Tag: broome county jail (Page 1 of 2)

2027 Broome Justice Budget?

September 29, 2026 / Bill Martin / 0 Comments

The Sheriff is in the news again, this time the national news. On September 15, 2026 he led a delegation of Sheriffs to testify in Congress, denouncing New York State’s new law that prohibits formal agreements with ICE. This endangers, he tells everyone, the county, the state and the nation. Along with other New York Sheriffs he demands full power to cooperate with ICE and Federal authorities as he sees fit. It was compelling political theater in support of Trump’s war against migrant workers.

What captured much of the media however was a forceful exchange over a women’s charges of an exploitative relationship following Akshar’s investigation of the homicide of her son. Akshar called the woman’s allegations “fictitious and slanderous.” When U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman challenged Akshar’s credibility to represent law enforcement, Akshar was enraged: “Only a degenerate politician like you would bring this up at a hearing like this!” Closer to home Akshar’s work with ICE has caused him much trouble, ranging from disrupted town halls through protests at the jail to continually contested county legislative meetings.

Legislative Meeting Sept 19, 2025

Give credit where it is due: his support for mass policing, incarceration, deportation and the President are consistent and longstanding, appearing at Trump rallies many years ago.

And with his own spin doctor-the first appointment he made when elected Sheriff-we can expect to see more aggressive and continuous appearances by Akshar. But will Broome County buy it? Will legislators continue to support the Sheriff and these policies in the face of public revulsion with ICE? A test is soon coming: the 2027 county budget.

Here Comes the Budget, Again

The County Executive had little to say in his presentation on the proposed 2027 Broome County budget about county policing and incarcerating residents. Other than praising the Sheriff and his good works, Jason Garner was quiet on the Sheriff’s budget, speaking only about a little more money for bullet-proof vests for law enforcement officers. And who could be against that?

But take a closer look: it’s a bit duplicitous. The Sheriff’s budget surpasses $60 million for the first time. The jail budget increases by over 10% to at least $42 million. As in past years there is more money for jail salaries and benefits ($31 million) including $4.9 million for overtime.

More Bearcats!

Dig deeper and there are further surprises: Broome County gets a new Bearcat! No, not a star recruit for the local State University of New York’s Bearcat athletic teams, but $360,000 for another armored personnel carrier (Capital Budget, p.13). Yes, it’s another one: this is the third one the Sheriff’s office has added to his fleet, following the 2019 Casspir (formerly used to wage war against Black South Africans), a 2020 Bearcat (purchased with commissary profits legally required to be spent on the rehabilitation of incarcerated residents no less)—and there is at least one more in the county, the Binghamton Police Department’s Bearcat, purchased in 2019 with then State Senator Akshar’s assistance.

The Bearcat joins an impressive stream of war-fighting equipment: military-grade transport trucks, enhanced Humvees, sound cannons, multiple surveillance drones and so on. What have multiple armored vehicles been used for other than policing protests, poking holes in windows of parolee’s homes, and entertaining children at county show-n-tells? We don’t know. Are fevered heads envisioning fighting an invasion from Canada across Lake America?

AI generated

Build it and they will come?

Looking forward the county budget tells us to envision higher jail costs, more costly incarceration of Federal and ICE prisoners, and jail expansion. In his budget proposal the Sheriff estimates an increase in the jail population from 340 in 2025 to 410 in 2026, and on to 460 in 2027 (County Recommended Budget p.460). Costs rise for related food, medical treatment, hospitalization, transportation, and other needs of poor residents.

This is an old story, familiar to students of mass incarceration: build it and they will fill it. Data-driven studies show that construction of prisons propelled mass incarceration through the 1980s and 1990s, especially in impoverished rural communities (and especially Black communities).[1] Largely ignored was the boom to build jails exemplified by Broome County, fed in part by the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, sponsored by Senator Strom Thurmond and championed by Senator Joe Biden, which led to local county jails becoming depositories for federal prisoners including ICE detainees.[2]

Broome followed these trends: when IBM fled the area 18,000 jobs evaporated, poverty increased, the local population declined, and incarceration accelerated. In the late 1970s the Broome jail housed fewer than 50 persons, tripling to 150 in the late 1980s. A brand new jail was then funded, located on land outside the city donated by the State University of New York.

It opened in 1996 to hold 536 persons. Jail numbers rose to 500. In 2014 a study by a jail architect firm was commissioned by the county and projected the need for a 710-bed jail. In 2016 Democrat and Republican legislators joined forces to vote $6.8 million, over a protest in county chambers, to expand the jail to a capacity of 600.

But then numbers fell. Ten years of community and statewide protest produced criminal justice reforms that reversed the drumbeat for mass incarceration. While local politicians, billionaires, and correctional officers facing felonies had long easily gotten bail and avoided the jail, other local, poorer residents now could as well. Jail numbers, excluding Federal detainees, fell to barely 300 persons, paralleling even longer and steadier falls in crime rates.

