William Martin, Professor Emeritus at Binghamton University, writes about the implications Trump’s deportation policy could have in Broome County.
William Martin
Guest Columnist
Anticipating President-elect Trump’s arrival, they are preparing to close the southern border. Not the United States, but Canada, which is expecting a surge of refugees across its border with the U.S. And New York State is again the passageway from south to north. How will local officials and agencies react?
For Broome County, Trump’s policies portend a bonanza or a disaster depending on where you sit, what forces you control, and whose interests you serve.
The financial benefit is already in place: the county now gets $100 to $300 per day for every federal detainee held in the jail. Indeed it’s a way to maximize county profits by using, as explicitly stated in 2024 County Budget objectives (p153), “available cell space to generate revenue” by housing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees.
Meanwhile, the county has forcefully acted to prevent refugees from settling here. In May 2023, Democratic County Executive Jason Garnar was among the first of over 30 upstate counties to declare a state of emergency, which prohibited local hotels from housing refugees and migrants. Republican Broome County Sheriff Frederick Akshar promptly dispatched deputies to enforce the order.
Gov. Hochul has recently contributed to the effort by allocating over $2 million to Broome County and local city governments to vastly expand policing and surveillance devices. More identification, stops, and searches are on the way. The Sheriff alone is putting in 65 more cameras with his $834,000, adding to the City of Binghamton’s existing and expanding system. SUNY Binghamton has its own system, too.
Much more is coming. Trump promises that money is no object in the effort to track, detain and hold migrants and refugees. Funding will be in the billions — some estimates run to $1 trillion — raising new possibilities and dangers. Finding millions of migrants will require the assistance of state and local police departments. Nearby federal detainee centers, as in Batavia, have little or no room — thus the reliance already on county jails. Broome County’s jail, expanded in 2016 to house 600 persons, now regularly has less than half that number. Will refugees and migrants soon fill it? Empty local dormitories and apartments — as in the still-vacant Bible School Park complex in Johnson City — are other possibilities.
Broome County has a mixed historical record here, welcoming at times large inflows of migrants, most notably from southern and eastern Europe. In the 1920s during the last Great Depression and worldwide trade war, Binghamton became the state headquarters of the Klu Klux Klan, hosting Klan meetings, hillside cross burnings and hooded parades on Main Street, including marches against non-Protestant, most prominently Catholic and Italian, immigrants.
Faced with radical new federal policies and billions, what will county, city, and police officials do? What plans are being put in place now? How will local community leaders, including pastors and the Broome County Council of Churches, and social service organizations, respond? We do not know. Let the conversation begin, in public.
William Martin is Professor Emeritus, SUNY-Binghamton.
On April 18, 2024 Legal Services filed a lawsuit against Sheriff Frederick J. Akshar, Broome County Jail administrator Robert Charpinsky, Corrections Officer Philip Stephens, Broome County, and Trinity Services Group (the jail’s food subcontractor headquartered in Florida). It charges them with enslaving free persons, forced and unpaid labor, harmful and unlawful coercion, and violating state labor laws. Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier has issued a press release with more detail and a call to action. Further reading on prisons, jails and forced labor may be found here.
The Broome County Jail and its Sheriff have lost successive lawsuits over wrongful deaths (Alvin Rios, Salladin Barton, the outstanding Thomas Husar case), sexual and racial abuse (most recently the Holland case), and the beating of youth (the Vega and Legal Services youth case) as reported on this blog and elsewhere in the media. The continuing problem: there is no active oversight as this latest lawsuit shows us yet once again. The State Commission of Correction, consisting of a retired Sheriff and a former NYC Department of Corrections administrator, has proven to be more adept at forcing the building of new jails than protecting the unfortunate persons who end up in county jails. The result is that even the thin laws and regulations formally protecting those in the hidden cells and cages of county jails are widely ignored. The damage is widespread–and thanks to local activists and activists increasingly coming to light.
We need systemic solutions to a systemic problem. JUST closes it press release by (1) calling on local legislators to cosponsor and promote two bills before the State Assembly and Senate that would end slavery and provide new oversight of labor in state prisons (but not jails in the bill, yet), and (2) asking “County and State officials, including the Attorney General, Comptroller and our elected representatives, to provide independent oversight of the jail and its operations as they are empowered to do under state laws”.
Here are three areas that show the systemic problem in three critical areas covered by limited existing laws and regulations: sexual and racial abuse, medical and health violations, and financial malfeasance imposed on those in the jail as it has become the center for displaced, discarded, ill and impoverished residents of the county.
The incarcerated and formerly incarcerated, their families, and local activists have long written state and county authorities, legislators, and the press in all these areas. The Comptroller, Attorney General, and State and County Health Departments should at the very least do their legal duty. State law empowers all local Assembly and Senate members to make unannounced inspection visits to jails. Some state legislators have done so in their counties. But not yet in Broome County. They need to do so.
Sexual and Racial Abuse
Public records provided by successive and successful lawsuits by families (wrongful deaths), Legal Services of Central NY (youth and Vega abuse cases), and NYCLU (Makkyla Holland case) have documented in detail rampant and continuing racial and sexual abuse in the Broome County jail. Yet the abuse continues and abusers go unpunished. Officers continue to abuse persons of color with the ready use of the n-word, while sexually abusive treatment and language are directed toward women, men, and LGBTQ persons alike. Allegations of rape circulate. Not a single person has ever been disciplined for these behaviors. Complaints and grievances by incarcerated persons of violations of the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 are not allowed to be filed; grievances of any sort are regularly denied contrary to state law as documented yearly by the State Commission of Correction, including in the most recent March 2024 inspection report.
March 2024 State Commission of Correction, Minimum Standard Evaluation of Facility Operations for the Broome County Jail, “Commission staff reviewed several grievance packages and found that the grievance coordinator continues to issue determinations that grievable grievances are non-grievable.”
Bill Martin, Truthout, March 24, 2024, “In NY Jails, Prisoners Must Submit Their Abuse Grievances to Their Abusers,” Can openly transphobic and homophobic jailers be relied upon to enforce nondiscrimination settlements? Can disabled and injured youth, especially young Black men, depend upon legal settlements to end abuse in our jails?
Medical and Health Violations
State law now requires medically assisted treatment for persons with substance use, and the Broome County Jail handbook lays out procedures for MAT. Yet these are not followed. JUST members and family visiting the incarcerated are regularly told of instances of persons detoxing without MAT; attempts by persons to get on methadone are denied for weeks and months, despite appeals to UHS and OASAS offices in Broome County and regional headquarters. Media reports, most recently in NYFocus, document the problem in detail. Unsanitary conditions and severe shortcomings in medical procedures are regularly reported, even by the State Commission on Correction’s own annual inspections with no external oversight and follow-up provided. State law requires county health departments to inspect the jail but as the Sheriff has reported to the State Commission of Correction every year, the BC Health Department has not provided any inspection reports and apparently refuses to inspect the facility.
