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Commentaries on Local Justice by Bill Martin

Tag: broome county covid

Jail Update: Fewer Incarcerated, Costs Up, and a Battle over the Future

February 8, 2022 / / 2 Comments
Womens Voices Rally January 20 2022

For those fighting mass incarceration in Broome County the past two years have been tumultuous, combining repeated street protests, legislative reforms and rollbacks, falling and rising incarceration numbers, and fear-inducing responses by the police, sheriff, and elected officials.

Much revolves around our jails, the gateways for mass incarceration. What is happening, where are we headed? Delayed figures from the NY State Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) show that in the last year the number incarcerated in jails has risen about 10% in New York City (NYC) and outside NYC.  Far more persons are now incarcerated outside NYC (9,744) than in NYC (5,270, mainly Rikers).

Broome County:  up, down, and highly racialized

Broome County, with one of the largest jails outside NY City, has long had the scandalous record of having the highest jail incarceration rate among all the state’s 62 counties including New York City. In December 2021 the number of persons incarcerated stood at 398, a 4% increase over a year ago.  These numbers represent a slow uptick after years of pressure to push jail incarceration lower.  In 2017 the average daily jail population was over 500, by April 2020 it had fallen below 300.  These trends reversed after reforms, rollback of reforms, and COVID as the following graph of long-term trends suggests.

One result of the recent increase: incarceration in Broome County is now even more racialized.  Black persons are 6% of the county population. Data Vera obtained by a freedom of information request (FOIL) show that the Black percentage of the incarcerated rose from 33% before bail reform in March 2019, to 38% in February 2020 after bail reform went into effect, and 42% in June 2020 after COVID hit. The figures are even more disproportionate for those sent to state prison from Broome County:  46% were Black, and 5% Latino (4% of county population). 

And women? We don’t know since that record, like so much about the jail, is hidden—it takes a lengthy Freedom of Information Request.  Vera obtained past figures that get us to mid-year 2018, before legislative reforms and COVID.  The rising numbers are undeniable however:

More recently the passage and coming implementation of the Less is More act, which reduces persons incarcerated for technical parole violations (e.g. missing a parole meeting), promises to reduce the number of parole violators.

Update on Gender and Race (February 17, 2022)

A freedom-of information-request subsequently submitted to the State Commission of Correction generates updated gender and race figures for the last five years. Women represented the following percentages of persons incarcerated in the jail at the end of these years, with slight falls during the Covid era:

Among women admitted to the jail over the whole year from Broome County, Black women remain over represented:

Black persons, 6% of the 2020 county population, are vastly over represented as these figures for black men and women admitted to the jail from the county indicate:

COVID Impact?

April 2020 COVID: Sheriff dispatches unmasked deputies to shut down distanced protest

COVID exacerbated deadly conditions in Broome County’s jail: social distancing was impossible, PPE was rarely provided, infection rates were exceedingly high, and testing and vaccination rates remain low as reported here. Community organizations led by Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier (JUST) launched a long series of outdoor, socially distanced and masked rallies outside the County Executive’s media briefings, pressing for releases and better conditions inside. 

COVID’s impact increased the incarcerated population as courts closed, the number of persons awaiting trial swelled, and the state stopped transfers of sentenced persons from jails to state prisons. It will take more study, but the timing and impact of reform, rollback, and COVID are clear in month-to-month jail figures:

Rising Costs and Profiting from Selling Cells

Despite falling numbers in the jail, the number of staff and funding have both risen steadily under Democratic and Republican County Executives alike. The cost of keeping a single person in the jail for a year has risen to $90,000 in 2020 from $51,000 in 2016. As explicitly expressed every year in the county budget, a key county aim has been to profit from selling “available space to generate revenue by housing prisoners for the U.S. Marshall’s Service, U.S. immigration, and Customs Enforcement “(2020, p. 157). The county now gets more than $200,000 in payments for December 2020 alone–especially from the 27 Federal and 35 state readies awaiting transfer to state prisons ($100/day).

Looking forward:  a bigger or small jail?  A larger or reduced incarceration budget?