Then came the local blowback. In 2023 a new Sheriff and District Attorney arrived in town, and two years later, came a new President. Drug wars, crime panics, a mania over migrants, and funding flowed again. Jail numbers have been steadily increasing, reinforcing Broome County’s claim to having the highest incarceration rate of all 62 New York counties.

And then came ICE

Trump’s war against migrant workers was expected to help keep the jail full. Not because of the Sheriff personally signing a 287g agreement with ICE to serve detainee warrants, but by simply continuing a 2002 agreement to house Federal prisoners which had long been used to sustain county cooperation with ICE and house ICE detainees. It is this agreement with the U.S. Marshalls Service that conservative New York State Sheriffs and Akshar defend. New York State’s new law against cooperation with ICE may lead to the termination of housing all federal prisoners, like the local dairy worker held at county expense for six months in the Broome County Jail on solely immigration charges. And lots of Federal funding is at risk for Sheriffs. Indeed Sheriffs report they make money from the Federal reimbursement of $110/day per person. Among the Sheriff’s 2027 Objectives in his budget statement: “Maximize available housing capacity to generate revenue through agreements with the U.S. Marshals Service, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and other New York State counties” (p.236). By Sheriff Akshar’s own formula, however, the cost of boarding in a person is $274/day, meaning the county loses $164 for every Federal detainee every day. For 2025 this totaled $2,860,000.

Who Profits?

Where the Sheriff does turn a profit is on charges for phone calls, tablets, and commissary sales. At the June 18, 2026 meeting of the county legislature community activists and families of the incarcerated rallied against the proposal to renew the Sheriff’s monopoly agreement with the out of state GTL corporation; up for a vote was a contract that would dramatically increase the prices on phone, video, text and tablet use. When questioned by puzzled legislators, the Sheriff simply said Federal law dictated it and he needed to make more money. Fake news, said Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier in its press release. Why are calls to stay in contact with family free in state prisons and other New York State jails, but cost 12 cents per minute in Broome County? Infrastructure and running costs run around 1.5 cents at best. Why does the Sheriff charge a 60% profit on every call? For the first time five legislators voted against a budget item for the Sheriff.

One might ask the same of other jail contracts.

Where do the 44% profits from commissary profits go? Why was the medical provider overpaid by at least $600,000? What will be the cost of two looming class action lawsuits over salmonella poisoning of 320 persons, with 12 sent to the local hospital, by the jail’s out of state private food contractor? Successive county audits in 2024 and 2025 continue to report the lack of legally registered contracts and the inability to trace prices, sales, expenditures and revenues. No member of the public could pose these questions to legislators much the sheriff at recent county meetings.

There is only one scheduled chance a year for persons to speak while the legislators listen (but don’t respond) Thursday, October 22nd at 5:00 p.m. 6th Floor, County Office Building, 60 Hawley Street,

Given recent protests by the audience this past year over justice, housing, and health expenditures, expect a long meeting. The public has much to say.

***

[1] John Eason, Big House on the Prairie: Rise of the Rural Ghetto & Prison Proliferation (University of Chicago Press, 2017).

[2] “If You Build It,” Vera Institute of Justice, accessed September 26, 2026, https://www.vera.org/in-our-backyards-stories/if-you-build-it.

More Jail Cash Grabs

July 2, 2026 / Bill Martin / 0 Comments

Where does the cash fly off to? Medical, Food/Commissary, Federal Monopolies?

How far have monopoly pricing, duplicitous kickbacks, and hidden payments seeped into the administrative bones of the county jail? Public debate and protest recently erupted over escalating profits for the GTL Corporation which charges over 100 times more than the cost of jail phone and tablet services—with the Sheriff skimming off 60% of sales into his private slush fund.

Inquiring minds and county legislators might ask: what’s happening with other agreements and contracts? Here are three more to scrutinize for medical services, food/commissary provisions, and Federal detainees (including ICE).

PrimeCare Medical: death and the missing $664,568?

Following the steady decline in county health funding, the county jail has become for many in recent decades the default regional treatment center. The jail was neither designed for nor is capable of this role. The result has been haphazard services marked by successive lost lawsuits over the abuse of youth (eg. Vaega, youth solitary) and transgender persons (NYCLU/Holland) and multiple wrongful deaths (eg. Rios, Barton, Husar).

The most recent June 2023 SCOC report for a person to die in the jail bluntly stated that “there was a complete failure by the medical staff to properly assess and provide treatment for a gravely ill individual… had Lxxx been timely sent to the hospital for a diagnosis and treatment, his death could have been prevented.” Last year the death rate was higher than in New York City’s notorious Rikers Island. Yet we have no accounting of associated medical/legal costs and financial settlements.