March 2024 State Commission of Correction, Minimum Standard Evaluation of Facility Operations for the Broome County Jail, “Commission staff spoke with administration and noted that the facility is consistently requesting the health department inspection, however the Broome County Department of Health has yet to complete such inspection.”
State regulation 9 CRR-NY 7015.3 “The chief administrative officer shall request that the local health authority with jurisdiction over the facility perform annual inspections of the facility. The results of such inspection shall be recorded in writing, together with a summary of the action taken to address any deficiencies, and maintained on file at the facility.”
Financial Malfeasance
Despite a significant drop in the number of persons incarcerated, the budget for the jail has steadily grown while funding for community health and social services has steadily been cut. There remain however no oversight of jail finances and financial irregularities that contravene state law persistently appear. The sheriff recently had to admit that the county had been billed for and paid their out-of-state medical provider $250,000 for services that were not provided. There were no fines or investigation. In order to meet basic hygiene and food needs, the incarcerated and their families spend $ millions at the jail commissary. State regulations require the Sheriff to spend his considerable profits (up to 44%) from unconscionable costs for commissary, telephone, video and tablet use –e.g. calls to family cost 4 cents/minute from state prisons, but 25 cents per minute from the BC jail—on the rehabilitation of inmates. Yet there is no accounting of the $ millions accumulated from these fees; past investigations reveal purchases range from lawn tractors, trailers, to retirement party costs. State and county authorities need to investigate and conduct an audit of jail purchases and expenditures.
State regulation 9 CRR-NY 7016.1 “
(b) The prices of any items offered for sale shall be fixed by the sheriff, or official in charge, to the extent that the commissary operation will be self-supporting and will provide a modest return above costs.
(c) Profits resulting from commissary sales shall be deposited in a separate bank account and shall be utilized only for purposes of prisoner welfare and rehabilitation.”
JUST May 13, 2019 letter to County Executive and SCOC (unanswered), “an examination of the county records regarding jail commissary and related accounts suggest significant irregularities. We request that you conduct a thorough examination and audit of the accounts for at least the last three years.”
Rozann Greco and Bill Martin, Guest Columnists Reproduced from Press and Sun Bulletin (Binghamton), Feb 9 2024 Opinion
Make no mistake: there is a new sheriff in town. David Harder, who ruled over the jail for 25 years, has finally left office. The election of Frederick Akshar gave us a very different person: 35 years younger, more energetic, an accomplished politician, and a hands-on officer. Recently, Akshar distributed a first-year progress report. It was big news, extensively covered by local media.
A new food contract has also been signed, and fruit for the first time in memory has appeared on jail trays. Here again, this comes after widespread demands by families and hunger strikes by the incarcerated.
Akshar also celebrated the hiring of 31 new correctional officers. But was this wise? The number of persons in the jail has steadily fallen from over 500 to around 300. Here the county missed an opportunity to right-size the jail and transfer funds and jobs to county services where they’re most needed − particularly the Department of Social Services, which has over 80 unfilled, poorly-paid staff positions. One unannounced result of all this new funding: the yearly cost to keep one person in the jail is now the highest ever: $97,000. For one person the county could pay full tuition for 18 students at SUNY Broome.
Equally puzzling is Akshar’s claim that the county saved money by his discovery of $250,000 in overcharges by the private medical provider. Isn’t this simply theft from the county treasury? How long has this been going on? Why are there not criminal charges? Shouldn’t there be a county audit of jail finances as activists have long demanded?
More financial losses are coming. The Sheriff’s office and the county have recently lost two more abuse lawsuits, and more are underway. One settlement discovered a blatant coverup by jail officials of the beating of a young Black man. Another settlement required extensive changes in how the jail treats sexuality and gender, from housing locations to medicines to verbal, physical and sexual harassment. None of the specific policy changes have found themselves into the new jail handbook. None of the 16 officers mentioned have been disciplined or fired. What stops more abuse and more lawsuits?
Progress? Only in the sense of modernizing mass incarceration in response to a decade of protest by community organizations, and further centralizing county health care and finances in the jail for which there is little if any oversight. This is not a model for the future.
Rozann Greco is an Endicott resident and Bill Martin is a Johnson City resident.
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(Links added to original text)
Appended note: And on the same day the newspaper published another (yes another, just by chance?) op-ed by the Sheriff on how in partnership with local NGOs he protects female domestic violence victims–this from the man who, after a Black woman with a substance use problem miscarried under his care, stated to the press “that if it were up to him, he would charge X with the child’s death, but that is no longer an option due to New York’s 2019 Reproductive Health Act.” Yes, he is part of the fetal personhood movement, which pursues laws that grant fetuses the same legal rights as any person with the aim of making all abortions murder. The 2019 Reproductive Health Act protects access to reproductive rights throughout the state after Roe vs Wade was overturned]
Some good news: NYCLU is suing the SCOC to get records of abusive correctional staff. Local activists have long fought to reveal the SCOC as an operation run by and on behalf of Sheriffs and mass incarcerators. A somewhat dated background piece is on the Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier website here.
The SCOC operates in almost complete secrecy: its January 3, 2024 meeting lasted all of one minute and six seconds, simply to go into closed, private session; the January 24th meeting lasted less than 3 minutes before going into private session. It rejects 97% of the thousands of grievances it receives from county jails, taking 8 seconds to review each one. That’s the state of NY justice under the SCOC.
Giving the SCOC more funds as some propose will not address this problem. An independent oversight agency with representative members of the incarcerated community is what we need.
Recent local evidence of abuse is all too clear from the Vega and Holland lawsuits. Taej’on Vega won his lawsuit, filed by Legal Services of Central New York, documenting the jail administration’s and correctional officers’ coverup of his beating and mental and sexual abuse (read a summary here).
Makkyla Holland, a Black trans woman, won her lawsuit for discrimination and abuse on the basis of her sex, transgender status, and disability. NYCLU filed on her behalf against Broome County, the County Sheriff, the jail’s medical staff, and almost a dozen correctional officers. Officers beat her, subjected her to illegal strip searches, and denied prescribed medications including antidepressants and hormone treatments.
“Strip, N-word!” That’s what Broome County correctional officers told the prone and handcuffed African American teenager as they dragged him across the floor to his cell two years ago. It got more brutal quickly, leaving Taej’on Vega naked, badly bruised, unable to breathe, coughing up blood, and sexually and mentally traumatized. And yet: a courageous mother and son triumphed in the end against all odds.
For this week a court decision came down and their lawsuit against Broome County and Correctional Officers was successful. The County and its officers were judged to have violated Taej’on’s rights and deliberately covered up evidence of the beating. A financial settlement is yet to come.
It has been a long road to some justice. At the time of the beating Taej’on’s grievance was found to have “no merit” and denied–as is almost always the case. Despite being aware of his mental health issues, he was like many others denied the multiple medications he was prescribed prior to entering the jail in October 2019. Like all, incarceration meant he was no longer working to support his family.
