community organizations issued an action plan calling for an immediate investigation into medical abuse at the jail, arguing that

Too often, death is how incarceration ends in the Broome County Jail. In 2011, Alvin Rios died “face down and shaking” in his cell. New York State faulted Broome County’s medical provider, Correctional Medical Care (CMC), which between 2009 and 2011 was implicated in nine deaths in jail facilities state wide. Since then, conditions have not improved: death has become even more common.

The County and CMC would eventually lose the lawsuit brought by Rios’ family.  Questioned about multiple deaths and the lawsuit, County Sheriff David Harder kissed it off, telling the media that deaths “will happen.” The county’s response:  it gave an award for excellence to CMC in 2014 and renewed its contract.  By the next year Harder was unwilling to even acknowledge yet another death, brazenly repeating he didn’t have to report it. As for changing any practices at the jail, there was “no reason to.” 

And so the deaths and abuse continued. In 2015, Salladin Barton, developmentally disabled and well known and liked on the streets of Binghamton, pleaded with his family: “The guards are going to kill me. You gotta get me outta here.”  He died shortly thereafter.  In 2018, the Sheriff and the County lost a class action suit filed by Legal Services of Central New York on behalf of abused youth. Early this year, Rob Card, denied basic medical treatment, told his family he was going to be killed in the jail, and died in mysterious circumstances.  Secretly released from custody by an unknown legal and court order, Card was removed from the jail, on a gurney and in coma, so he could die in a hospital–and off the books of the jail.

The families of the incarcerated have never accepted this, and never stopped pressing forward. Barton’s family filed a lawsuit.  JUST and other organizations joined in, forwarding continuous evidence of abuse to the County Executive, County legislators, and New York State officials.  Rallies and protests were organized outside county offices, the jail, and, most recently the UHS offices of Dr. Butt, the jail’s longstanding doctor.

On August 29^th over a dozen local community groups, propelled forward by Progressive Leaders of Tomorrow, will be rallying outside the jail to protest rampant abuse, racism, and deaths in the jail.

Harder’s response to all charges of medical abuse and specifically the lawsuit brought by Barton’s mother:  “It’s a bunch of crap.”

Well, this week Harder and the County can hide no more.  For on August 21^st a Federal Court judge issued a blistering judgement in favor of Salladin’s Barton’ mother, Rose Carter. Turning back County lawyers’ calls to dismiss the suit, Judge David Hurd bluntly noted that the county had “supplied precious little material” in support of their claims. 

The judge’s conclusion is stark: “as a result of the ongoing failure by CMC to provision appropriate medical care to inmates at the County Jail, and the failure by these policymaking defendants to intervene to correct it, Barton died while in the County’s custody.”

The Judge went much further, showing that that CMC’s medical problems had for years been reported to the Sheriff and County by both the State Commission of Correction and the Office of the Attorney General.  This was a legal breakthrough: this wasn’t the treatment of one person at issue but the knowing maltreatment of everyone caged in the jail.

Listen to the court:

“Sheriff Harder and/or Administrator Smolinsky, in their roles as policymakers for the Jail, possessed abundant knowledge about CMC’s egregious misconduct, knew that CMC was actively engaged in this misconduct at the County Jail, and yet failed to take any corrective action to prevent the substantial risk of harm those policies and practices posed to the inmates in their custody.

Among other things, Carter’s evidence shows that Sheriff Harder in particular

(1) knew CMC’s medical practices had caused at least one prior inmate death at the County Jail;

(2) was aware that the state’s investigation concluded that CMC’s improper medical practices caused or contributed to that death;

(3) had plenty of notice that CMC had not changed its medical policies or practices in any meaningful measure following that death; and nevertheless

(4) continued to approve of the County’s use of CMC without any modifications to its practices.”

Unlike in past cases, Sheriff Harder, Administrator Smolinksy, and Drs. Butt and Tinio are now personally liable.  

As the lawsuit now goes forward, Salladin Barton, on behalf of those who came before and after him, may at last get a measure of justice. The county and our elected officials may, at last, be forced to act.

As for Sheriff Harder, his departure, by impeachment or indictment, is long overdue.

Albany Times-Union op-ed published June 18 2019

Last month two NY Giants came to Broome County to support local bail and jail reform efforts. Expectations of change are high, for on January 1 new legislation comes into effect designed to eliminate cash bail for most misdemeanor and non-violent charges. JustLeadership USA, and the Vera Institute which facilitated the Giants’ visit, expect county jail populations across the state to drop by over 50%.

One would not know this from looking around the Southern Tier. In Cortland County, embroiled in a battle to build a new jail, local officials bluntly state that “recent justice reforms will have little or no impact.” The Onondaga District Attorney predicted long ago that bail reform would do little to change jail numbers, given existing reforms. One hears the same in Tompkins county, where a community bail fund and alternatives to incarceration are well in place. A local data expert in Broome expects no more than a ten percent reduction.

It is indeed hard to imagine approaching a 50 percent reduction. Bail will remain in place for all persons charged with violent felonies and key misdemeanor charges, leaving the poor still in jail. Bail reform will also not affect the growing number of persons in our jails due to technical parole violations. Nor will bail reform rollback the growing use of jails as mental health and detox centers.  Most of those in Broome’s jail—80 percent according to our Sheriff—have mental health and substance use illnesses for which we have almost no long-term treatment options. For poorer counties, bail reform is unlikely to prevent the recycling of these persons in and out of the jail, often on escalating charges.

Implementing bail reform needs fierce work too: expanding pretrial and parole supervision and staff, hiring new county justice coordinators, getting police to issue appearance tickets rather than booking persons on higher charges, persuading judges to release persons rather remanding more to jail, and so on. For counties this is an unfunded mandate that will cost $ millions. It is unclear who would monitor the bill’s implementation. Community organizations and non-profits upstate certainly do not have the resources.

How will the police, courts, district attorneys, sheriffs, and legislators respond to reforms that challenge their practices? How will judges calculate risk? Judgements based on informal criteria are likely to reproduce outcomes based on the wealth and race of the defendants. Will jail for those awaiting trial simply be replaced by e-shackles? How much will supervision and surveillance by probation, drug court and other officers expand? We do not know. There is little transparency in court and policing practices, and no real oversight over sheriffs and county jails.

Reform didn’t need to be so expensive or complicated. Ending cash bail outright, as has been developed in other states and Washington DC, would have been far simpler. We now face a muddled, expensive compromise, one unlikely to achieve significant decarceration even as it widens other components of mass incarceration and surveillance.

This is now a worrisome pattern for criminal justice reforms. Raise the Age reforms led to an estimated $500 million in new youth jails, expanded sheriff budgets, and the increasing supervision of youth. Closing Rikers is predicated on spending at least $11 billion to build new jails in the poorer parts of New York City. As New York Giant Michael Thomas told me before the community forum, building new modern jails in order to close old ones makes no sense if we want to overcome decades of mass incarceration. It is an insight that needs to be applied to the cascade of reforms ushering from Albany.

William Martin teaches at Binghamton University and is a co-author of “After Prisons? Freedom, Decarceration, and Justice Disinvestment.”

This report must start with a correction:  I mislead readers recently on the amount of money the Sheriff extracts from families of those in Broome County’s jail.  Focusing on high profits made on commissary purchases—from 230% profit on selling a bible to 560% on a pack of Ramen—led to an estimate of $102,000 in illegal profits on sales of $318,000.

This estimate however is incorrect, for new information reveals a much much higher source of money extracted from those in the jail:

Kickback payments from an avaricious private phone company have over the tenure of Sheriff Harder surely cost the families of Broome’s incarcerated literally millions of dollars.

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If you think your phone bill is too high, consider the fate of families who have someone stuck in the Broome County jail.  They are the targeted poor of the county:  the vast majority are in jail because they can’t afford the excessively high bail set by local judges for petty charges, face technical parole violations, or were captured by federal immigration officers.  At best, only one in four in the jail has been convicted of a crime. Your wife, husband, son, daughter or best friend is most likely there, quite simply, because they are too poor and far far too often Black or Latinx.

It is bad enough if you’ve lost your loved one’s contribution to rent, food, and childcare.  And now you have to send money to the jail commissary to keep them fed, washed, and clothed.   You naturally want to speak to them in this desperate situation.  Woe indeed, if you work long hours during the week or live a distance away for there are no weekend visiting times for the Broome County Jail, unlike for New York’s State prisons, Federal prisons, NY City jails,  and other nearby county jails (e.g. Cortland and Tompkins counties).