How much $ has the county paid out by lost lawsuits paying lawyers and then victims of abuse and wrongful deaths? We don’t know and they won’t tell. The county hides this: the cost of legal fees and payments has never been revealed much less reported; it is likely to be in the $ millions. Unless sealed by a judge, non-disclosure agreements can’t be used to hide payouts as in the most recent ruling in favor of the Husar family. But despite rulings by the NY State’s Committee on Open Government, the District Attorney’s office refuses to reveal payouts.

To that you can add how much the county has also paid out for medical services never provided by PrimeCare. In 2018 former jail nurses sued the out of state, for profit medical provider at the time, Correctional Medical Care, alleging the company forced them to falsify medical records and backdate call sheets to pass accreditation and maximize profits. The result: missed medications and specialist visits and general medical neglect, including an inmate whose broken arm was denied pain medication and an amputee whose limb became malformed due to a lack of proper care.

It’s a rewarding practice literally: profits of private jail providers across the state are running at 20 to 25 percent. And the firms change names and recompose themselves when faced with medical malfeasance. When Broome’s medical provider CMC was revealed by the State Attorney General to be operating without the required New York State license, it simply renamed itself CBH Medical to register in New York but with a head office in the same suite in Blue Bell Pennsylvania. When CMC lost too many lawsuits and attracted too much bad media coverage, the County found a new medical provider, awarding in February 2022 a bigger contract worth $5.2 million to PrimeCare Medical, another firm based again in Pennsylvania.

Then what community activists and nurses alike warned in 2018 and after came to pass. In 2023 a county audit revealed that the Sheriff had paid PrimeCare for $257,874 from August to December 2022 for medical services and treatments that were never provided.

No fraud charges were leveled, no financial penalties were imposed, no payments of lost interest were required. The Sheriff and County officials cast this as saving money for the County.

The Sheriff called the payments for services not rendered “disparities”. An agreement was announced that PrimeCare would repay the county with monthly payments over the coming year. As for PrimeCare? “We couldn’t be happier with the folks we have here”.

He spoke too soon. A follow-up audit reported on December 9, 2025 found PrimeCare were not overpaid $258,000, it was $664,568. County auditors left it to PrimeCare Medical, the Sheriff and the County to work out “how overpayment of $664,568 should be recouped and what form of credit or repayment is appropriate.”

That could be a problem since the Sheriff responded to the audit by stating that PrimeCare had not met the 2023 agreement to pay back the lost $257,000 in 12 monthly installments. In 2025 the Sheriff said he would be stopping any future payments since PrimeCare was yet to pay back the $257,000 from 2023:

There was no press conference this time on how money was saved for the county. No penalties or fraud charges were announced either.

Contract billing and invoicing fraud against local governments involves intentionally deceiving a county to obtain unearned funds. In New York State, these crimes are typically prosecuted under statutes like Grand Larceny (NY Penal Law Article 155), Offering a False Instrument for Filing (NY Penal Law Article 175), or the federal False Claims Act for federally funded projects.

Legislators all got a copy of the December 9, 2025 audit. But apparently they didn’t read it or were unperturbed: on May 21, 2026 all 14 voted to reward PrimeCare a new $5.2 million contract.

Four days later more than 300 people were treated by PrimeCare at the jail for food poisoning, with a dozen being sent to hospital and many alleging medical neglect.

Incarcerated have now filed grievances over their medical treatment (PrimeCare) and food services (Trinity) while a class action lawsuits seeking damages from the County have begun. Who is going to pay for defending the county legally and for all related medical and compensatory charges? That too as in the past remains unasked, hidden, unknown.

Trinity Commissary: missing audits, implausible accounts, no registered contract?

At least PrimeCare has a contract. It isn’t so clear with the commissary provider Trinity Corporation.

State law (9 CRR-NY 7016.1: §(a)) requires the “regular” auditing by the county of sheriffs’ commissary operations which are required to have “modest return above costs” with profits “utilized only for the purpose of prisoner welfare and rehabilitation. Profits must be kept in “a separate bank account,” which can “fully substantiate all purchases, sales and expenditures.”

Broome county has never met these requirements according to available documents and audits.

For years audits were slim and perfunctory, revealing only one figure, the total in the Commissary Fund derived from profits on sales. Ten years ago the balance was $ 112,052.39, with no purchases, sales or expenditures reported. The one-page report simply asserted without any details “it is our opinion that the Sheriff’s Office is in compliance with State Law regarding the commissary fund.” The same words, paragraphs, and conclusions were repeated word for word in 2017 and 2018. And then audits stopped.

In May 2019 Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier wrote a letter to the Broome County Executive and State Commission of Correction requesting a commissary audit given 200-600% profit rates on sales, the use of profits well outside any interpretation of “rehabilitation purposes,” and the illegal use of profits for mandatory hygiene items–among other items derived from freedom of information requests and information from persons inside the jail. No county audit was reported for 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023.