In the wake of the assault, unlike others, his mother managed to take video snapshots of his bruised body and pressed his case. Members of Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier (JUST), including the author, visited Mr. Vega as part of a program that visits vulnerable persons who don’t have family nearby and often need a watchful presence. Just wrote letters to legislative leaders, calling for investigations. And then in June lawyers for Legal Services of Central New York filed the lawsuit against the county and the correctional officers, including the sergeant in charge at the time.
Doom County Jail?
It is rare that families have the resources or find lawyers to press such cases. But they keep coming.
Makyyla Holland recently won a stunning award for abuse in the jail, with the jail and county now required to roll back discriminatory practices, rules, and cultures against trans persons and LGBTQ persons generally. Several families have won wrongful death suits, with the Husar family’s $5 million lawsuit outstanding. An investigation by NY Focus reporters this month revealed that the introduction of more medically assisted treatment in the jail has been an abusive disaster. As the headline put it, “‘Doom County Jail’: Dysfunction Plagues Program for Incarcerated Opioid Users.”
What are the incarcerated and their families to do? Medically assisted treatment in the jail for substance users was, after all, announced with great fanfare as a major successful reform. The Holland settlement relies upon persons filing grievances as the sole enforcement guarantee. Yet those with problems like Taej’on or Makylla still only support legal claims if they exhaust, and get exhausted by, the grievance process. The evidence is clear: incarcerated persons have long been denied access to grievance slips as long reported by advocates to the local press. In 2022 an assessment of the grievance process published in the community newspaper Binghamton Bridge found that in the previous six months not a single grievance filed in the jail was forwarded to the oversight review committee of the State Commission of Correction (SCOC)—which rejected 99.7% of grievances that reached it.
The recently released 2022 Broome County Sheriff’s Annual Report confirms this continues: in the last year the vast majority of filed grievances were rejected outright, with not a single grievance about the staff, legal issues, or grievance polices and services being passed upward to the SCOC. One grievance about medical services was forwarded. And officers named in the lost lawsuits and settlements remain unpunished, in the jail, and on full pay. Lacking any real reform, how will abusive, transphobic and homophobic officers still on the payroll enforce the Holland settlement?
“All the juveniles spoke of the harsh and abusive practices [of] the Correctional Officers (COs) with many identifying in exquisite detail the beatings they endured at the hands of the COs’…. [a] youth spoke of an incident in which he was restrained in a restraint chair and then pepper sprayed while he was restrained. Still another youth spoke of the COs carrying batons they used to beat the kids; they reported that the COs refer to the baton as their “n-word [sic] beaters.”
As more lawsuits are lost by the County and the abuse continues, it is time for elected officials to exercise their oversight powers and investigate, including visiting the jail unannounced as they are legally empowered to do. Can they speak for basic human rights, and report their findings to the community? We all also need to thank the Taej’ons and Makyylas for their bravery and persistence.
Continuing declines in crime rates and incarcerated populations pose the question: what to do with our increasingly empty jail cells? The trends are unmistakable for the smaller cities and towns of the state. Index (serious) crime rates for counties outside NY City have fallen by 39% since 2012. County jail populations have correspondingly fallen by 42% in the last ten years. As county budgets come under increasing pressure, questions about fiscal overreach are emerging.
Thus the questions posed by the Ulster County Comptroller to his elected officials: why is the county jail so large, so heavily staffed, and over-funded given the drop in incarcerated populations? Aren’t there better uses for the county money? His recommendation: “a reduction in facility capacity and commensurate staffing” and an “examination of the costs of operation to ensure that they are commensurate with the needs of the community”.
Broome County, regularly ranked as the top county in the state for jail incarceration, faces similar trends—and equally daunting fiscal dilemmas given looming state budget cuts. In the last ten years index crime rates for Broome County have fallen steadily, dropping by 35 percent–even as the number of guns and gun violence has risen.
And jail capacity and populations? In 2015 the county was convinced by jail authorities and an external study they commissioned to spend $6.8 million to expand jail capacity from 536 to 600 persons. The expected boom in jail numbers, projected to hit 700, never came. Average daily jail population has fallen instead from 500 to below 300, half the capacity of the jail. In January, 296 persons were housed in the jail, including 26 held on behalf of federal authorities (and of the 296 only 50 were convicted and sentenced for a crime).
The result? As in Ulster, a dramatic increase in the cost to keep a person in the county jail, rising from $45,000 in 2012 to $109,000 now.
For the cost of jailing one person on misdemeanor charges, the county could offer free tuition to SUNY-Broome to twenty local youth. Or hire two mental health counselors. Or offer incentives to respond to the staffing crisis at the county’s debilitated Department of Social Services, with over 80 vacant positions. Local elected officials appear oblivious to these needs, expanding instead the jail budget yet again this year, and empowering the newly elected Sheriff to hire up to 38 more correctional officers by offering $5,000 bonuses and lowering educational requirements.
As in Ulster the story is straightforward: its time to ask local legislators and auditors to investigate and adjust staffing at the county jail—and release funds to where they might further reduce crime, as in supporting underfunded mental health, housing, and youth services.
William Martin is a Johnson City resident and professor emeritus at Binghamton University.
What would you do if someone gave you an unexpected $37 million? A once-in-a-lifetime bonanza?
That was the delicious dilemma faced by the Broome County Executive and Legislators when the Federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) was passed in March 2021. ARPA allocated $350 billion to municipal, county, state, and tribal governments to assist in COVID recovery. COVID had eliminated jobs, impoverished families, overwhelmed public health services, and destabilized the mental and physical health of youth, adults, and seniors alike. ARPA monies were intended to address the public health, economic, and housing needs arising from the epidemic. ARPA guidelines for spending were flexible, but emphasized prioritizing vulnerable groups and equitable economic recovery (Federal guidelines are here).
How did Broome County spend the money? We don’t know. Neither the press nor county government has provided a list or tabulation of funded projects. When the local Press and Sun-Bulletin newspaper reported on the use of $163 million in ARPA funds across the Southern Tier, Broome County had only one, unspecified commitment mentioned.
Binghamton’s $46 million in ARPA: where did it go?
The City of Binghamton was no clearer on how it was spending its $46 million. Like the county, the city did not hold any community public hearings, get public input, or provide any transparent accounting. Thanks to investigations by community activists we now have the details on a new website, #bingamtonslushfund, which tracks the city government’s ARPA decisions.
It’s not a pretty picture. The group’s conclusion: ARPA dollars were recklessly laundered into a slush fund controlled by the Republican mayor and city council members. They then funded pet projects unrelated to COVID, from a parking garage to a luxury housing project downtown. Judge for yourself by looking at the funded projects detailed on their website here.
Broome County’s $37 million: where did it go?