Broome County really does stand out in making it difficult for families.

So you need to call.  You go to the Sheriff’s jail website or look at notices in the jail’s waiting room and find just this posted: “Inmate Telephone:  GTL (866) 230-7761”.  That’s it. You wonder what “GTL” might be.  You call the number and it’s a private corporation and they offer to set up an account to pull money from you for calls from the jail. But ask what a call costs, and they can’t tell you, they refuse to tell you, indeed they cut you off when you ask.  You ask others in the jail visiting room, and a chorus of voices protest they are spending over $2/minute to call, amounting to hundreds of dollars.  It is scam widely known as documented on Youtube:

Global Tel Link video: Prison Profiteers

Wiser heads in the visiting room advise you to never accept a collect call with its heavy fees, and to sign up for a GTL account with only a local area code number.  Calls for outside the local area can be multiple dollars a minute—too bad if you are from another area code or calling from out of town (here is how to get a free google voice 607 area code for Broome County).[1]  And be sure you don’t pay for a call with a credit card since you will get an additional $10 or more cash fee added to GTL’s own setup and bewildering “fees” from GTL and payment services (e.g. Moneygram).

So you eventually figure this all out and find the cheapest rate is $4.35 for the first minute and 40 cents for each additional instate minute—that’s $10 for a 15 minute call. It need not be this way:  people in state prison pay only 65 cents while a 15-minute call from a Federal prison is $3.75.[2]

Why is staying in touch with loved ones, which reduces recidivism rates,[3] so expensive in Broome County?

Its simple: Broome County is determined to make as much money off incarceration as it can:  a contract signed by the Sheriff and Patrick Brennan, the Deputy County Executive, provides for massive kickbacks to the jail.   A copy of the contract obtained by a freedom of information request reveals that the Sheriff receives “forty-four percent (44%) of the gross revenue billed or prepaid by every completed call.”

And what does the kickback amount to?  Another FOIL document, attached here, records a payment to the jail of over $25,000 per month, totaling $319,858 in 2018.

Where does this money end up?  Like commissary profits, it isn’t visible in the accounts of the jail as laid out in the 2019 Broome County Budget (see page 156 for corrections revenue)  or in county audits of jail accounts (see the latest commissary audit here).  Letters to the County Executive and State Commission of Correction asking for accounting of these monies have gone unanswered.

We need not accept this. Over a decade of public protest and mobilization against such rapacious exploitation has resulted in the much lower charges in state and federal prisons—and even now free phone service in other cities.[4]  The same changes in contracts and legislation could, indeed should, happen soon in Broome County, and people are getting agitated.  Stay tuned.

 

Notes/Hyperlink sources

[1] See this site from the community organization Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier, for information if you have a loved one in the jail; it has information on visiting, mail, commissary, etc.

[2] The current state of costs from jails and prisons is provided here and here. Broome is among a long list of the worse offenders in NY State.

[3] Close family ties are critical; see the summery by Alex Friedman, “Lowering Recidivism through Family Communication” among others.

[4] See the resources and work done among others by the Campaign for Prison Phone Justice, and Prison Policy Initiative, and the Prison Phone Justice among others.  See for example the February 2019 report “State of Phone Justice: Local jails, state prisons and private phone providers” by Peter Wagner and Alexi Jones. Recommendations on how prisons and jails and legislatures can lower costs are here. Ending commission payments in all their forms is critical.

Who’s the Lawbreaker?  State Laws vs. County Jail Accounts

On any given day there are hundreds of local families with loved ones caged in the Broome County jail. Talk to any of them and you quickly find out how costly it is to sustain the lives of those inside.  Want to call your neighbor locked up inside?  A recent call of less than 7 minutes to my local phone ran $11.00. Want to keep your young friend fed, when he, like others, tells you of the thin meals leaving him hungry all the time?  You need to send in money so he can buy Ramen from the jail commissary.  Want your partner to have soap or shampoo? The incarcerated have to pay for it, one way or another.

Dig a little deeper, and you find out one reason for all these cross-cutting costs:  the corporation that profits from commissary deposits (Access Corrections) provides the food services (Trinity) and care packages (Access Securepak): it’s a vertical monopoly.

Try to bypass all this and mail in a bra, as permitted by state law? Forget that:  it is returned to Amazon, rejected by jail authorities.

Deposit money in your young Black friend’s jail account and you think he will then get to buy Ramen or shampoo?  Don’t count on it, for if this teenager was sent to solitary for an unknown reason (as is often related to be the case), and has a charge from years ago,  that’s a lingering $25 charge, for each solitary trip, even if the charges are years old.  Puzzled by why so many incarcerated persons in the visiting room  have unkempt, wild hair?  Well, if your son needs a haircut and you have put money in his account, that’s a $10 charge.  He’d rather forego the haircut and spend the $10 on food, stamps or soap. Want the clothes, wallet and cell phone your daughter came into jail with mailed back to you? That’s a $20, $30, $40 charge. And so it goes.

Deposit $50 or $100 in their jail account, and your friend or loved one may not see a penny of it.

And hundreds of local residents linger for months and months in the jail, with 80% of them unconvicted.  Even if there are no fees or charges, many families don’t have the money to support and stay in contact with their loved ones.  This is a poor person’s, a debtors’ prison, particularly for Black and Latinx residents of the county.  Most inside are trapped by high bails, coming as they do from Binghamton, with a poverty rate (33%) much higher than New York City (20%).

Profiting from Hunger, Profiting from the Poor Incarcerated

But where does the money friends and family send in to jail accounts go?  It is hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. How much is charged in fees, and who uses the money? We don’t know. Some basic facts are emerging from documents gotten from Freedom of Information requests, leading to yet more questions about the jail’s finances and the lack of local and state oversight.

The State Commission of Corrections mandates that jail and prison commissaries must be organized to produce “a modest return above costs.”  This doesn’t seem to apply to the Broome County Jail. The prices the Sherriff pays for goods are hidden, but surely must be bulk rates from what little we can find out. Compare jail prices to similar food and hygiene purchases at the local Walmart/Sams Club, where the profit rate is 2.1% on sales, and what does one find?

The jail’s profit ranges from 230% for a Bible to 560% for Ramen to 600% for a towel

Item	Commissary	Walmart/Sams Club	Jail  Profit
Towel	5.95	1.01*	600 %
Ramen	.95	.17	560 %
Washcloth	1.00	.23*	430 %
Decaf Coffee, 1 stick	.50	.15	330 %
Grape Jelly 1 oz	.40	.13	307 %
Kit Kat bar	1.70	.58	290 %
Holy Koran	27.95	10.00	280 %
Holy Bible	11.50	5.00	230 %
Macaroni & Cheese	1.50	.80	187 %
Playing cards	2.35	1.33	177 %
*actual county contract price (2017)

 

And what was the” modest profit” produced? It’s hard to tell: we need more information on kick-backs from contracts and overall profits.  But records obtained in response to a freedom of information act request on profits show disbursements from commissary of over $102,000, on sales of $318,000.

If Sheriff Harder was Sam Walton, this $100,000+ would be reduced to less than $7,000.

Has the Sheriff not read state laws and regulations?

Such vampire profits contravene state law. The State Commission of Corrections sets clear regulations for county jails, including the provision of hygiene items, accounts for the incarcerated, and the handling of commissary sales and profits.  It is hard to see how Broome County follows them.

Consider the following, starting with commissary regulation 9 CRR-NY 7016.1.  The state is clear, “The prices of any items offered for sale shall be set by the sheriff… and will provide a modest return above costs.” So why are prices 2, 3, 4 times higher than costs, and profits so massively excessive?

Where do the profits go?  The state is clear here too: “Profits resulting from commissary sales shall be… utilized only for purposes of prisoner welfare and rehabilitation” (emphasis added).  That sounds good. But are they? Where did the profits from selling over $45,000 of cheap Ramen go? Were they spent on education materials?  Job training? Books?