After a five year wait a new audit was posted in 2024. It too failed to include figures on revenues or expenditures. Those apparently were not available with auditors reporting that “during the course of our audit, we noted that the Broome County Sheriff’s Office does not have any written policies and procedures regarding the Commissary fund.”

And the reasonable profits from sales as required by state law? Auditors found no records, no ability to verify commissions. “Currently, the vendor does not provide a detailed Sales and Commission report. Therefore, there is no process in place to readily verify the accuracy of the calculated commission.”

Even more striking was the absence of any legally registered county contract with Trinity: the Sheriff had personally signed an extension of the previous contract without informing the County Law Department; it lacked county approval. Auditors also noted vendors from news subscriptions to cable and internet service were also not under contract. The Sheriff perfunctorily agreed to rectify all the items concerned.

A year later the December 3, 2025, audit (also distributed to all legislators but not the County Executive) was similarly unable to follow prices, sales, expenditures, revenues. Still, it was curiously able to conclude the “Commissary Account to be appropriate in accordance with New York State Law.” To be fair, the audit only partially examined one month of accounts, November 1-30, 2024. How the conclusion of even appropriate expenditures was reached is clear: as auditors stated, “approval forms (for commissary disbursements) were not completed for purchases made under existing contracts.” contravening “New York State Commission of Correction regulation 9 CRR-NY § 7016”.

Why does this matter? Its $ millions flowing unaccountably through county hands. Many families and friends of incarcerated persons spend hundreds of dollars a month so person have access to supplemental food and hygiene products. The Sheriff can raise prices at his own, monopoly capitalist, discretion. Price markups in the past have varied from 100-600% including on even Bibles and Korans. A single packet of Ramen that might cost 50 cents at Walmart now (and far less if bought in bulk) is priced at over $1 in the jail commissary–before the prices were increased last month. But New York State does dictate limits on prices, profits? Ten years of required audits demonstrate state laws, transparency, and even the most basic audits demonstrate county jail contracts, purchases, and expenditures are beyond all basic oversight. And it’s the incarcerated and their families who pay.

U.S. Federal Marshals Service: $2.8 million+ lost in 2025?

Signed by the Sheriff in 2002, this agreement imprisons people in the county jail for the Federal government, including in the last year hundreds of ICE detainees. There is no requirement to have such an agreement.

In 2025 the new Trump administration arrived and the number of persons held, fed, cared, and transported for the Federal government exploded with the arrival of new ICE detainees. The number rose from 18 per day in the previous ten years to over 80 a day in March 2025. Its currently running 60 to 70.

What does this cost? When state prison officers went on an illegal strike in February 2025 and the jail could not send convicted and sentenced persons on to state prisons, the Sheriff protested to WBNG that it cost the him $274/day to keep a “state ready” in the jail while the county only received $100/day in reimbursement from the state.

If you apply the Sheriff’s daily figure of $274 to the housing of Federal and ICE detainees, and deduct the $110/day Federal reimbursement, it costs the county $164/day to house Federal detainees. The total cost for 2025?

17,440 federal days reported x $164/day = $ 2,860,160.

And that’s before the county pays for additional transport, liability, food, and medical expenses.

The Sheriff retorts that jail costs are fixed no matter whether the jail holds 50 or 500 persons, enforced by the State Commission of Correction which dictates staffing for a rated capacity of 535. But capacities are regularly changed for jails. The solution here is simple: cancel the Federal agreement and officially downsize to a capacity reflecting the maximum number used in recent years to house local residents plus a small buffer. Such variances are regularly granted; the form to apply to the SCOC to do so is here and they have 60 days to reply.

What number? Since 2020 the average annual count minus Federal detainees (but including even state readies) is 332 persons per day (see state DCJS data here). Not 535, but over one-third less, 332. We don’t need a supersized jail and can easily reduce its rated maximum by at least 25%. And save the county $ millions.

Monopoly Capitalism at the Broome County Jail

July 1, 2026 / Bill Martin / 0 Comments

AI generated

Monopoly Capitalism: an economy dominated by a small number of corporations wielding market power, often dictating prices, suppressing smaller competitors, influencing political decision-making, and making “free competition” difficult or impossible for smaller players.

The Sheriff sets the prices, the people and the county pay

At the June 18, 2026, meeting of the Broome County Legislature something surprising took place. It wasn’t the appearance of community activists, who rallied against the proposal to dramatically increase the Sheriff’s unilateral prices on phone, video or text with family and friends in the jail. Indeed, no comments from the attending public were allowed, as usual.

What was new? Five county legislators voted for the first time against the Sheriff. How did this happen?