Paulus Housing Project Johnson City $4.7m in tax rebates
County finances receive far less attention by the press and community groups. A freedom-of-information request to the county asking for ARPA expenditures was submitted in September 2022. It finally received a response in January 2023. It may be downloaded here.
The summary results? While lots of groups were funded, no substantial money went to address the health impacts of COVID, the local housing crisis, or the mental and physical health aftermaths of COVID. In the midst of the fentanyl/tranq epidemic exacerbated by COVID isolation and poverty, we cannot fund, for example, the community-based initiatives other cities and counties have launched.
Who were the big winners? Developers and the Sheriff–and a distant third group, county parks.
Here are some of the developers’ pet projects, all charging commercial, market rate rents:
Sparc Corp JC Oakdale Mall $7,170,000 19 Avenue B Housing Project & Phoenix/Huron $2,800,000 Conifer & LeChase (IBM proje3ct) apartments $1,000,000 Paulus Development (JC EJ building) apartments $750,000 SEPP Group Endicott apartments $670,000 K Mart Plaza $1,000,000
None of these projects are contingent on providing the numerous living-wage jobs and low-income housing we need. Indeed as has happened in both Binghamton and Johnson City, they are likely to decrease affordable housing for poor and Black residents as gentrification and expensive housing projects continue to proliferate around new SUNY downtown buildings–and displace existing lower-rent housing. As reported in the SUNY campus newspaper Pipedream, “BU has acquired over 30 plots of land throughout Broome County to expand the school, demolishing the 50 single-family homes and apartments in them.” Lacking customers due to gentrification driven by the SUNY Nursing school, the last supermarket in downtown Johnson City closed, driving people to overwhelmed, nearby pantries. Faced with public debate over the impacts and cost of student housing, SUNY Chancellor John King in a visit to Binghamton this past week coldly asserted this was the cost of “economic development.”
50 Front St Luxury Apartments $16.8m tax rebates
And most of the ARPA projects already have been underwritten by state, county, or municipal funding . The most egregious diversion of public funds? Up to thirty years of tax exemptions through so-called PILOT agreements provided by local development agencies as reported by the press. In Broome County these have granted property and sale tax rate reductions and exemptions, most notably for one luxury housing development after another. As recorded in cost-benefit analyses by the Broome County Development Agency, these include $4.7 million in rebates for the EJ Victory Building in Johnson City (156 apartments) and, in Binghamton, rebates worth $7.5 million for the Ansco building on Emma Street (100 apartments), $16.8 million in tax abatements for the owners of the “50 Front Street Luxury Apartments” (122 apartments, opening with the highest local rents), $3 million for Chenango Place on Court Street (94 apartments), $6.5 million for the gated, luxury student apartments next to the SUNY Downtown Center (127 apartments), and another $9.4 million rebate to the developer of the Oakland Mall—to mention but a few. ARPA adds more fuel to the bonfire elimination of corporations’ tax bills, while, like new, tax-exempt SUNY and hospital operations, increasing demand for more city services.
Up on the Hill: The Sheriff’s $ 7 million
Pushed aside and out of sight, where will the homeless and people with health problems go? For far too many the jail has emerged as the county’s major substance use and mental health “treatment center.” And that’s what the county funded from ARPA, giving $7 million to the Sheriff for unspecified purposes.
The Sheriff has a $42 million budget, with the jail accounting for $32 million. Why the additional $millions? The need for road patrols surely did not increase under COVID. Nor did jail numbers. Indeed due to lower crime and criminal justice reforms the jail population has been dropping for years. Built and expanded to incarcerate 600 persons, the local jail population rarely exceeds half that number. Last month there were fewer than 300 local residents in the jail (and only 52 convicted of a crime). The number of Correctional Officers had also fallen proportionally.
And yet an additional $7 million was allocated from ARPA funds. Democratic and Republican County Executives and Legislators have for decades privileged the jail. But what are the $7 million being used for? A hiring boom for up to 38 more Correctional Officers is apparently underway according to the press. How is this justified?
This is a costly commitment, for correctional officers are expensive. Of the 46 county employees who earned over a $100,000 in 2021 (the last posted year), at least 32 are correctional officers (and all but 5 of the 46 are employed by the criminal justice system). The highest paid employee? District Attorney Korchak. Its the cost of making Broome County, of all 62 state counties, the county with the highest jail incarceration rate.
Elite Capture
It is too late to turn back irresponsible ARPA spending: although ARPA funds may be spent over 5 years, over $32 million of the county’s $37 million has already been spent. We can–as has the community group working on the City of Binghamton ARPA funds–press local officials to hold public hearings, account for their decisions, and reallocate remaining and future county monies to meet community needs.
As the story of county use of ARPA and Broome County Development Agency funds demonstrates, however, the problem is deeper and long-standing. Corporate and political elites–all too often an interlocking web of developers, real estate interests, and lineage politicians–have long captured county and city funds. Overturning this corporate/political complex, and allocating public funds to real human needs like housing and health, will require an equally long-term community struggle.
Binghamton Press and Sun Bulletin December 11, 2022 Page A12
When COVID hit, the doors to state facilities slammed shut to visitors. Two years later, families regularly visit loved ones in nursing homes, all state prisons and hospitals.
Yet for the many thousands with friends and relatives locked in county jails, the doors remain closed. It is time for county sheriffs to reopen their jails — and do so fully and transparently.
It takes a struggle to do this, as those of us in Broome County know all too well. As the Vera Institute has documented, our county regularly has the highest jail incarceration rate among all the state’s counties. Here, the sheriff, backed by the county lawyer, steadfastly refused to return to visitation, arguing the danger of COVID.
Local activists associated with Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier (JUST), with the assistance of Legal Services of Central NY, filed a lawsuit this past May charging that visitation is a basic right enshrined in the New York state constitution. State Supreme Court Judge Blaise ruled in our favor, ordering a return to the pre-COVID visitation schedule.
This the sheriff appealed. And lost again. Forced to open, he did so on a truncated schedule in defiance of the court. County lawyers in court — the sheriff refused to appear — reported the schedule came from state Commission of Correction. Yet when asked the commission denied in writing any correspondence with the sheriff on the matter.
JUST now awaits a ruling on its filing charging the sheriff with civil and criminal contempt of court and a return to a full, five-days-a-week schedule.
Broome is but the tip of an invisible and worsening harm syndrome across the state. Visitation is still denied in upstate jails. More grievously, the reopening of jails has circumscribed everywhere the rights and basic humane treatment of the incarcerated, including their families. Visitation hours across the state have been seriously trimmed back, making it impossible for people to visit their sons, daughters, wives, children and friends. Families continue to spend millions on ruinous video and telephone bills; calls from jails are commonly 25 cents per minute, versus less than 4 cents from state prisons. Commissary prices have been raised dramatically, and food and hygiene products increasingly limited. Families are no longer able to order supplemental food packages from Walmart or Amazon to be sent to their loved ones. Even the mailing in of bras and Christian crosses, allowed by state regulations, are turned back. The list of new restrictions under the cover of COVID secrecy accelerates unseen, the denial of humane treatment steadily increases.