It is hard to tell. But here are a few of the items that the Sheriff reported being spent from commissary funds last year, (taken from a Freedom of Information request):

Three garden tractors                            $ 9,357
Indigent hygiene, intro packs          $ 24,000
Agway lawn & garden supplies:        $ 2,238
Flares                                                               $ 2,523
Haircuts                                                         $ 1,800
Copier lease:                                                   $ 960
Tires and parts for a trailer                    $ 700

Garden tractors and lawn supplies as meeting welfare needs of the incarcerated?  There is no food garden, although one could be used.  Flares to light the way to further rehabilitation? Copier leases provide for the incarcerateds’ welfare support, when persons inside already pay 25 to 50 cents per copy in the law library? And $24,000 for hygiene/indigent packs given to people when they are processed into the jail? Is it possible? Has anyone read state regulations 9 CRR-NY 7005.6NY-CRR and 9 CRR-NY 7005.4 that require the facility to provide  food, hygiene, and indigent haircuts at facility expense?

It gets worse.  This year the jail withdrew from commissary, for reasons that local citizens and even legislators cannot discern, the ability to buy from the commissary clean underwear, bras, and thermal shirts (necessary in the underheated cells of the jail where the use of blankets is banned during the day)–and this even though the most recent commissary list provided by the county shows them on sale.

Persons working in laundry confirm that underwear is old, stained by body fluids, and not adequately cleaned.  Bras, laundry workers have stated, are so old, torn, and dirty that they are almost unrecognizable as they go through the wash.  State regulation 9 CRR-NY 7005.7 clearly states that bras are permitted to be sent to women from outside vendors. But when even this was attempted from Amazon, an approved outside vendor, the jail refused delivery.

These miserable situations have been reported to the county executive and local legislators to no avail.

Who will enforce state rules and a common sense of decency for women and men in the jail?

What happened to the County Auditor?

It isn’t the county, which says it is fully aware of state regulations.  State regulations require regular audits of the jail.  And year after recent year the Broome County Department of Audit and Control, headed by Comptroller Alex J. McLaughlin and the Chairman of the Legislature, has dutifully fulfilled this responsibility to ascertain, in their own words, “whether commissary funds are being used and accounted for properly in accordance with State Corrections Law.” The findings?  “Based on the results of our examination, it is our opinion that the Sheriff’s Office is in compliance with State Law regarding the commissary fund.”  Is there something missing in the jail records and accounts that might sustain such a conclusion?

Ask the County and the Attorney General

It is time to ask county and state authorities, including the New York State Office of the Attorney General which oversees jail operations, and the State Comptroller which oversees contracts, to investigate–and ensure the county and Sheriff follow state law, if not common standards of humane treatment for those suffering in the jail.  There are too many anomalies, too many accounting irregularities.  We need to know:

• Why are jail prices for commissary items so high, and profits so excessive?
• Why are profits not spent on “rehabilitation and welfare” as required by state law?
• Why does the jail not provide basic food and hygiene needs as required in state law?
• Why have annual audits by the county not enforced state laws?
• Where does the money sent to inmate accounts go? How much is charged in unaccounted fees?
• What is the return on jail contracts for food, telephone, and commissary purchases—and why aren’t contracts posted on the county purchasing website like other contracts?

*******************

Note:  this post will be updated and corrected as as more information arrives, particularly regarding county jail profits and contracts with private firms operating in the jail.

How can we best educate Broome county’s kids and protect them from harm?  The choices are tough for parents, teachers, and school principals. Do we spend thin funding on more teachers or nurses?  Or a guidance or a mental health counselor? Or when it comes to safety, hardening the schools against armed attack and hiring armed police? Unfortunately fear, and not a rational calculation of where dangers lie, drives today’s calculations.

Fear is a powerful motivator.  In the Cold War years, children were drilled to “duck and cover” under their classroom desks to avoid the effects of Soviet atomic bombs.  Today students and teachers practice turning off lights, locking classroom doors, pulling down window shades, and huddling quietly in closets to hide from active shooters. Surprise lockdown drills have become the norm, reproducing a climate of insecurity and anxiety. One in three parents nationwide fear for the safety of their child at school, fed by lurid media coverage and politically calculated calls for more state security.

Living in fear imposes costs and choices.  Most prominent is the cost of police in our schools. In Broome County, as across the nation, the number of armed School Resource Officers (SROs) and civilian security staff has grown steadily.  What does this cost?  And has this reduced, prevented, or increased harm to our youth?

There is neither transparency nor much discussion here. School, city, and police budgets provide little help.  Incomplete responses to freedom of information requests to local towns, police departments, and the county, in addition to a survey of press and website listings, produce an incomplete total for Broome County schools of $1.3 million per year.  It looks like this:

 

District	School Resource Officers	Non-sworn civilian monitors
Binghamton	$190,000	$170,000
Vestal	$108,000	?
Chenango, Maine-Endwell (Broome County Sheriff)	$108,000	—
BOCES, Catholic Schools, Harpursville, Susquehanna Valley, Windsor; (District Attorney Cornwell’s Program)	$664,000	?
Johnson City	0	?

These are very incomplete figures, given that SRO costs remain hidden in many budgets, and even these tabulations do not include in most cases civilian security staff, costs of “hardening” school facilities, staff training, consultant fees, drill practices, etc.

For many of our elected representatives this is not nearly enough. State legislators, led by our Senator (and former Undersheriff and current police officer) Frederick Akshar, have long advocated putting armed officers in schools. Senate Bill S1330 cosponsored by Akshar proposes that the state directly fund a force of retired police officers in all public and private schools outside of New York City—while raising school security officer (SRO) pay over 60 per cent.

The cost? Close to $200 million a year.

As an employment program, adding 4,000 part-time retirees to the state payroll is impressive. Nationwide, we’ve seen billions now spent on policing and hardening schools. Yet glaringly absent are other resources:   14 million students go to a school with a police officer but no counselor, nurse, psychologist or social worker.

Even more critical is the simple fact that adding armed police to school hallways does little to protect youth from the dangers they may face.  As multiple reports by security firms,[1]  research scholars,[2] and the Congressional Research Service[3] tell us, deaths in schools from active shooters are a minuscule subset of school fatalities, less than 5 percent,[4] and an even smaller percentage of youth homicides or suicides by firearms.[5]  Shootings in and around schools are also exceedingly rare. Students know this: their fear of attack or harm while in school has been falling for over two decades.[6] Students in schools do face harm but from sources armed police can do little to prevent or resolve:  transport accidents, suicide, bullying, and hate crimes among other causes.

Indeed armed police may exacerbate these problems. They certainly increase the danger of kids ending up in what is commonly called the school-to-prison pipeline. For what we do know is that more policing in our schools is associated with more detention and arrests, particularly of African-American and Latinx students.  Incidents previously addressed by teachers, principals, and parents are increasingly turned over to retired police officers, who by training rely upon force and the criminal justice system.  Recent protests against Binghamton High School security staff beating down a Black student on Court street, and the strip searching of four young Black girls at East Middle School highlight the problem and the fear some students have of the police and security staff.

Indeed, as local statistics and national surveys indicate, policing in schools reinforces racial disparities, with racially dipropionate rates of detention and arrest feeding directly into the prison pipeline.  African-Americans, for example, compose 10 percent of Broome County’s students, but account for 43% of juvenile detentions and 50% of those on probation supervision. Where are the precursors?  In the Binghamton School District, which spends the most on armed and private security, African-American students are suspended at 2.5 times the rate for white students and suffer a 26% drop out rate.  County-wide, African-American are 10 percent of youth but 43% of juvenile detentions and 50% of those on probation supervision.

It is simply too costly a system: too many police in schools, too many poor, disabled and students of color channeled into the criminal justice system, and too few counselors, nurses, and mental health workers in our schools to really help kids resolve the conflicts and troubles of growing up in these difficult times.

Twenty years ago DARE, the police program in schools to prevent drug use, was shown to be a total failure and it collapsed.  We should do the same to its successors, and end, finally, unaccountable mass policing in our schools.

References

[1] Stephen C. Satterly Jr., “Report of Relative Risks of Death in U.S. K-‐12 Schools” (Safe Havens International, August 1, 2014).

[2] James H. Price and Jagdish Khubchandani, “School Firearm Violence Prevention Practices and Policies: Functional or Folly?,” Violence and Gender, March 19, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1089/vio.2018.0044.

[3] Authors Redacted, “School Resource Officers: Issues for Congress” (Congressional Research Service, July 5, 2018).

[4] Authors Redacted, 18.

[5] Price and Khubchandani, “School Firearm Violence Prevention Practices and Policies,” 2.

[6] Lauren Musu-Gillette et al., “Indicators of SChool Crime and Safety 2017” (Washington, D.C: U.S. Department of Education, U.S. Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics, March 2018), 105.