Up for a vote was the Sheriff’s new contract assuring large profits from monopoly controls given to the out-of-state GTL corporation and an announced 60% profit skim on all sales for the Sheriff. GTL is a well-known profiteer among jail and prison phone call companies that reap 20% or more profit rates. The contract is obscure in details regarding profits to the Sheriff and charges to the incarcerated and their families for landline phones, video calls, tablet calls, and tablet use for messaging, calling, and reading. Several legislators questioned the abstruse details of the contract, openly stating it was incomprehensible. Why were costs doubled for text messages to 50 cents? Why were phone calls upped to 12 cents a minute, video calls 21 cents, and apparently any use of tablets 7 cents a minute? How were Broome’s extraordinary figures arrived at? Would it not cut off family and friends from the incarcerated, the vast majority not convicted of any crime? No alternatives, no open request for proposals was made.

The Sheriff was invited to the podium by the legislative leadership. He told everyone it was simple: they didn’t understand his need to cover losses from changing Federal regulations that reduced his income from phone calls. As the press release from Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier (and other media reports and a briefing here) detailed, no federal regulation required such massive increases in phone, tablet and video charges. Elsewhere across the state phone calls cost 1.5 cents per minute to cover costs, and phone calls are free in all state prisons and for many persons in jails in New York State. And while profits to the Sheriff from landline calls have fallen as landlines gave way to cheap internet calls for all of us, the move to per minute rates for calls, music, and reading via tablets was vastly increasing profits from expanded tablet use around the state and country. So what was being increased at the jail, and why?

None of this was addressed as the Sheriff belittled critics and legislators who questioned his unilateral contract decision and monopoly charges. As legislators noted in objection, phone and tablet charges are a lifeline for families and friends of those in the jail, often keeping families intact. They statistically reduce recidivism. The Sheriff countered his income, to a private, un-audited fund he controls, was of overriding importance. In the end, with several rude, interjecting members of the public leaving the room, followed by deputies, the contract was approved by a vote of 10 to 5 opposed (Weslar, Ames, Myers, Kaminsky, Ryan). This was a record-breaking move: never have so many in recent memory voted against any request from a Sheriff.

Legislators would do well to push a little harder and examine such dissembling, confusing-by-design contracts, revenues and expenditures at the County Jail. The GTL monopoly contract will cost local families $ millions in the coming years. Other monopoly contracts for medical care, food services, and the housing of Federal/ICE detainees have cost the County $ millions. PrimeCare’s contract for medical services was overpaid by at least $600,000, Trinity’s contract for food and commissary purchases breaches state laws and poisoned over 300 persons last month. And the U.S. Federal Marshals agreement from 2002 alone cost the county $2.8 million last year to subsidize Federal/ICE detainees in the jail.

Sidebar: Democracy Broome County Style

When several members tried to understand the admittedly confusing contract the Sheriff proposed with GTL, he was allowed to respond from the podium, speaking to “everyone in the room”. But of course no member of the public could respond, and those who rudely interjected from the audience were compelled by threatening deputies to leave the meeting. As has happened in previous meetings, the legislative chair ignored the rules of order that require any visiting elected official to request and get permission to speak before the meeting. This is democracy in action at the county legislature: no public comment permitted, privilege granted to the powerful male figures who rule over the county, and monopoly prices imposed without audit or accounting to the public.

Up next: more contractual boondoggles

Medical, Food Horrors Update

June 9, 2026 / Bill Martin / 0 Comments

Media reports and press releases from both the Broome County Sheriff and Broome County Health Department reassure us they have gotten to the cause of the poisoning of over 300 persons in the jail and remedies are forthcoming.

If only it were so. Perhaps persons should look a closer look at the record. Of the 24 inspections since 2017, only 4 had critical violations reported. The two just before the poisoning reported zero critical violations. State law requires inspections of health conditions in the jail, and apparently only the kitchen is ever inspected and that barely.

Justice and Unity for Southern Tier, this blog, and incarcerated persons and their families and friends have long reported serious, life-threatening health and food hazards. In 2018 Sue Ruff, Rozann Greco, and I wrote an op-ed against the contract with Trinity, reporting on problems so severe that contracts elsewhere were cancelled.

JUST wrote a letter to the Broome County Legislature asking our local representatives to keep local food workers and reject outsourcing food to Trinity corporation.

In following years persons inside reported continuous, serious violations of food preparation and quality–which we posted widely on social media and the JUST website:

This blog has also steadily reported on food problems and illnesses.

But we are today told there is no one to blame. There is no sign of any comprehensive investigation. There is no discussion of the dire costs to persons in the jail, and no revelations on the financial and legal mess for the county. We are reassured solutions are in hand, perhaps another cost-saving, death-defying, for profit, out-sourced from the county, food service contact.

We hope for better, but we do live in Orwellian times.

Medical Horrors in the Broome County Jail

May 29, 2026 / Bill Martin / 0 Comments

What is happening? What is to be done?

The ongoing medical disaster in the Broome County Jail should surprise no one. Family and friends of the incarcerated tell us of plaintive cries for help, of hundreds being locked into cells with diarrhea and vomiting, without showers, and with intensely painful bone and body pains–and being offered small cups of Gatorade and small doses of Pepto-Bismol as treatment. It’s a horror story accompanied by all the signs of a coverup.