Criminologists will tell you that maintaining close contact with families reduces both recidivism and violence in jails. It’s time for state and county authorities to do the right thing: act humanely, morally and legally, and transparently reopen jails across the state.
Bill Martin, of Johnson City, is a founding member of Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier, and professor emeritus of sociology at Binghamton University.
NYS Supreme Court Judge Blaise had a straightforward question: Where is the Sheriff? In his defense of County Sheriff David Harder, Broome County Attorney Robert Behnke had no adequate answer. Charged with contempt of court in the motion brought by Justice and the Unity for Southern Tier (JUST), Harder failed to appear.
Law and Ill-Order in Broome County
The members of JUST packing the court knew the answer: as part of a long legal contest, the Sheriff had lost the lawsuit they had brought on behalf of families and friends of those incarcerated in Harder’s jail. In his ruling on July 29th, Judge Blaise ordered Harder to reopen visitation on the pre- COVID schedule posted in the jail’s own handbook. Harder’s officers in the jail had long been telling the incarcerated that Harder wouldn’t let this happen. When the County’s appeal to delay re-opening was denied on September 22nd, Harder was thus forced to finally reopen visitation.
Yet when the County finally opened up the jail doors on September 29th, Harder defied the Judge’s ruling. To the surprise of family members knocking on the door of the jail, visitation hours were posted for highly restricted times. Harder had unilaterally reduced visiting from the pre-COVID schedule of 44 hours a week, to 15, and visiting days from five to three—with none on the weekends for persons who work or live out of town.
On the threshold of retirement, pending election of one of his former deputies, Harder was again refusing to obey state laws–and now the State Supreme Court. To observers of justice in Broome County it was another case of law and ill-order.
The JUST Response
On October 7, on behalf of JUST, Josh Cotter of Legal Services of Central NY, filed a motion and affidavits charging Harder with civil and criminal contempt of court, with personal and financial penalties.
Before the contempt hearing on October 29th, JUST members and supporters rallied in the chilly morning on the steps of the county courthouse. The gathered families and friends of the incarcerated told numerous stories of their inability to visit daughters, sons, fathers, partners, and friends under the posted hours.
Meanwhile, fees for telephone and video calls remained exorbitant. Many of the county’s poorest residents were spending close to $1000/month to maintain contact with family in the jail and provide necessary food and hygiene products. Banning visitation held a warped, punitive, financial logic here: the Sheriff had reaped $ millions in profits from his share of expensive calls and commissary purchases, outside any county control. And he spent it on personal diversions, among them his second, armored personnel carrier.
Statements from incarcerated persons and family members unable to attend the rally due to work or distance repeated these complaints:
“Does this mean my mother can’t visit me?” “I can’t visit since I work and live in Syracuse” “I keep calling but can’t get through to book a visiting hour” “I’ve spent $800-$1000 every month to talk to my husband awaiting trial” “I booked a visit with the Sheriff’s office but when I came was refused the visit” “We need to be paid back for the $ thousands we’ve spent due to him denying visitation”
Demands
JUST’s demands addressed the problems, calling for
Full five days with regular hours for visitation, extended to weekends for those who work
Pay back of exorbitant profits from video & telephone calls, and commissary purchases
Food that meets basic nutrition requirements, including that item never seen in years: fruit!
An end to the incarceration of persons with disabilities and health crises
Penalize Sheriff & County for defying state supreme court and violating the state constitution
At 11 am, after the rally, over 30 JUST supporters went through metal detectors to attend the hearing, where they were faced down by a phalanx of grim, armed court security.
The Court Hearing
At the hearing, Judge Blaise questioned both Josh Cotter of Legal Services of Central NY, acting on behalf of JUST and families, and Broome County Attorney Robert Behnke, defending Sheriff Harder. In earlier legal briefs, the County had defended continued denial of visitation on grounds of COVID precautions. This was, however, increasingly implausible, given that visitation had long since returned to nursing homes, all state prisons, and jails across the state. Indeed, the Sheriff had long shown indifference to COVID, never requiring his staff to get vaccinated. And when visitation opened up on September 29th, there was no social distancing or masking.
The excuse for the Sheriff’s actions put forth submitted in court by Behnke on October 28th was thus a new one: Harder’s restricted hours were said to follow a formula provided by an official of the State Commission of Correction (SCOC). This formula had never been seen before, and certainly wasn’t in any posted regulations of the SCOC. The Commission had not met and approved this application either, as is required for variances or modifications of jail practices. Nor had one of the three SCOC Commissioners, all previous Sheriffs or Wardens, signed off on it. It was, rather, a SCOC administrator who had negotiated the new visitation regime directly with Harder. This was, as the Judge suggested, a last minute invention.
As JUST’s lawyer rightly pointed out: visitation rights are guaranteed in the state constitution, and rights can’t be limited by county officials.
The Judge’s ruling is expected in a week. Stay tuned.
Some good news: Sheriff Harder has lost again. And local activists are celebrating, again. This time it’s not another wrongful death lawsuit, or a state investigation: even worse for the Sheriff and the County, it is the inner workings of the jail.
For years now, County Sheriff Harder has unilaterally prevented hundreds of local residents from visiting their loved ones in his jail. On August 8th, NYS Supreme Court Judge Blaise III decreed that Harder and Broome County had violated the constitutional human rights of those incarcerated in the county jail. Harder has until September 5th to re-open in-person visitation.
The lawsuit was filed by Legal Services of Central New York, on behalf of family members, and Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier, an activist group which had led local protests. When the judge indicated he would rule against the County and Sheriff, Harder disingenuously proposed a few hours of visitation on a few days a week, which would have cut former jail visiting hours by over 80%. The judge rejected this outright, requiring instead a return to the pre-pandemic visiting schedule with social distancing. Those incarcerated in the jail, and their families and friends outside, are ecstatic at the prospect of family visiting again.
Of the 300 local residents in the jail, fewer than 50 are convicted and serving time—almost all the rest are awaiting trial, largely on misdemeanor charges. When COVID struck and courts closed, the jail was closed to outsiders. So years have now gone by without persons able to see mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, and beloved neighbors. Not even lawyers could consult privately with defendants and—unlike in other jails—no confidential phone line has ever been provided for the incarcerated to consult with lawyers.
Public and medical facilities everywhere have now opened up. Masks, social distancing, and temperature checks are familiar in all these places. The courts are now open to the public, with trials being held in county courtrooms without mask requirements. Visitation has long returned at hospitals and even nursing homes. All state prisons and many jails have returned to in-person visitation, including jails in surrounding counties.
But not in Broome County. Why? Is it just stubbornness and meanness on the part of the Sheriff and the county executive and legislators who support and finance him?