It has become far too common:  another person denied medical care at the Broome County Jail, and this time with gruesome and deadly consequences.  Today’s epitaph is written for Rob Card, a local carpenter, artist, and family man who was sent to the jail for violating probation on a minor drug charge. At the time of his arrest on January 8^th, he was being treated for a brain tumor and seizures, a fact known to the local police and court authorities.

Rather than getting the treatment he needed, his only relief at the jail was Tylenol. His condition quickly worsened, and as he had difficulty walking and clothing himself, he fell multiple times. In desperation Rob called his family and said “Broome County jail is killing me.” In this history repeats itself:  in 2015 Salladin Barton told his family ““The guards are going to kill me. You got to get me out of here.”  Sal, as friends and family remember him, died shortly thereafter.

Is this why such mystery surrounds Rob Card’s death? After Rob suffered a stroke and was near death in the jail, unknown local authorities—presumably a judge, a court appointed lawyer, and the district attorney, all without notifying his family–arranged for him to be released from custody.  He was reportedly carried out of the jail in a comatose state on January 20^th, only to be kept on life support so he could donate his organs. He was declared dead on January 22^nd,  a death neatly hidden from public view.

His family and friends are outraged. In less than 24 hours over 400 persons signed a petition this week asking for answers:

• Why did Rob need to be incarcerated?
• Why did he receive no treatment for his brain tumor and seizures?
• What lawyers and court officers directed his release in a comatose state?

Robert Card’s death was the ninth at our county jail since 2011 that we know of, a rate far above state and national norms.  In 2014 our jail’s private medical provider was indicted and fined by the State Office of the Attorney General. Hundreds of medical and abuse grievances go unanswered in system indicted by our own State Comptroller.  Community groups, especially Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier and Truth Pharm, have for many years now presented evidence of abuse and medical malfeasance to county officials.

And in face of all this, and a long-term falling crime rate, the county has bluntly accelerated the use of the jail as a depository for the poor who can’t afford bail, far too many Black residents, and those with substance use disorders and health problems of all kinds.  Every year the county legislature has expanded the local jail force and the district attorney’s budget, while cutting local health resources.  Over 75% of those in the jail have health issues, particularly substance use disorders, for which there is almost no long-term local treatment.  And too much of our short-term treatment is tied to the police and the courts, where criminal rather than medical procedures insure lapses in recovery and a constant cycling of persons in and out of jail.

We must do better. Why do we criminalize and incarcerate and harm so many, at so high a moral (and financial) cost?  County officials, the Sheriff, and the courts owe Robert Card’s family, and all of us, an answer.

[Submitted on Feb 25th as a commentary to the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin–and rejected]

In last year we have witnessed a rolling series of protests at police brutality against black youth and black women; the Binghamton school officials’ beat down of a young Black male student; and, now, the traumatizing and strip searching of four Black girls at East Middle school.  To the credit of the local community, protests have grown in size, led by the Progressive Leaders of Tomorrow (PLOT).  There will be another rally at East Middle School at 3:15 on Tuesday January 29^th (see the PLOT Facebook page for updates).

These are not isolated incidents, to be recorded briefly and then forgotten.  There is a systemic problem of the criminalization of Black youth that local officials will not admit.  Recall that one of the first acts of the Binghamton Mayor Richard David, was to close down the Human Rights Commission.  He and city legislators have refused to collect and disseminate the racial, ethnic and gender data of those stopped and frisked by city police.  Court proceedings and high cash bail are purposively shrouded in mystery.  County officials, despite years of testimony and protest by Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier (JUST), refuse to address brutal conditions and excessive deaths in the Broome County Jail. Meanwhile the County has massively expanded the budget of the jail and District Attorney, while cutting health funding and closing the local mental health center. And this despite declining crime rates for decades.

The result of mass policing, criminalization and mass incarceration?  Broome County has the highest incarceration rate of any county in the state.

For Black youth and their families, the process has its origins in school.  We know from academic studies over the last ten years that Black youth commit harmful acts, including the drug use these Black girls were accused of, at rates no higher and often statistically lower than white students.

How then do we answer these questions, questions that local officials have refused to address at successive board meetings:

• Why are black students in the Binghamton school district suspended at a rate 2 ½ times more than white students?
• Why do we have a 26% drop rate for Black students at Binghamton High School?
• Why is the Black drop out rate 50% higher than the white rate?

And after school?  Black youth are 10 % of the youth population of the county. Why are they:

• over 40 percent of those cast aside as Juvenile Offenders?
• over 40% of the youth captured by family court?
• almost 50 % of the youth put on probation?

And the end result: a county incarceration rate for Black residents over 2,000 per 100,000 (vs. 270 for whites).

And for contrast:  why are Black students only 5% of Binghamton University enrollment, but 15% of those arrested by Binghamton University Police?

Source and Data Notes:

• Enrollment and drop out rates from The New York State Education Department (NYSED)
• Disciplinary statistics from nationwide compilation by Propublica
• Juvenile Justice Statistics from: New York State, Division of Criminal Justice Services
• Comparative county incarceration rates, by race/ethnicity at Vera Institute
• Local justice data and events are tracked on justiceST.com and have been presented by JUST members to county and state officials, including testimony at the NY State House Assembly hearings. Additional data and references from www.justtalk.blog .
• Binghamton University enrollment statistics from the National Center for Education Statistics,  Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS);  BUPD arrest rate from data received from a Freedom of Information Act request.

The new year brings a new budget for Broome County, with the County Executive and Legislators celebrating a tax cut.  As noted in a previous column here, the proposed budget projected more funding for incarceration. The approved budget reveals even more emphasis increasing funding for the prosecution, policing, and incarceration of the people, especially the poor people, of the county.

Elected officials blame the most dramatic increases on implementing Raise-the-Age, the state-imposed mandate to remove 16- and 17-year-olds from adult county jails. This indeed another “reform” that has inflated carceral costs around the state. Yet the state is, we are told, to repay related expenses. And one might have expected a reduction in local county jail costs given the removal of youth and their special needs.  That hasn’t happened. Indeed the county’s new budget reveals the continuing acceleration of the practices of mass incarceration well beyond the forces targeted at youth and particularly Black and Latinx youth.

It presents a puzzle. One might ask, as did a Cortland county legislator in a public meeting there late last year:

‘Why are our county jail costs rising without end, when our county’s population is steady or falling over time and crime rates are falling?’

This is certainly the case in Broome county, where crime rates are now lower than twenty years ago, the population is smaller,[1] and yet jail funding has starkly, radically, risen[2]:

The number of correctional officers has risen from 167 to 194 over this time. This year’s budget continues the trend, bringing us four new correction officers and two new staff for the Sheriff, and five new staff for the probation office as well.

Who is losing funding? The budget eliminates, among other cuts, six public health lines, including two nurses; four nurses at Willow Point nursing home; and one part-time veterans service assistant. The county mental health division, having seen its budget cut by over 70% in the last fifteen years, and down to just 3 positions, is simply reported to have “requested a 1.3% cut in County Support.”[3]

Both Republican and Democratic legislators have continued to vote for these priorities: the continual expansion of policing and incarceration, and continual cuts in public health and public social services.

The long-term push for incarceration is even evident within the county’s criminal justice system. While the number positions in the district attorney’s office has grown from 27 to 38 in the last fifteen years, the number in the public defender’s office has remained flat at 21. Expenditures by both departments chart a startlingly enhancement of the resources and power of the DA’s office:

Is it any surprise that that those lingering unconvicted in the Broome County jail constantly complain about lack of access to harried public defenders?  Or that given such allocations, Broome County has literally unparalleled resources to find and prosecute even the most minor of misdemeanors, giving us the dubious honor of having the highest incarceration of all 62 counties in the state?

Almost all these changes are reported week after week as part of frugal budgeting, bewildering attempts to make sense of what is going on in the county. Take this past week’s announcement that a new state requirement, which requires defendants to have representation at their arraignment, would be implemented by having central arraignment at the Broome County Jail. This was heralded by all our elected officials as a masterpiece of fiscal efficiency:

• Assemblywoman Lupardo: “This change will streamline the process, saving taxpayers money,”
• Senator Akshar: “Our residents deserve to have their hard-earned tax dollars spent efficiently by their local government,”
• County Executive Jason Garner: “We have a plan which not only will result in taxpayer savings but at the same time allow law enforcement to be out on the roads protecting the people,[4]
• Sherriff David Harder: “This is going to save a lot of manpower.”[5]

And where do these savings come from? They reportedly result from avoiding the cost of hiring four additional public defenders to represent persons at courts spread out around the county.  Yet as local TV station WBGH reports, the sheriff has been allocated five new officers for central arraignment at the jail.  Are that many needed for but two arraignment sessions a day?  Can anyone do the math? Sheriff’s Officers reportedly average $72,000 or so in pay. PDs reportedly average $77,000 or so. Four PDs, who might have actually helped defendants, are certainly cheaper than five new correctional officers.  And what happened to the savings from not having officers transport persons?