At first people on the outside were told by the press releases of the Sheriff and Health Department this was due to a norovirus. Then it was food poisoning, salmonella. Or was it poison, as flyers posted in jail pods we are told suggested? Or was it due to meat accidentally sprayed with insecticide and still used as some tell us—without staff becoming ill since their daily food is provided separately even if charged to the food costs of the incarcerated?

Left in the hand of those responsible we may never know, we may never be able to separate fact from rumors that circulate behind a wall of official secrecy. As reported at length in this blog, e.g. here, the local Health Department for years has not conducted legally required inspections of the health operations of the facility. The official oversight body, the State Commission of Correction–which currently cannot even meet due to a lack of a quorum of commissioners–has failed to investigate continuous and literally deadly conditions in the Jail. Broome County provides no oversight and refuses to reveal the costs of lost wrongful abuse and death lawsuits settled out of court. Grievances and allegations over medical abuse, persons admitted to the jail without medical clearances, and rape go unacknowledged, unaddressed, and continue to flow out to family and friends.

What is to be done? Here are four beginning steps. You can be certain others, particularly those with medical and incarceration experience, will have other recommendations.

One, an independent commission with open public hearings should be appointed to investigate this and longstanding cases of medical malfeasance. For reasons already noted, it can’t be under the direction of those currently responsible and involved for managing the jail and health conditions there.

Two, the county needs to immediately terminate the private, out of state medical provider and contract with local medical services and physicians responsible to local authorities and oversight.

Three, food purchasing and preparation needs to be removed from an out of sight, out of state, for profit corporation, and be returned to a locally, county-run food facility employing local workers.

Four, the county needs to begin the process of separating the jail from law enforcement by placing the jail under an independent authority as is done in other counties. It is not reasonable to expect the sheriff to run a large law enforcement agency and a very large jail. The county should correspondingly move to construct and enact policies to reverse recent decisions that have made the jail into a regional health care center. Medical services from substance use treatment to the care of the disabled should be in the hands of local medical care givers and providers–and not hidden behind high and secretive walls.

July 2024 County response to Freedom of Information Law request for Health Department legally-required health condition inspections of the jail?

“I was able to connect with our Health Department regarding your below request. The only record they would maintain are kitchen inspections.”

Last Broome County Health Department inspection report on County Jail kitchen only? August 27, 2025: zero violations

Broome County: Fleecing Families, Feeding Sheriff

May 22, 2026 / Bill Martin / 1 Comment

“It just seems so heartless”

This month Broome County moved to radically raise what people pay to be incarcerated in the county jail. Families already spend mightily to help loved ones survive, paying for food, hygiene, haircuts, and irregular fees. Now they face accelerated, monopoly rates to stay in touch by phone, text, or video.

It was not supposed to happen. For over a decade friends and families of the millions incarcerated in our jails and prisons lobbied to reduce the exorbitant costs of staying in touch. Decades of research show that when families stay together, children do better, jails and prisons are safer for everyone, and fewer persons return to prison. And as internet calling replaced landlines, the cost of local and long-distance calls fell amazingly for all of us.

The result? In New York State prisons phone calls are now free, making it possible for incarcerated people to stay in contact with their children, wives, husbands, grandparents and loved ones. In New York City jails phone calls have been free since 2019. But not in Broome County, where the Sheriff just announced stunning increases in phone, video, and tablet rates. Some were increased by over 100%, all generating 34-44% kickback profits.

Why?

Sheriff Akshar had a ready explanation faithfully relayed by local media, it’s a federal regulation he says: “New rate changes for phone calls ($0.09 to $0.13) and video conferencing (0.14 to $0.17) are due to recent nationwide standards changes set by the FCC. Our tablet vendor, Viapath Technologies, made changes in their pricing in accordance with those new standards.” If only that were true. Like so much in these Orwellian days, its fake news.

No government act, law or FCC ruling required raising rates. Rates rose due to a local decision made by the Sheriff to sign a new contract with the prison phone monopoly, GTL/Viapath. And it is the families of incarcerated in the jail, many held for ICE and the Federal government, that will pay. Five years ago the Sheriff’s take was estimated to be over $500,000/year, it must surely be more now, and rising.

How did this happen? After 20 years of work by families, in 2022 a bipartisan Congressional vote approved the Martha Wright-Reed Fair and Just Communications Act, named after a grandmother who struggled to afford phone calls to her grandson. The Act mandated significant reductions in phone call costs in prisons and jails. In 2024 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued new regulations as required by the Act to reduce rates and end kickbacks to jailers, all while funding equipment and call monitoring costs.

But private prison telephone companies, prison wardens, Republican state attorneys, and county sheriffs struck back. And with Trump came two new commissioners at the FCC who moved to defy Congress. Last October they overturned rates caps, increasing them by as much as 83%. Sheriff Akshar cast this as a mandatory federal action. But this was fiction. The FCC only set legal maximum rates, any jail could set rates anywhere below. And thus calls remain free from New York State prisons and New York City jails. But not in Broome County.