Follow the money: how to profit from COVID
One suspects it is financial and political power at stake: there is too much money involved, and one dare not challenge the powerful and unchecked Sheriff, long backed by the County Executive and county legislators. Turning truth on its head, they will tell you visitation is too costly, it would require too many officers to reopen visitation.
What they won’t tell you is that it takes only 3 or 4 officers to staff the visitation room. And that Harder has a budget—over $30 million—that grows every year and now pays for over 190 correctional officers. And he hasn’t got three persons to manage visitation again?
Restricting in-person visitation has a financial logic: COVID was used to channel yet more money into Harder’s hands, some from the county coffers, and over $1 million from families of the incarcerated. How? Well, the county just gave him $7 million more from federal COVID recovery funds, money that might have been directed to the desperately needed and severely underfunded youth, mental health, and substance use programs.
Does any elected official take a look at Harder’s expenditures ? Despite protests by local activists, the jail was expanded in 2016, in order to increase its size to 600 beds, at a cost of another $7 million. In recent years the jail population has fallen from over 500 to below 300 local residents, of which less than 50 are convicted of any crime and serving time. One doesn’t need to look any further than the jail budget to find fiscal irresponsibility. How does funding inexorably get increased while the number incarcerated falls so significantly?
The result? The cost to incarcerate one person is now over $100,000 per year, more than double what it was five years ago.
Year $ per person
2016 $51,447
2017 $53,992
2018 $59,563
2019 $61,282
2020 $90,251
2021 $74,510
2022 $106,881 (Jan-June average)
For the cost of holding one person awaiting trial for a year on a misdemeanor charge, the county could send 17 local youth to SUNY-Broome tuition-free. That’s the price of excess policing, prosecution and incarceration.
And these figures don’t include the Sheriff’s personal slush funds, unaccounted for in the county budget, that nevertheless accumulated rapidly due to COVID. How so? With visitation closed, families turned to expensive phone and then video calls. While it costs less than 4 cents (a minute?) to call your family from a state prison, it costs 25 cents from Harder’s jail. And due to county contracts, the Sheriff skims off 44% of all phone call costs. More flows in from video calls, video viewing, and selling goods at unbelievable prices in commissary (and, yes, outside shipments from vendors were outlawed).
Profits from telephone calls alone doubled from 2019 to 2021, reaching over $1 million per year now, according to FOIL data. Video and commissary profits have to be added on top of that. All this flows into the Sheriff’s private hands. State laws require profits from commissary be spent on the rehabilitation of the incarcerated. So how is Harder allowed to spend his profits on armored personnel carriers, lawnmowers, and retirement parties? Of course, the county auditor won’t follow up. Is it any wonder that COVID has been so good to Harder’s personal piggy bank?
More losses coming, political and personal
JUST’s victory is a strike for justice for the poor and disproportionately Black residents who are channeled into the jail. It follows in the footsteps of a series of punishing state investigations and lawsuits lost by the county. And yet, the county may face more losses:
The Husar family filed a $5 million lawsuit over the wrongful death of their son
The beating of a Black/Latino youth is being contested in a court filing
The abuse of a trans women is contested in another suit
Akshar kicking off Harder’s 2018 re-election campaign
Harder wasn’t among the 75 local officials and Sheriffs in attendance, and hasn’t said anything publicly on the matter since. However, he donated his outstanding campaign funds to his current department spokesperson, Captain Newcomb, who switched party affiliation from Republican to Democrat and is running against Akshar.
So don’t expect much change at the jail, regardless of who wins: both candidates have long records of service in the secrecy and abuse that surrounds the jail. Both have been involved in local scandals as deputies under Harder. Local activists and lawyers are likely to stay busy well after the coming electoral season.
Akshar for Sheriff campaign launch 2021: not a Harder in sight
Broome County devotes a large share of its budget to maintaining its reputation as having the highest incarceration rate among New York State’s 62 counties. The Sheriff alone gets over $30 million each year for his jail, even as the number of persons incarcerated there has steadily fallen in recent years. Meanwhile the official county budget for the jail increases year after year.
What remains unseen and unaccountable however is additional, rapidly growing funding on the scale of millions of dollars as COVID conditions have been exploited. And the most punishing and hidden funding comes directly from the poorest residents of the county—the families and friends of those incarcerated in the jail.
$7 million in COVID funding
Take for example last month’s County’s allocation of $7 million in Federal COVID recovery funds to reportedly “public safety revenue replacement.” Did these millions go to public health, housing, infrastructure, or youth employment recovery? Far from it: a freedom-of-information (FOIL) request reveals they were sent directly to the Sheriff’s budget for correctional officers—even as the jail, built and expanded to hold 600 persons, now holds less 300 local residents and only 42 persons convicted and sentenced for a crime. How and why $7 million? We don’t know.
Unseen Cell Profits by the $ millions
Even more hidden and unaccountable are the profits generated in recent years by selling cells to the Federal government and other local Sheriffs. Last month the jail housed 25 persons for the federal government, for example, and received $100 to $300 per day for each. That’s $ millions in cell profits over time, not counting payments for holding persons for other counties.
Preying on incarcerated families: another $1 million+ ?
Most punishing are the funds charged to the incarcerated and their family and friends. COVID has had a dramatic impact here as well. Unable to visit in person and desperate to talk to their loved ones, families have been forced to pay for both telephone and video calls. For the Sheriff it’s a lucrative enterprise, as county contracts dictate high commissions to be paid directly to the Sheriff to be used as he decides. Here too it took a FOIL request to uncover the contracts and revenues, and how they were spent behind closed doors.
The pages attached here contain the response from the Broome County Sheriff to the FOIL request that asked for telephone and video revenues for 2019, 2020, and 2021. County contracts dictate that the Sheriff rake offs 44% of all costs from telephone calls to/from the jail, and 20% for all video tablet use (both calls and content). The figures supplied by FOIL show the commission payments to the Sheriff (but exclude the GTL shares, which means that the total charges for families are much larger (2.27 x larger for telephone calls and 5 times larger for video)).
As reported by the Sheriff, telephone calls alone generated these commissions, and by extrapolation the calculated total cost that includes the GTL share (based on the contract commission rate).
Sheriff’s Commission $
Estimated Commission plus GTL charge $
2019
303,722
690,360
2020
309,779
704,129
2021
528,900
1,202,190
Are these excessive costs? You judge. The rate for a one minute phone call for persons in
State prisons: 3.9 cent Broome County Jail: 25 cents
To the telephone figures one must add profits from video calls.
It need not be this way: one could have open competitive contracts, eliminate commission fees, or even drop fees for telephone calls as some jails have done (comparative jail rates are available from the striking reports generated by www.prisonpolicy.org ). Meanwhile all state prisons and surrounding jails have restored in-person visits, which Sheriff Harder refuses to do—ensuring a continuing flow of profits under his control.