Successful lawsuits against the jail, marginal improvements in medical treatment, and above all reducing the number of persons incarcerated by 20 to 40% only came about through a combination of large, repeated local protests over abuse and deaths, local investigations, protests and a hunger strike by the incarcerated, and pressure on county officials–all backing deep statewide reforms and efforts.  Today we face blowback:  a counter push to roll back reforms that could, if unchallenged, lead to a larger jails, new jails, and even higher jail budgets. 

The Governor, NYC mayor, and most elected Republicans and Democrats have stated they agree on the need to roll back bail reform. Implementation of the HALT act which severely limits solitary in prisons and jails is likewise being promoted and resisted, primarily in NYC. Strong coalitions of advocates across the state are working to defend HALT, bail and parole reforms, and pass additional parole and related reforms. Closer to home, Binghamton Mayor David and State Senator (and likely next Sheriff) Akshar have been active locally and statewide, mobilizing forces to roll back reforms in alliance with other elected officials and guard unions.  An alliance of elected officials backing rollbacks, Republican and Democrat, from NYC to upstate towns, is in formation.

JUST protest outside Wilson Hospital vs jail doctor

Jail Budgets and Reform 

Falling jail populations have not led to smaller jails or smaller jail budgets.  Despite reforms like Raise the Age, which removed juveniles from the jail, Broome County has repeatedly increased the number of jail officers and the jail budget.  (Note: Governor Hochul has put provisions in her new budget to bring many youth back into adult jails.)  This is part and parcel of the build-it-and-they-will-come effect. A big new BC jail was authorized and opened in 1996 and expanded again in 2015 to hold 600 persons using, as stated in even this year’s county budget, “the use of double celling, where possible, to control costs.” This is now justified in practice by turning single-celling into a COVID necessity. Will the State Commission of Correction, which has long dictated jail expansion and staffing, use this logic to require the expansion of current jails and even building new ones? We don’t know.

Sheriffs and elected officials have also been adept at turning medical, mental health, and disability ‘reforms’ to increase the funding and power of county jails, police, and courts. No one to my knowledge has examined the possible impact upstate of the HALT bill that restricts solitary, a bill community organization including JUST strongly support.  HALT requires large jails like Broome County’s to create additional treatment units and protocols for the young and those with mental illnesses and disabilities.  How this will be done outside NYC is unknown. It can easily be translated into more special units in jails, requiring more guards, pods, dorms, and funding.  While NYC and the state can be forced to fund these new units in their jails and prisons, the lack of funding means struggles will erupt in small counties. The expansion of medical assisted treatment in the face of the opioid epidemic and deaths looms even larger as a site of power and contestation. Sheriffs have responded to revelations of medical abuse and deaths by demanding (1) increased medical services in jails under their control and (2) tying local mental health and disability responses on our streets to police control—something likely to further advance our jails as de facto county treatment center for the poor, homeless, disabled, and Black folks.

Looking forward, we celebrate and aim for fewer and fewer persons in our jail, and greater public scrutiny over the dismaying conditions in which friends and family are trapped.  Community protest continues.

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Select Sources: 

Broome County Sheriff, “Annual Report,” www.gobroomecounty.com/sheriff

Broome County, “Budgets | Broome County,” www.gobroomecounty.com/countyexec/budgets

New York State, NYS Division of Criminal Justice Services, “Criminal Justice Reports & Statistics”, www.criminaljustice.ny.gov/crimnet/ojsa/stats.htm.

U.S. Department of Justice. Bureau of Statistics, “Historical Corrections Statistics in the United States,” 1850- 1984. Washington, D.C: U.S. Department of Justice, 1986.

Vera Institute of Justice, “Incarceration Rates – Incarceration Trends – Vera Institute of Justice,” https://trends.vera.org/rates/broome-county-ny.

Pictures by William Martin

COVID Denialism and Media Complicity

April 21, 2020 / / 1 Comment
April 12th: Sheriff deputies practicing social distancing with PPE while attempting to shut down a public protest over COVID-19 in the jail

Why is it so hard to get basic facts about the extent of COVID-19 infections and their spread in Broome County? Weeks and weeks of protests and public pressure have finally produced a few details and the naming, reluctantly, of a few local hotspots. Prime among these is the jail, as predicted for months by local community organizations and activists. But what is being done? To listen or watch most local media reports we hear only the official line: don’t worry, be happy, all is good!