What the future will bring is suggested in the County Executive’s proposed Capital Improvements Program for 2019-2024: another $3 million for the Sheriff’s complex, including $700,000 for a garage next year.

It is hard to see any savings, much less a move away from decades of massively expensive over-incarceration.

References

[1] Population has fallen from 200,000 to 194,000, and while crime rates have fluctuated up and down, a downward trend is visible:

Source: New York State, Open Data, data.ny.gov, “Index Crimes by County and Agency: Beginning 1990,” https://data.ny.gov/Public-Safety/Index-Crimes-by-County-and-Agency-Beginning-1990/ca8h-8gjq

[2] Data on county budget lines are taken from annual, passed budgets posted online. Assistance from George Staudter on setting up initial budget figures is greatly acknowledged.

[3] Broome County Budget, Adopted 2019, 11/15/2018, p. 235.

[4] Lupardo, Akshar, and Garner statements from Assemblywomen Donna Lupardo website, “New law allows central arraignments at Broome County Jail, January 10, 2019.

[5] WICZ, “Broome County Is Now Central Location For Arraigning Defendants,” January 10, 2019.

The City of Binghamton and SUNY-Binghamton fully agree on at least one principle:  there is seemingly no limit to funding mass incarceration and mass policing, even in times of fiscal crisis.

Binghamton’s City Council, which prides itself on cutting budgets and trimming social services while adding more police officers every year, announced last month the purchase of the city’s own $275,000 armored personnel carrier.  The Sheriff already has one in his fleet of large military vehicles scattered around the county; one would think one is enough to repel any military invasions or dark threats to the local state. Not to be outdone, announced this month was yet another holiday gift:  a $1.2 million updating of police headquarters.

SUNY-Binghamton, which already funds part of the City police budget, hasn’t quite matched the City’s moves this month—after all the University just announced a major fiscal crisis.  The President and Provost quickly blamed 2% raises for faculty and staff. Yet the raises have long been anticipated, and are smaller than the rampant rise in University spending in other, less transparent, areas.

Millions of dollars are likely to be recouped by not filling vacancies arising from over 90 retirements alone this year.  Harpur College, which does most of the teaching on campus, is likely to suffer particularly. Some programs have already announced they will no longer be able enroll new students.  In my own department six faculty are leaving or retiring, with no replacements likely at any time in the near future–gutting course listings, new programming, and recruitment of students.

As the campus newspaper Pipedream reported, among other cutbacks “University libraries face a 4 percent budget cut for next year, and the University is implementing a hiring freeze, which includes all leadership searches. The only exception to the freeze will be teaching assistants and adjunct professors.”

This however has been proven to be inaccurate.  For shortly after the freeze was announced, the University proceeded with hiring a new police chief, rather than appoint an interim replacement as is now the case for other senior positions across the campus.  And police chiefs aren’t cheap:  the outgoing Chief’s rate of pay was $163,000 last year.  Nor was this all:  more expensive is the creation of a wholly new Associate Vice President position and office for the outgoing Chief.  Associate Vice Presidents earn upward of $200,000.   And this is before the approximately 40% more for fringe benefits.

For those on campus, these moves continue a long steady growth in the armed and militarized presence of police.  Binghamton University’s police is already larger than that of Johnson City, Vestal, and Endicott.

Fiscal crisis and fiscal constraint?  It seems not, when it comes to growing the machinery of mass incarceration, notwithstanding low and receding crime rates.

December 23, 2018

Cuomo’s “Carceral Humanism”

Published November 16, 2018 in Jacobin

Andrew Cuomo is being touted as a 2020 presidential contender. But his juvenile justice reform law does more to shore up the carceral state than attack it.

New York governor Andrew Cuomo speaking at rally in 2015. Wikimedia

It was a historic day for youth, New York governor Andrew Cuomo told his audience. With the “Raise the Age” bill, the state would no longer be one of only two that prosecuted and imprisoned all sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds as adults.

For years, parents, community activists, and liberal reformers had pushed for the change. The 2015 death of Kalief Browder, who at the age of sixteen landed in Rikers Island prison for allegedly stealing a backpack, added more urgency. After three brutal years awaiting a trial that never came, Browder returned home innocent of any charges but deeply traumatized. Support from his family, the media, and even celebrities — from Oprah to Jay-Z — was not enough. Unable to retrieve his lost youth, Kalief committed suicide.

Two years later, on April 9, 2017, Cuomo signed the Raise the Age bill in Harlem. Turning to Kalief’s brother, Akeem, he proudly proclaimed: “Your brother did not die in vain. Your brother died to make a social change and he has. God Bless You.” Standing alongside the Reverend Al Sharpton and Harlem Democrat Charles Rangel, Akeem looked on as Cuomo affixed his signature to the bill. Politicians, the press, and many youth advocates celebrated.

Reactions a year later are much grimmer. Akeem refused to endorse Cuomo in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, joining others who had come to see a future of not less punishment of youth, but more. Everywhere across the state police, prosecutors, and jail administrators are building new youth prisons and courts, and adding to county payrolls new correctional staff, court officers, judges, youth counselors, probation officers, and prosecutors. Criminal justice reform in the Empire State has come indeed, but for many it presents but a new face of mass incarceration and mass policing.

Examining the current slate of criminal justice reforms, activist James Kilgore has warned of the danger of “carceral humanism,” with jails repackaged as caring social service centers and alternatives to incarceration simply extending the carceral net. Anti-prison movements are also sounding the alarm. From Los Angeles to upstate New York, activists are challenging the use of law enforcement agencies as social work providers and the expansion of jails as a means to deal with social problems like mental health and substance use disorders.

Cuomo’s Raise the Age bill falls into the same trap — reshaping detention and probation in a way that extends punitive state intervention into the lives of young people without paring back the carceral state.

What Went Wrong?

Things weren’t supposed to turn out like this. When it was first introduced in 2012, Raise the Age was designed to transfer young people with less serious crimes to family court. The goal was to shrink the shadow of the legal system in young New Yorkers’ lives, particularly poor, working-class youth of color.

But despite receiving wide support from community groups and youth advocates, the bill languished in the State Assembly. And when public support for juvenile justice reform grew, the governor and those with vested interests in retaining the juvenile control complex sprung into action — eventually defanging the bill.

A first step occurred in 2014, when Cuomo created a “Commission of Youth, Public Safety and Justice.” He staffed it with experts vested in the system: state agency heads, prominent lawyers, senior law enforcement officials — and a sprinkling of foundation and nonprofit executives. A year later he launched a campaign to Raise the Age. While formally based on the commission’s recommendations, the legislation the governor proposed bowed to the designs and pressures of sheriffs, prosecutors, and conservative politicians. Organizations like the District Attorneys Association of the State of New York fought to expand the list of felonies that would require youth to remain subject to adult criminal courts and have permanent criminal records. Conservative Democrats in the State Senate did the same.

These efforts undermined the bill and those whose age was “raised.” While young people charged with misdemeanor arrests will automatically be transferred to family court, those charged with violent felonies involving “significant physical injury,” “display of a weapon,” or a “sex offense” will be prosecuted in specialized “youth parts” in criminal court. Some of these cases could potentially be transferred to family court, but district attorneys will still have unfettered power to send youth to adult courts whenever there are (undefined) “exceptional” circumstances.

Even worse, the bill leaves untouched the draconian Juvenile Offender Act of 1978, which turbocharged the punitive turn in the juvenile justice system. The act allowed the state to treat fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds as adults for a laundry list of felonies, from possession of a weapon on school grounds to burglary. Under the legislation, even thirteen-year olds accused of murder can be tried as adults.

Raise the Age also does little to change the collateral costs of being swept up in the criminal justice system. Most sixteen- and seventeen-year olds will still bear the scarlet letter of an adult criminal record. According to the Division of Criminal Justice Services, 3,063 sixteen- and seventeen-year olds were charged in 2017 with violent felonies that the new law’s passage would not affect. Raise the Age also imposes a complicated process for sealing juvenile criminal records, and increases the wait time for sealing felony records from three to ten years. This means that as young people transition into adulthood they will have a harder time accessing education, housing, and employment. And those most impacted by these changes, as in years past, would remain black and Latino youth.