And where did the Sheriff spend these funds? As reported elsewhere, telephone and video profits were spent on everything from retirement party banners to a second, $273,000 armored personnel carrier.
Broome County Bearcat, funded by the incarcerated
Super profits from Commissary
And even that is not enough. Cut off from families, and denied access to outside vendors, those languishing in the county jail under COVID became even more dependent upon food, hygiene products, and other basic goods purchased from the jail commissary run by a private corporation—and from which the Sheriff skims off yet more profits.
State regulations dictate that profits be modest and be spent on the welfare and rehabilitation of the incarcerated. As the attached foil demonstrates, under COVID profits accelerated by 50% to over $300,000 a year–and were spent on purchases that had nothing to do with rehabilitation or welfare, from carpeting and vacuum cleaners, to religious plays, to gardening supplies and lawn tractors. When Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier in 2019 asked the County Executive and State Commission of Correction to investigate these misappropriations, they declined to respond–as did the NYS Attorney General and Comptroller to whom copies were sent.
Demanding Oversight
The lesson here is straightforward: excessive $ millions are secretly spent every year on the jail, much directly taken from the pockets of the poorest Broome county residents. There is no accountability, no county or state oversight. The solution? Independent community oversight.
What is a Bearcat? Mention the word in Binghamton and most will think of the mascot of SUNY-Binghamton’s sports teams.
For police chiefs and the sheriff it’s another animal altogether: an armored personnel carrier, most often used to carry SWAT teams into action or counter civil protest. And where there was one, there are now two.
Produced by the Lenco Corp for military use worldwide, BearCats are personnel carriers with armored steel bodies, ballistic glass capable of multiple high-powered weapon hits, and blast-resistant floors. The first local BearCat was obtained in 2019 by the Binghamton Police Department and introduced with celebration by the Republican Mayor, the Democratic County Executive, and our Republican State Senator:
Mayor David, State Senator Akshar, County Executive Garnar and BPD BearCat team
The City was playing catch up here: over five years earlier the Broome County Sheriff got himself an armored personnel carrier, a surplus apartheid war machine, a South African Casspir:
Not to be outdone by the City, Sheriff Harder has apparently retired the Casspir and purchased his own BearCat for his own SWAT team–at the cost of $273,000.
Broome County BearCat
It isn’t clear at all what such a war vehicle will do. Last year the Broome SWAT team was primarily used for drug raids on unarmed persons—and the constant policing of protests and parades. Indeed, the most notable use of the BearCat according to the Sheriff’s own annual report was its dispatch to a Black Lives Matter protest in Troy NY (2020 Annual Report, p. 36).
And where did the $273,000 come from? You won’t find it in Broome County Budget sheets. It took a freedom-of information request to find the source: the pockets of the poorest residents of the county, those incarcerated in the Sheriff’s jail.
Out of sight and unmonitored, the Sheriff reaps huge profits from running a monopoly telephone and video exchange for those incarcerated in the jail. A 15 minute call that costs 65 cents from a state prison costs at least $3.75 from the Broome jail and can run up to $9.95 with setup and billing charges. The Sheriff skims off 44% of revenues from all telphone calls and 20% of all video tablet use. Profits in 2020 came to $373,000 and paid for everything from the BearCat to retirement party banners to outfitting conference rooms. Under COVID, profits rose to $655,000 in 2021.
These revenues rest on the exploitation of families desperate to remain in contact with loved ones locked behind closed doors, out of sight. As state and local authorities relax COVID restrictions it is harder and harder to justify keeping in-person visitation closed. State prisons have long ago reinstated in-person visitation with social distancing. County jails across the state, including those in nearby counties, have done the same. In an effort to force the same, Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier and families of the incarcerated have filed a lawsuit with the assistance of Legal Services of Central NY demanding a return to family visits.
Sheriff Harder has refused to comment, so far. County officials are silent as well.
The Sheriff and County have lost a regular series of lawsuits over wrongful deaths and the abuse of the incarcerated, and face ongoing lawsuits over the beating of youth, another death, and the abuse of trans women in the jail. Those with family members in the jail look forward to JUST winning this lawsuit
It will not be easy to deter the militarization of local police forces: State Senator Akshar, sponsor of the Binghamton BearCat, recently announced the retirement of Sheriff Harder and his candidacy to replace Harder (Harder himself has said nothing). His democratic opponent is, like Akshar, a veteran Sheriff’s Deputy and long-term Harder supporter.
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.
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.
“Strip, N-word!” That’s what Broome County correctional officers told Taej’on Vega after dragging the prone and handcuffed Black/Latino teenager across the floor to his cell. It got more brutal quickly, leaving Vega badly bruised and traumatized.
Similar stories have for years been repeated from cell to cell, from incarcerated persons to parents and friends. In this case, however, evidence exists. For Vega and his mother are courageously persistent, and Legal Services of Central New York admirably stepped in and filed a lawsuit on behalf of Mr. Vega.
Violence vs Black Youth, Again
Vega was not alone: women, Black, Latinx, and the poor are vastly overrepresented in the jail, and those with medical and disability conditions are even more vulnerable. Mr. Vega, at the age of 19, was in that difficult position: his fiercely dedicated mother couldn’t visit, and the jail would prove a punishing place.
Mr. Vega had attended Johnson City High School with a recognized disability, including Bipolar Disorder and ADHD, but had not graduated. When he entered the jail he was knowingly denied meds for his previous prescriptions of Adderall, Geodon, Lexapro, and Risperdal.
What happened on February 10th is detailed in the lawsuit. As part of a shakedown search, correctional officers entered his unit in riot gear. Vega was ordered to lay down flat on the floor—and he did, on his stomach. As officers passed by, he asked how their day was going. For that, an officer pressed his knee on Vega’s neck and pressed his thumb on the nerves there. Sergeant Daniel Weir then ordered two officers, Richard Hrebin and Corey Fowler, to take Vega to his cell. They handcuffed him, dragged him to his cell by his outstretched arms, and proceeded to beat and slap him on the head, body and back steadily calling him the n-word. They then uncuffed and told him to “strip, n-word,” and proceeded to perform a search of his genitals and anus to humiliate him.
Court papers with these details recount that he was held so tight he could not breathe, was shaken twice, and told “do what you’re told, n-word.” After all this, they destroyed his few personal items in the cell, including family pictures, and repeatedly flushed his sheets in the cell’s toilet. Vega was then left naked in his cell, traumatized and in pain, and coughing up blood. Other officers heard Vega being pounced on, dragged to his cell and the noise of the beating, but did not intervene.
Punishing Grievances, Institutionalized Racism
On February 12th Vega filed grievances at the urging of his mother, who obtained the following pictures of his bruised and swollen face and body from a video call.
These injuries were also visible to members of the community organization, Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier (JUST), including the author, who visited Mr. Vega as volunteers, as part of a program that visits vulnerable persons in the jail who don’t have family and often need a watchful presence.