The local NPR station WSKG has written and broadcast successive defenses of the Sheriff and the jail (e.g. by Natalie Abruzzo here) as has Channel 12 WBNG (e.g. here). Not to be outdone, today the Binghamton Press and Sun-Bulletin published an article by Anthony Borrelli on the front page of the paper.  It is as fine a defense as one might imagine of the wonderous work done by the county to make the jail, in the Sheriff’s words, the “safest place“ in the county. (One does wonder how it could be so, given the reportedly 22 COVID-19 cases and the many more–numbers unknown–waiting to be tested if the county ever gets an adequate number of tests.)

The article is a clear counter to the New York Post piece from last week which cited the incarcerated at some length about the spread of infection and the lack of safety in the jail.  Of course no person inside was apparently interviewed by Borelli (or WSKG and others), no criticism or critic referenced (JUST’s website and social media list many quotes from persons inside on the coronavirus threat), no physical layout of the jail noted or observed, no oversight body contacted. 

Incarcerated: “Social distancing? our beds are 18″ apart!”

Well, the last is understandable since there is no real oversight, neither by the state nor local authorities like the Broome County Health Department even though the jail is now the prime incubator and spreader of COVID-19 locally. Denialism today has a history: for years the county has has turned a blind eye to medical malfeasance and excessive deaths, even as the county and jail have been steadily losing wrongful death and abuse lawsuits.

All these claims can be denied now as in the past. For as reported by Borelli,

“Harder, on Monday, said the inmates’ claims were false.”

 That’s all the public needs to know. 

This follows the media’s earlier felicitous reporting of the Sheriff’s words that:

“Medically everything is going well, there’s been no infection whatsoever.” (March 24)

and

“[Inmates] are safer inside our facility. They aren’t out in the general public where the disease is prevalent” (March 26)

What do we do now? Even the county has to acknowledge the widespread spread of coronavirus in the jail, while over 300 people move into and out of the building every day. Perhaps someone might ask the County Executive a few pointed questions at his next, closed to the public, press conference? Or really listen to those inside and their families, and investigate in some detail? Denialism now as in the past comes with deadly consequences.

April 14 protest: Who has masks on? Who is practicing distancing?

Jail Protest Explodes, County Officials Dither and Deny

April 15, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Activists from three community organizations rallied in public on April 14th to demand that local officials release as many persons as possible from the Broome County jail.  Filling the parking lot outside the Taste New York store where County Executive Jason Garnar was holding a press conference, members from Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier, Citizen Action, and Truth Pharm called on the County Executive Jason Garnar, Sheriff David Harder, and District Attorney Michael Korchak to prevent further COVID infection and death in the jail and across the county. 

The county Sheriff responded by deploying a phalanx of officers and patrol cars, with multiple officers demanding protestors leave the site as it was “private property.”  Protestors stood their ground, pointing out that this was state property, with the store still open to the public, and the parking lot and sidewalks unimpeded.  The protest proceeded surrounded by officers and their vehicles.

Family members spoke at length of loved ones lingering in infected cells and pods at the jail, without sanitizer, masks, and essential, prescribed medicines such as asthma inhalers.  Inmates who complain, they told the crowd in their cars, are being threatened with isolation and denial of any contact with family outside by expensive phone or tablet—jail visitation is closed.

The groups’ demands are straightforward, and have been repeated for months:

  • Provide daily counts of tests, positives, quarantine and deaths in the jail
  • Immediately release anyone at high risk for infection
  • Release anyone held on non-violent charges
  • Provide testing, sanitation supplies, medical treatment, and adequate nutrition
  • Make phone/video calls free and end predatory commissary pricing
  • Ensure those coming home have a discharge and treatment plan, including medical and housing resources that enable self-isolation

In reply County Executive Garnar stated, in a line taken from his Sheriff’s public statements: “I don’t have anything to do with it…. I can’t let people out of jail.” The county DA Korchak says the same.  As one reporter pointed out at Garnar’s press conference, this is not the case in other counties where Sheriffs, DAs, and County Executives have all acted, individually and often together, to release persons with short sentences, those at high risk for infection and death due to medical conditions, and those incarcerated on technical parole violations like smoking weed or missing a parole meeting. Cases of these conditions were all recounted by family members at the rally.