Perhaps most perversely, the bill wouldn’t have even helped Kalief Browder. As scholar and activist Alexandra Cox notes, Raise the Age significantly raises penalties for many youth, particularly for those charged, as Browder was, with a violent felony (most of which never result in a felony conviction). If Browder were arrested today, he would still be treated as an adult and could even end up in the hellish situation of long-term incarceration.

New Forms of Confinement

Raise the Age advocates, relying on brain science research, argue that the adolescent mind is not fully developed until age twenty-five and that young people therefore don’t fully realize the consequences of their actions.

Following this logic, the bill created a new category of “adolescent offenders” that covers sixteen- and seventeen-year olds charged with violent felonies and sends them to separate facilities jointly regulated by the Office of Children and Family Services and the State Commission on Corrections. The new bill distinguishes between nonviolent and violent offenses, reflecting wider trends in criminal justice reform today.

Since the implementation process began on October 1, New York City has transferred an estimated one hundred sixteen- and seventeen-year olds from Rikers Island to New York’s two existing secure juvenile facilities: Horizons in the Mott Haven section of South Bronx and Crossroads in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Both of these facilities are operated by Association of Children’s Services (ACS), the main city agency in charge of child welfare. This leaves a large youth population at Rikers, since sixteen- and seventeen-year olds represent only one-fourth of the overall youth population held there.

It’s not clear that transferring young people from adult to youth facilities will produce “kinder” and more “humane” confinement conditions. Since the start of the current fiscal year, there have been 385 instances of Horizons and Crossroads staff using restraints on youth. The South Bronx facility has also been hit with numerous allegations of sex abuse and is currently being sued by a plaintiff who claims to have been sexually assaulted by a guard when he was fifteen years old. And despite attempts to showcase a modern facility with renovated units and brightly painted walls and murals, repurposing the facilities has layered on the symbols of imprisonment: barbed wire, hardened walls and doors, and guard posts. Visitors enter through metal detectors, young people wear uniforms, and the incarcerated are confined to windowless rooms.

Carceral staff is also being bulked up — Rikers guards and other correctional officers supervising adults will be transferred to Horizons and Crossroads. On Rikers Island there were roughly 147 officers supervising sixteen- and seventeen-year olds. That number will now double, and for the next two years they will work jointly with ACS staff in Horizons and Crossroads while new youth supervisors are trained. According to the president of the Correction Officer’s Union, Rikers guards will be the only ones permitted on night duty in the Bronx facility.

The use of correctional officers in the renovated facilities maintains the deep culture of violence that activists have long organized to end. Already, staffers have been called in to quell recent bouts of violence in Horizons, and have implemented various rules like limiting movement in the hallways and the right to carry and use pepper spray (previously banned by the state in this particular facility). These changes have already earned Horizons the name “mini-Rikers.”

The scramble by smaller and rural counties outside New York City to find places to incarcerate 16- and 17-years olds has been even more daunting and uncertain. New York City may be able to spend $300 million to build out its two existing youth facilities; no such funds and few facilities exist upstate.  Governor Cuomo did insert $100 million in the state budget to cover such costs but it won’t be enough, particularly given that the cost of confining a young person in a state facility can now run over $1,000/day. This is not a minor problem: 45 percent of recent arrests of 16- and 17-year olds took place outside New York City.

One solution being pursued is to repurpose and reopen state juvenile detention centers that had been closed as part of the “close to home” reform effort, which shuttered abusive and remote youth prisons and sent youth back to far cheaper facilities in and around New York City. For example, the grievously misnamed Harriet Tubman Center in Cayuga County, closed in 2010, will now be refurbished and reopened as a secure youth facility with a $12 million investment from the state and eighty-five newly hired employees.

The state has also committed itself to spending $29 million to expand a facility in Monroe County, and almost double that amount for detention centers in Livingston and Adirondack counties. Expansion of other county and nonprofit facilities has forged ahead as well, including proposals to truck in modular housing units as a stop-gap measure.

For many small and rural counties, however, the only solution will be to ship youth off to distant juvenile centers run by the state, other counties, or nonprofit agencies. These new and renovated complexes represent a reversal of the most celebrated of New York State’s reforms: the closing of sixteen state prisons and even more youth detention centers since 2009. Most importantly, despite the rhetoric of sparing sixteen and seventeen-year-olds from criminal justice involvement, many teenagers will continue to be confined and incarcerated in facilities that are indeed prisons.

Expanding the Carceral Net

The most striking impact of Raise the Age can be seen in the increase in court, police, and probation operations.

In Broome County, home of Binghamton University, the new county budget is dominated by the accouterments of youth incarceration. While social and human services continue to be cut even as an opioid epidemic rages, the Democratic County Executive in his recent budget speech outlined fifteen new positions for 2019, all tied to Raise the Age. One proposal to save money was to simply buy e-shackles for youth — something officials have also proposed in the far north because they couldn’t find a suitable detention center north of Albany. Officials in Tompkins county, home to Cornell University, simply note that the $7/day cost of incarcerating a youth at home with a shackle is far cheaper than $600/day expected at the revamped Hillbrook center.

A more insidious effect of Raise the Age will be the expansion of probation for adolescents. Legislators in both Lewis and Broome County have approved the hiring of more probation officers who will assess adolescents and transport them to other facilities. Tompkins County officials estimate that they will have to spend at least $300,000 on new probation officers and transport. Similar efforts are also underway in New York City to meet the increasing caseloads anticipated both in Family Court and the new Youth Parts in Criminal Court. These officers will supplement the hires made in recent years to staff the newly created specialized adolescent unit handling sixteen to twenty-four year olds throughout the city’s five boroughs.

We know that placing more youth on probation has high costs. Avoiding all contact with police — often one of the main conditions of probation — is difficult for many young people who live in tightly surveilled and heavily policed neighborhoods. Probation officers also tend to play a far greater role in Family Court than in adult courts. Probation officers working in Family Courts usually conduct the intake of youth and recommend the level of punishment — ranging from release on one’s own recognizance to imposing electronic monitoring, probation, and in the last instance, detention. Transferring the vast majority of arrests of sixteen- and seventeen-year olds on misdemeanor charges  to Family Court, instead of facilitating diversion or dismissal, will impose further punitive controls over youth.

In short, a minor arrest will now lead to greater scrutiny of young people’s lives by a host of state actors including prosecutors, judges and probation officers. Raise the Age Bill does very little if anything for adolescents charged with violent felonies. And it will expand surveillance and social control in the lives of youth charged with misdemeanors — youth who would otherwise have their case diverted or dismissed.

Less Is More

In the 1970s the criminal justice system was in crisis, and then as now the call for change was supported by both liberal and conservative reformers. The result was mass incarceration and mass policing. As juvenile justice reforms proceed today, we must ask: are we destined to unwittingly repeat this history?

Governor Cuomo casts Raise the Age as an integral part of New York’s quest to be “a progressive beacon for the nation” in the age of Trump. Yet it is hard to square this with the construction of new juvenile facilities, the expansion of existing ones, and the hiring of more probation officers, district attorneys and correctional officers. This is not a departure from the punitive past. In fact, it was reform that led the city to create its very own penal colony, Rikers Island. The design and construction of this and many other New York prisons, jails, and juvenile facilities are a testament to the results of carceral humanism, the call for “kinder” and more “humane” forms of punishment.

If there is a silver lining, it is this: the crude numbers of those imprisoned in adult and even juvenile jails has been steadily falling under vigorous public pressure. The number of youth arrested and sent into detention has fallen by 60 percent in the last eight years. We need to make sure these real gains continue — and are not undercut by new novel forms of probation, parole, e-shackles, and confinement. Our goal should be less incarceration and less social control of our youth, particularly the poor and working-class youth most affected. They deserve no less.

About the Author

Zhandarka Kurti is a postdoctoral fellow in New York University’s Prison Education Program. She teaches at Wallkill Correctional Facility and conducts research on the politics of criminal justice reform.

William Martin teaches at SUNY-Binghamton and is coauthor of After Prisons? Freedom, Decarceration, and Justice Disinvestment and a founding member of Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier. He covers local justice matters at justtalk.blog.