On February 14th his grievance was found to have “no merit” and denied.
This is not an isolated case. Persons incarcerated in the jail have, in the past, openly commented on the institutionalized racism there, reporting to local organizers that officers refer to their batons as “n-word sticks,” and that they have “been called N-word, monkey, and other degrading names… when we speak up we get punished by being put in the box [solitary]”.
“All the juveniles spoke of the harsh and abusive practices [of] the Correctional Officers (COs) with many identifying in exquisite detail the beatings they endured at the hands of the COs’…. [a] youth spoke of an incident in which he was restrained in a restraint chair and then pepper sprayed while he was restrained. Still another youth spoke of the COs carrying batons they used to beat the kids; they reported that the COs refer to the baton as their “n-word [sic] beaters.”
Taej’on and his mother have considerable courage, for it is well known that even attempts to file a grievance often result in retaliation by correctional officers. To pursue any public or legal case, however, one must legally have filed grievances. This Taej’on did, with retaliation that followed. There is no expectation of grievances being heard, even at the state level: those that get filed and sent to the State Commission of Correction are so often denied in their entirely that the State Comptroller in 2018 investigated and denounced the SCOC’s almost total rejection of all grievances.
Medical Maltreatment and Death
JUST May 23, 2019 protest outside UHS Jail Doctor’s Office
The County and the medical provider, Correctional Medical Care, have also lost a series of wrongful death suits, brought in the rare instances when families can mount a long and expensive legal case. These include the 2011 death of Alvin Rios who was left “in an emergent, life-threatening status without appropriate medical attention” before dying in his cell on July 20, 2011. Questioned about multiple deaths and the lawsuit, County Sheriff David Harder blew it off, telling the media that deaths “will happen.” 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. The Sheriff’s response to Barton’s family lawsuit was equally cold and blunt: “It’s a bunch of crap.”
A Federal Court judge had the last word however, issuing a blistering judgement in favor of Salladin’s Barton’s mother, Rose Carter, declaring
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, declaring
“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.
Another case, by the parents of Thomas Husar, is underway, seeking $5 million in damages for the death of their seriously ill son. His cries for help were ignored for at least 12 hours by correctional officers on November 2019—pleas echoed by other inmates. Lawsuits, like those on behalf of Thomas Husar and Taej’on Vega, remain the lonely possibility for unearthing brutality and corruption: there is not even the most minimal county or state oversight of jail operations. A recent state law requires police departments and county sheriffs to release disciplinary records, as might be filed for officers investigated and discharged for sexual abuse, regular drinking on the job, or bringing methamphetamines into the jail in exchange for thousands of dollars—all allegations reported to those with family members in the Broome County jail. Sheriff Harder refuses however to release any records, declaring in defiance of state law that he possesses no disciplinary records at all—as seen in multiple, denied replies to freedom-of-information requests.
And Now? Fire Harder, Terminate CMC, Investigate
The formerly incarcerated, the families of the incarcerated and the dead, and local community organizers have now collected and reported a long list of abuses and deaths to state authorities, including to the NY State Attorney General. They have testified before the state legislature. Letters have been written to legislative leaders in Albany again regarding the brutalities meted out to Taej’on Vega. This June local community organizations called upon the Governor to remove the Sheriff from office and terminate the county’s contract with the private medical company. Independent, open, and community-based investigation and oversight is dramatically needed. It is far past time for our elected officials to act. How many more beatings, how many more deaths, must pass before they take action?
Bill Martin is a founding member of Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier and Bartle Professor in the Sociology Department of the State University of New York at Binghamton.
Binghamton Press and Sun-Bulletin, March 21, 2021, p. A12
Bill Martin Guest Columnist
The teenager who got hit by a bus and missed a meeting with his probation officer? Sent back to the county jail and then the state prison.
The youth who wants to live with his family rather than his assigned adult shelter? He dare not, for that will violate his probation and send him to the Broome County jail.
The local SUNY student who relapsed in his recovery from alcohol, or the women who went back to using drugs? Both are now parole violators, so back to the county jail and then a stint in a state prison.
It’s a common story: A person is incarcerated not for committing a new felony, but for violating technical rules imposed by the courts and parole or probation officers. It’s a plague across the state that cost $683 million last year alone.
It’s also very costly here. Broome County is spending over $1 million a year on jailing technical parole violators. Even prior to COVID conditions and the trimming back of bail reform, the annual costs were running at $770,000 per year.
In a period when the county cuts public health nurses and mental health funding year after year, our elected officials, judges and parole officers continue to spend millions to incarcerate local residents who break technical rules and most often need treatment, not further incarceration.
Judges and parole officers often claim they have no alternative, leading them to administratively decide to incarcerate multitudes — without considering the $70,000 to $80,000 cost of doing so. Is it any wonder that Broome County regularly has the highest incarceration rate in the state? The Less is More bill before the Senate (S1144) and Assembly (A5576) offers an alternative. It proposes moderate reforms that would cut back incarcerating people for technical parole violations. It would reward persons who comply with parole requirements. It would still allow incarceration for serious violations, but would end automatic incarceration based on mere accusations of a violation. Parole officers would follow new rules and no longer fear retribution for not automatically imposing incarceration, ending an easy administrative decision that ends up costing the county $70,000 or more.
In the coming months, local faith and community organizations will be working to urge adoption of the Less is More bill. Assembly Member Donna Lupardo is a cosponsor, while Sen. Fred Akshar’s position is not known, as yet.
It’s time to vote for justice and sensible fiscal reform.
Bill Martin is a Bartle Professor at Binghamton University and founding member of Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier.
Why does the Broome County jail, which incarcerates 4% of the statewide county jail population, have almost 4 times that number of the reported positive COVID cases? We were told in May there were no more cases in the jail, and yet now we learn from a freedom of information law request that positive tests keep occurring. Why don’t we have more information on this admitted “hotspot”?
Broome County, which has 4% of the persons incarcerated in county jails using the July 2020 data, has 15% of reported cases—a figure available only after a persistent FOIL request finally got a response.
On April 20th it was declared a “hotspot” for Broome County along with local nursing homes. By early May the public was told told that all cases there were resolved, and no public comments or the data have been released since then.
We now know that positive test result cases continue in the jail, with over dozen positive cases in quarantine/isolation among both staff and the incarcerated since late April. New cases keep cropping up right until the present.
And this is only a partial count: we don’t know how many tests have been conducted, and how many persons have been put in solitary due to possible contact with others in the jail who have COVID. Many, many persons report being put in lockdown, from all new arrivals to persons who live in pods with one infected individual. As for contact tracing of staff and persons they come into contact with, there has been no information at all.
County Executive Garnar: “He has done a really good job in preventing the spread of the virus”
There are at least 22 positive COVID-19 tested persons in the jail with a population of approximately 450 persons (COs and incarcerated), and 290 positive cases in the county with a population of 190,000.
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