When pressed on this at the press conference, Garnar said he couldn’t agree with the groups’ demand to “release all prisoners.” This too was a blatant fabrication, as the longstanding list of demands shows –and as a reporter quickly pointed out.

Meanwhile COVID-19 continues its march through the jail, with the Sheriff recently reporting 11 officers and 11 incarcerated persons testing positive. This would be over 20% of existing cases in the county, where little testing has been done. 

No one has been able to confirm these numbers, much less answer questions on how many tests in the jail have been done, how many persons have been discharged or hospitalized with the virus, and how many current or recently released persons have died (the Sheriff and local judges have the habit of releasing persons from the jail just prior to hospitalization and death as in the case of Rob Card).  When asked for this information by reporters, Garnar said, as he has when asked for information on other county COVID “hotspots” like local nursing homes:  “I don’t know.” 

The car rally is just one of recent protests pressing the County Executive, the District Attorney (who suffered a phone zap/call in on Monday) and the Sheriff, and the organizations promise to continue their work in the coming weeks.

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A sample of local media coverage may be found here, here, and  here.

Broome County Approves Death Sentences

March 25, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Yesterday Broome County Executive Jason Garnar approved death sentences for scores of Broome County residents.  There is no other way to state it. In an interview with Bob Joseph on WNBF radio, he insisted he would not approve any releases from the Broome County jail.  He refused to answer any real questions:  has anyone in the jail, guards or inmates been tested? Are there any cases of coronavirus there?  He would not say.

Sheriffs, District Attorneys, and County Executives from Cleveland to California, from Texas to New Jersey and Brooklyn, are releasing thousands of persons for good reasons.  Jails are deadly for those inside them, guards and prisoners alike. As we have seen in China, Iran, and Italy, it is perfectly predictable that coronavirus clusters incubate in crowded cells and then spread into surrounding towns. Releasing persons is sound public health policy, a necessary measure to prevent death inside and outside jails and prisons.

Broome County is no exception.  Who is incarcerated? It’s not dangerous local criminals.  Broome’s jail houses 346 persons, including 29 under federal and state custody (held only to make money for the county).  Of the 346, only 89 are sentenced—and for minor crimes since persons convicted of serious crimes go to state prisons.  The simple truth is that almost all persons in the jail are innocent, awaiting trial, or charged with misdemeanors. At last public count only 6 percent of those arrested in the county were arrested for violent felonies.

It is impossible to protect those living and working in the jail from the virus. Sheriff Harder brazenly postured for the press yesterday, stating that the jail was the safest place to be.  Even a child can figure out that following even the most basic rules to prevent infection is simply impossible.  Self-distance yourself from others in a crowded pod or a double-bunked cell?  Use tissues when you cough or sneeze, when there is no ready tissue supply?  Wash your hands when you have been given 4 ounces of liquid soap a week for all bathing and hand washing? Isolate yourself when you are in a dormitory with bunk beds and shared and unclean bathrooms, toilets, showers? Wash your hands with alcohol-based hand sanitizer when none exists since it is contraband? Cover your mouth when you cough when your hands and feet are shackled while in transport of because of security status? Eat food prepared by forced labor in a distant, unsterile, unsupervised kitchen?

These are the ghastly conditions under which we keep poor local residents, from women and men suffering from terminal illnesses, to youth who are parole violators due to smoking marijuana, to a majority of the incarcerated suffering from substance use disorders, disabilities, and health problems. The incarcerated and the workers who move among them are, quite simply, under a coronavirus death watch.

It need not be so: Broome needs to follow the example of other countries and radically reduce the jail population.

Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier is running a social media campaign to force elected officials, the District Attorney, and local judges to release as many persons as soon as possible–and provide the resources for them to self-isolate in the community.  Link to the campaign here.  And for more news, head to the JUST webpage.

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