 

SUNY-Binghamton University (BU) now has a larger police force than any of the surrounding cities of Endicott, Johnson City, or Vestal. Only Binghamton, where many students live and where the University funds additional city police, has more.[i]

Recent protests against racial profiling and assault at Binghamton High School highlight studies showing that adding police and security forces accelerates racial profiling and racialized punishment of students, and fails to stop bullying, drug use, or conflict. Is something similar true for BU?

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the University responded that the BUPD does not record stops on campus, and certainly not by race, ethnicity or gender.  To be fair, neither does the City of Binghamton where city councilpersons have rejected  a proposal to do so.  Nor does the University admit to having any similar records for campus disciplinary procedures.  Where such data are revealed, as for stop-n-frisk in New York City, the public protest has been vigorous–and led to changing the policies imposed by police chiefs and actual policing practices.

The one statistic that cannot be avoided however is arrest data.  It is reasonable to ask:  What percentage of the student population at SUNY-Binghamton is Black, and what percentage of arrests by the BUPD are of Black persons?  We know from long-term national studies that Black youth generally commit harmful acts at rates no higher than other population groups, and that the Black youth use drugs, a major campus “crime,” at lower rates than white youth.[ii]

Here is the situation from the available and admittedly poor data we have:

These data naturally lead to further questions: how does the University Administration and the BU Police Department explain such disparities?  And why can’t we find out the number, race, and ethnicity of persons stopped and questioned on campus, and disciplined on campus? It isn’t for a lack of resources: there has been a proliferation of offices, staffing and funding related to not just policing but so-called diversity programs on campus (is the number of Black students that low?). Is there something else hidden here?

[i] As reported by the NYS Division of Criminal Justice Statistics for 2017, the total personnel counts are: SUNY-Binghamton 55, Endicott 37, Johnson City 44, Vestal 37, and Binghamton 151.

[ii] See among others Bruce Western, Punishment and Inequality in America (New York: R. Sage Foundation, 2006), 44–47.

Four years ago many of us attended a meeting of the County legislature to argue against spending $5 million to expand the jail.  We lost that argument.

Two years later the new jail opened at a cost of $ 6 million to house 600 persons (it now houses less than 450 Broome residents). The $6 million was just the down payment:  thirteen new correctional officers were immediately hired to staff the new facility. Subsequent additions to the District Attorney’s office allowed the county to prosecute more misdemeanors, particularly by those who have health or drug problems. Build it and they will come.

It’s been costly: the Sheriff’s jail budget alone has ballooned in four years from $23.8 million to over $29 million proposed for 2019, continuing a long acceleration under both Republican and Democratic County Executives:

Correctional Officer positions in the last four years have risen from 169 to 194.

And all this, despite ever lower crime rates.

As a result of these efforts and funding, Broome County now has the highest incarceration rate in the state—yes, in the state.  Reflecting corresponding cuts in health and social services, we rank 55^th in health care among the states’ 62 counties.

This year’s proposed budget follows this path:   it’s a mass incarceration, mass policing budget.

How was this year’s increase justified?  In presenting his proposed 2019 budget, Jason Garner, the Broome County Executive, blamed the new Raise the Age bill, which requires some 16 year olds this year, and some 17 year olds next year, to be referred to youth and family courts, and not automatically to be charged and tried in adult courts (until this year New York was only one of two states that considered 16 and 17 year olds as adults).

Local State Senator Akshar, a former Broome County Undersheriff,  had vigorously opposed the bill, falsely charging that it would “compromise public safety by not holding violent 16 and 17 year olds accountable for rape and murder”; the bill did no such thing as local media reported.  Local District Attorney Cornwell was even more violent and fanciful in his opposition, telling the media that Raise the Age would  “lead to the exploitation of children, who drug dealers will prey upon, to sell poisonous drugs, without the threat of criminal prosecution.”

The crippled bill that passed requires, the County Executive tells us, 15 new positions to deal with just a few 16 year and 17 year old youth. This includes it seems:

• 4 new corrections officers (despite youth no longer being held in the jail)
• 1 (or 2?) new district attorneys (we need to prosecute more youth?)
• 3 new probation officers (for whom, what numbers?)
• 1 more family court judge (are there that many cases?)
• More e-shackles for youth (and adults? At what price?)

It isn’t clear from the submitted budget what these costs are, but they will surely be high and continue for many years. We’ve seen no justification. Surely, we should ask: in an era of falling youth crime rates, do we really need this?

And: who will pay?  The County Executive assures us Albany will. Really? Have plans for these positions and costs been submitted to the State?  Have they been approved by the State, as they must be, before any financial reimbursement is approved?  Can we see them? Or will we in Broome County end up paying?

Is even the state money there? The Governor put $100 million in the state budget to pay costs by all the state’s counties.  New York City’s costs are alone estimated at $300 million.

What we have, as in the past, is the use of “reforms” to expand incarceration, policing, courts, and district attorney budgets–this time on the back of punishing yet more youth.

September 22, 2018

Yesterday Binghamton Mayor Richard C. David, Binghamton Police Chief Joseph T. Zikuski, and the Broome County District Attorney Stephen J. Cornwell Jr. launched a joint offensive to denounce those who have protested local police brutality. Standing in front of deep ranks of police officers, they jointly met the press to reject any public charges of the unnecessarily violent arrest of a 5’ 2” Black woman outside the YWCA.

As the press dutifully reported, Police Chief Zikukski was “outraged” at any criticism.   DA Cornwell sternly exclaimed that “there is only one, only one conclusion that can be made! There was no misconduct by the police officers involved.”  Mayor David proudly confirmed that “after reviewing the videos, I can say without hesitation, the officers responded and acted appropriately.”  The DA agreed: “You would have to be from another planet to come up with any other conclusion.”

Why such language and why such a show of force?

The city, county, and police do face a common problem:  community complaints of police violence are escalating all across the country. That’s true locally as well.  In less than a month we have seen three instances of community mobilization against police violence, two backed by video and bystanders’ accounts (one on the harsh detention of Black/disabled children here and the YWCA’s account here).  As in the past, the city, county and police refuse to release any of their surveillance or body-cam footage and rules for them. Even the local media is blinded, the city having rejected (as usual) an attempt by the local press to get a copy of the police’s videos through a freedom of information act.  So much for transparency and oversight.

This should put an end to liberal reformers’ hopes for body cameras, which is now a $ billion industry.  In the wake of Ferguson and increasing exposes on police brutality, many reformers called for police forces to adopt body cameras.  When they know they are under observation, so the argument went, people, even police, behave better.  And public confidence in the police would be reaffirmed.  Or so the argument went.

Data from surveys of large urban police forces soon undercut these assumptions, as they showed that police wearing cameras used force and faced public complaints at the same rate as officers without cameras.  Meanwhile police-controlled cameras rise in ever greater numbers among us, backed forcefully by the Mayor and his allies, including in the past SUNY-Binghamton President Harvey Stenger (who faced his own protests in 2017 over giving $1 million for more police and cameras in town).

When the Mayor tells us “body cameras captured everything at the YWCA from start to finish from multiple angles without favor or bias,” we should demand: let the community see it, all of it, all the time. When city officials proclaim the lack of bias in policing we should ask:  open up to public oversight the data on stops, arrests and bail by race, gender, age—something city and and county officials have rejected forcefully in past years. What are they hiding?

The one statistic we do have isn’t reassuring: diversity in their ranks.   At the Broome County Jail, the Correctional Officer force is 97.5% white.  As for the city’s police force, this is what the Press and Sun-Bulletin reports: “Among the ranks of the 138-member Binghamton Police Department, 13 officers are women and three are black. If the department reflected the city’s demographics, 69 officers would be women and 21 would be black.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Late yesterday Roderick Douglass posted a news story on how the “Endicott Police Mistakenly Tase Disabled Bystander, Causing Heart Attack.”   As Douglass reports, witnesses state that Devon Johnson, an Endicott resident, rushed to scene of a car accident last Sunday, removed a victim from the car, and waited for first responders. Searching for a Black man who fled the scene on foot, the police grabbed Johnson—another Black man. While his partner frantically told them he had a pacemaker, he was tased several times.  He had a heart attack, and was taken to UHS hospital.  The police charged Mr. Johnson with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, and his partner with disorderly conduct.

This is the third time there has been public community protest about police violence in recent weeks.  The first focused on Binghamton officers who on August 11^th roughly handled and detained a 13 year old girl and a developmentally challenged 14 year old boy.  This was captured on video. The second, also on video,  involved the abusive treatment and arrest of a Black woman outside the YWCA.  A large public demonstration on August 17th protested the first; the second led to a public rebuke from the YWCA for the violent, public escalation of a dispute that had resolved itself until police arrived on the scene.