It gets worse given new technology. Landline phone calls have been fully replaced by the use of tablets with bounded, monitored, and recorded access for phone and video calls, music, movies and so on—all to be purchased by per minute rates. Tablets became a massive new source of profit for prison phone companies and sheriffs.

I asked men inside what they feared most from rising prices for commissary, punishment block fees, or phone, video, or tablet use. It wasn’t commissary where prices have just been raised, or phone calls, or video calls now at 21 cents per minute. It was the new tablet rates which for limited materials went from 3 to 7 cents per minute and from 5 to 7 cents per minute for other uses. Limited 2000-character-only texts to persons inside also doubled in price from 25 to 50 cents. And then there are the fees on top of these rates: if you deposit $15 in your own account, to send 30 texts to a friend for example, you will pay another $5.44 for the transaction, raising the rate to 68 cents per text:

It’s a complicated structure designed to confuse, but this much is clear: GTL/Viapath gets 60% of sales and the Sheriff’s commission is set at 44%.

The contract brokered by the Sheriff was approved unanimously by the Public Safety Committee of the Broome County Legislature on May 11, 2026, including votes by Democrat legislators Kim Myers and Susan Ryan. On May 21, 2026 the County Legislature met but held over the resolution for another meeting. No comments by the public on this and other financially contentious resolutions were allowed. One thing we know for certain: the Sheriff is already charging people the new rates, lack of county contract approval or not.

What will happen? As one family member reported to WBNG, “It just seems so heartless.” She already spends $500 or more a month to stay in contact with her son and fears for his and others’ mental health if communication is cut off. People will go without food to fund phone calls, food and soap for incarcerated family. Children at home and ICE teenagers in the jail will become more anxious and depressed. The jail will become more dangerous for everyone inside. But be assured, the Sheriff’s ‘discretionary’ funds will grow.

And this is just the beginning: people in the jail report that commissary prices are going up this past month too, already a source of illegal profits. Here state law dictates profits must be reasonable, but they are not. And profits skimmed by the Sheriff are legally required to be spent on items for the rehabilitation of incarcerated persons. Sheriff Akshar tells WBNG that’s true for phone and tablet profits too: “as always, any revenue received from those tablet messages and internet use goes directly to improvements to programming, services and other direct benefits to the incarcerated population.”

How would we know? There are no public audits or accounting in any detail. The state oversight body, the State Commission of Correction, doesn’t provide any insight (although it does occasionally admonish the Sheriff for not following basic regulations, including hygienic ones like weekly laundry linen services–which he simply ignores for years). By state law the county does have to audit the commissary fund (but not other jail funds). You can’t find any figures in the county audit of commissary accounts. The latest 2024 county audit simply, and most generously, and only notes “inconsistent authorization and documentation of commissary disbursements” and the balance in the fund was over $500,000 (2025 County Audit here). The 2024 audit recorded a balance of $496,000 and “noted that the Broome County Sheriff’s Office does not have any written policies and procedures regarding the Commissary fund” and that “the contract with Trinity Services Group, Inc. to provide food, health, and personal hygiene items for sale to inmates had previously expired” so the jail was operating commissary without any legal, contractual basis to do so.

What one can find via past Freedom of Information Requests is profits being spent on basic hygiene supplies, haircuts, wheelbarrows, oil, lexis-nexus costs, TVs, wages, party favors, copier costs, newspaper subscriptions, food, lawn tractors and trailers, and an armored personnel carrier—all this for rehabilitation?

The Rehabilitation Machine: the Broome County Bearcat

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Hochul’s ICE Hoax

February 5, 2026 / Bill Martin / 0 Comments

With much fanfare Governor Hochul announced on January 30^th a proposed law to “ensure that New York law enforcement is focused on keeping New Yorkers safe – not doing the job of ICE”. The list of supporting statements from district attorneys, police chiefs, and county sheriffs should have been a tip-off: it’s a publicity stunt with little effect on ICE operations in New York State. Even worse, it fits a longstanding Hochul pattern of support for racialized mass policing, the rollback of popular justice reforms, and ever more surveillance by law enforcement on all state residents, documented and undocumented. Hochul and the legislative leadership refuse to endorse legislative proposal that might substantially stop ICE operations and detentions, most notably the widely supported New York for All and Dignity Not Detention bills.

Don’t Believe the Hype

What Hochul’s order does propose is to stop local governments from signing 287g cooperation agreements with ICE. Yet 287g represents but a sliver of the large number of agreements and the vast integration of New York law enforcement agencies with ICE. Currently 287g agreements exist in 9 of the state’s 62 counties, signed by 14 of the 528 law enforcement agencies in the state. Of the 14, only 6 are Task Force agreements that authorize and train local officers to act as ICE agents. One is a Jail Model to house ICE detainees. Others authorize local officers to serve warrants to people in local jails.