There are some elemental truths here.  If you call the police, expect an armed and often fearfully violent response. That is how police are trained to respond to every call, as senior officers and police research groups themselves report.  If a Black or Latinx person is involved, expect a racially-biased response:  data and studies from across the nation continually document this.  If the incident involves a person with mental health problems or substance use disorders, expect the criminalization of the individual, their incarceration, and, in too many cases, their death.

Can we imagine different outcomes? Can we employ community forces trained in de-escalating, rather aggressively exacerbating, domestic and family disputes? What might happen if persons with mental health problems were met by counselors rather than armed police? Is it possible to imagine giving persons who want drug treatment access to it, rather than repetitive confrontations with the police followed by stints in jail (or worse, death by overdose)?

Op-ed published in the Press and Sun Bulletin, September 16, 2018, (they provided the new title) with additional references here (see end of text below).

Schools Don’t Need More Resource Officers

Recently, the Press & Sun-Bulletin reported District Attorney Steve Cornwell’s accelerating effort to place yet more police in our schools.

We’ve seen this before: in the 1980s and 1990s, the DARE drug prevention program put officers in the nation’s schools at a cost of over $1 billion. By 2000, it was clear the program was completely ineffective, and it collapsed. As one mayor put it, it was a fraud upon the public and public education.

As school budgets tighten, parents and teachers might wonder if shifting resources once again from educational programs to police supervision of students is wise. The DA, in announcing the expansion of the Student Resource Officers, surely thinks so: “… with their backgrounds, training and field experience, our School Resource Officers have dealt with issues related to children, domestic violence, drug abuse and violence — these experiences and lessons are invaluable to the schools and students.”

But is this the case? Does the experience of retired police officers with adult violence, SWAT teams and undercover drug operations help solve the real problems of youths and our schools?

Empirical studies show that there is little evidence that having armed police in school corridors prevents drug use, bullying, and disruptive or even violent behavior. Does it really make sense to turn a scuffle among students into an assault charge, or acting out in class into a suspension and a charge of disorderly conduct? Are these police matters, or problems to be resolved by parents, teachers and those trained in effective alternatives to detention and incarceration?

What we do know is that schools with SROs have fewer resources, especially counselors, to address students’ social, emotional and discipline needs. SRO schools also refer kids to the juvenile legal system at a rate five times greater than schools without SROs, with poor, black and Latino students far more likely to be suspended, expelled or drop out because of unevenly applied, punitive policies.

Do we really need another 10 years to find out what doesn’t work? Can we afford it? Can our youths?

William Martin is a founding member of Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier and teaches at Binghamton University.

Additional references (not in newspaper):

Multiple long-term studies chart the failure of DARE to change students’ use of drugs;  one study  suggested that DARE students were more likely than their peers to experiment with drugs and alcohol.  See among others:

• Steven L. West and ^,Keri K. O’NealPhD, “Project D.A.R.E. Outcome Effectiveness Revisited,” American Journal of Public Health, October 10, 2011. Conclusion: D.A.R.E. is ineffective.
• S T Ennett, N S Tobler, C L Ringwalt, and R L Flewelling, How effective is drug abuse resistance education? A meta-analysis of Project DARE outcome evaluations.”, American Journal of Public Health 84, no. 9 (September 1, 1994): pp. 1394-1401,
• And recent press report summaries: Christopher Ingraham, “A brief history of DARE, the anti-drug program Jeff Sessions wants to revive,” Washington Post, July 12, 2017,
• Denis P. Rosenbaum, and Gordon Hanson, “Assessing the Effects of School-Based Drug Education: A Six-Year Multilevel Analysis of Project D.A.R.E.,” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 35, no. 4 (November 1, 1998): 381–412,
• Deanna N.Devlin, Mateus Rennó Santos, Denise C. Gottfredson, “An evaluation of police officers in schools as a bullying intervention,”Evaluation and Program Planning, Volume 71, December 2018, Pages 12-21. Conclusion: “SROs do not have an effect on bullying in schools. Policy implications of these findings suggest that programs that focus on components such as teaching social and emotional competency skills, improving relationships between students and adults, and creating a positive school environment may be more effective in reducing bullying than a security procedure such as the use of SROs. Alternative programs should be explored to mitigate bullying and improve the well-being of students.”

And on where DARE is most deployed, and on the need for alternatives, see for example

Ebony Slaughter-Johnson, Karen Dolan, Myacah Sampson, Report: Students Under Siege, July 24, 2018, Institute of Policy Studies. Among their conclusions:

• Schools with school resource officers (SROs) refer children to the juvenile legal system for “disorderly conduct” at a rate almost five times that of schools without SROs.
• Recent research indicated that even one suspension can double the likelihood that a student drops out of school.
• Black students, who during the 2013 to 2014 school year represented 15.5 percent of the public school student population, were 46 percent of those punished with multiple suspensions outside of school.
• According to Kids Count, which uses data from the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights, for the 2013-2014 school year, nearly three million students in U.S. public schools experienced in-school suspension, and nearly three million students experienced out-of-school suspension. This trend continues for the 2015 to 2016 school year.

 

 

On Saturday September 8th another case of Binghamton Police Department violence on a Black woman was reported by the YWCA on their facebook page.  Local press reports provide the official view and the charges the woman now faces, and a report in the BU campus newspaper. The woman is in the Broome County Jail, where protests  against the treatment of women in the new $6 million wing continue. This takes place only a few weeks after a strongly supported local rally against police violence organized by Progressive Leaders of Tomorrow (PLOT). And of course the history is much longer if often invisible:   Binghamton University Students  rallied in 2017 support of Black female students’ mistreatment by the BPD as well (and lack of University support in pressing complaints with the BPD). And then back in 2013 students and community protested the beating of a Black student by Dillinger’s staff while the police looked on,  and….  

July 6 2018 Press & Sun-Bulletin In September 2015, local food workers, social service providers and community organizers packed a county legislature meeting in protest. Their aim: to reverse the county’s plan to outsource food preparation for the county jail and Willow Point Nursing Home to an out-of-state corporation. To let profits determine basic food service, protesters argued, courted disaster. Complaints from Willow Point soon grew and became public: food was cold, inadequate and delivered late. Recently, the county finally announced it was terminating its contract with Aramark. It was a wise decision. What comes next is likely not. The county now proposes to contract with the French firm Sodexho for feeding elderly and disabled residents at Willow Point, and with Florida-based Trinity Corp. for those in the county jail. It appears the same abuses will be repeated. Sodexho has the contract for Binghamton University, where complaints over high prices, low part-time wages and poor service are common. Unlike BU students, our vulnerable seniors at Willow Point cannot go to an alternative. Even more vulnerable are those in the county jail, filled as it is with hundreds of unconvicted persons (persons without a conviction or sentence), most of whom are there only because they cannot afford our high local bails for nonviolent charges. Publicly available news reports and state investigations tell chilling stories about how the incarcerated will fare. In Michigan, where Trinity replaced a disastrous experiment with Aramark as well, the firm was fined $3.7 million for failing to provide even the most basic food. Trinity workers smuggled in contraband and had sexual relations with prisoners. Hunger strikes and riots spread across the state system. In Colorado, hunger led to a riot, and in Georgia, prisoners in Trinity-run facilities resorted to eating toothpaste and syrup packets. Next month, Michigan’s Republican governor is returning to state-run kitchens. Broome would be wise to do the same, returning jobs to local workers and permitting direct, local oversight. Past and current county executives and legislators refuse this option, stating that we can’t afford it and need cheaper food and lower labor costs. A much more effective way to contain county spending would be to cut the radically increasing corrections budget. In recent years, we have spent $7 million on an unnecessary jail expansion (built to house 600 persons, with now less than 430 county prisoners) and hired over a dozen new corrections officers — while cutting back on community health facilities and funding. This makes little fiscal sense given that 80 percent of those in the jail struggle with mental health and addiction issues, and return to us without long-term treatment options. Our elderly, disabled and incarcerated all need basic services. To give monopoly contracts to private, profit-driven corporations, with little or no public oversight, risks repeating expensive, past mistakes. We deserve better. Rozann Greco is a re-entry specialist with the Walk With Me Program. Bill Martin is a professor at Binghamton University. Sue Ruff is advocacy director at the Southern Tier Independence Center.

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