Terminating these agreements is a good step. But this hardly impacts the widespread support local and state agencies provide to ICE through the everyday working of the mass policing and mass incarceration system built up over the last three decades under Republicans and Democrats alike. As a Sheriff of in western NY with a 287g contract responded when asked how Hochul’s proposal would change his operations, he simply said “it wouldn’t”.

Broome County Model?

Consider my county, Broome Count, which regularly has the distinction of having the highest incarceration rate of all NYS counties and has housed in the last year hundreds of detainees for ICE. In March 2025 Sheriff Frederick Akshar signed a 287g Warrant Model contract. Yet this had little to do with caging ICE detainees. As the Sheriff tells all who will listen, his 287g agreement has not authorized or trained his officers to carry out ICE captures or even house ICE detainees—it only authorizes his officers to serve warrants to persons in the jail. Indeed the incarceration of ICE detainees is not new, but has long taken place under a 2002 contract the County signed, like many other counties, with the U.S. Mashall Service to incarcerate persons for the federal government. The current number of persons held for the federal government is spectacular. In past years there have been 5 or 6 people in the jail on federal charges on any given day. This number is now running close to 80 daily, a surge composed of ICE detainees often held for only a few days. We don’t actually know the numbers much less the names of ICE detainees, they like so much of ICE and jail operations aren’t revealed.

Will Hochul’s proposal change what happens in the jail and county? The answer lies in the shifting, slippery legal language promulgated by Homeland Security and ICE. Hochul’s proposal outlaws holding persons on civil charges, but continues to allow the incarceration of persons held on criminal charges. Almost all commentators have assumed this prevents incarcerating the vast majority of ICE detainees. We know very few have been convicted of any serious crime, and overstaying your visa results only in a civil charge. But what of other cases? What constitute a criminal charge?

Take the case of a local farmworker I’ll call Juan whom I visited in the Broome County Jail in response to a letter pleading for assistance. Speaking over the plexiglass visitation room barrier, Juan quietly told us he had been held for months with no family contact (and no staff who knew his language). He was held on criminal charges solely for crossing the border a second time to return to his ill wife and thankful employer. He ended up being convicted in a federal court on criminal charges and being sent to a federal prison, leaving his children—US citizens, if that matters—visibly distraught and materially impoverished. Others watched his passage grimly.

Or take the case of uber driver Guan Heng whose detention in the Broome County Jail generated international media attention due to Guan’s flight from China for posting videos and locations of Chinese detention camps. Guan got picked up when ICE raided his house seeking persons on criminal charges. He had entered the US by small boat without permission and later applied for asylum. As the American Immigration Council pointed out five years ago, “those who enter or reenter the United States without permission, however, can face criminal charges.” What does one think ICE and local sheriffs who support ICE will do? Under Hochul’s proposal ICE can simply lay down federal criminal charges for more people like Guan and Sheriffs will legally hold them.

“Illegal Entry”/8 U.S.C. § 1325 makes it a crime to unlawfully enter the United States. It applies to people who do not enter with proper inspection at a port of entry, such as those who enter between ports of entry, avoid examination or inspection, or who make false statements while entering or attempting to enter. A first offense is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine, up to six months in prison, or both. American Immigration Council, 2021

This should have been expected. The criminalization of migrants and undocumented residents based on stereotypes and minor misdemeanor offenses has been been a central part of the racialized mass incarceration era. Federal immigration prosecutors had long ago entrenched this process by replacing civil with criminal charges for entry and reentry offenses. By 2016 over half of all federal prosecutions were for immigration offenses. Over forty percent of convicted federal offenders were non-citizens, with 90 percent sentenced for “unlawful entering or remaining in the United States.”

Moving forward it is hard to chart out what would happen if court hearings were held for every person with pending criminal charges for unlawful entry. Certainly sending cases through Federal courts isn’t practical at the moment. As one public defender in a federal court told me, ‘if prosecutors start taking immigration violations to court we would overwhelm and close down the system’. Given the new $ billions for ICE just appropriated by Congress its possible to envision an expanded authoritarian court system. Easier for prosecutors and ICE would be to revoke Temporeary Protested Status and Deferred Enforced Departure status and criminalize by fiat those lawfully resident. Faced with this prospect, as we have seen in the Broome County jail, many persons faced with interminable, isolated incarceration will resort to escape by self-deportation.

Local residents might press for an end of coopeation with ICE for financial as well as moral reasons: it’s costly. The federal government reimburses Sheriffs $110/day per person. Yet the cost per day for a person in the Broome jail is $264 (2025 budget/average daily population). Close the jail’s ICE pod, reduce the jail’s official capacity, and you eliminate $ 3 million in county spending. Stop the 287g contracts and nothing is changed. But stop incarceration agreements for those charged with federal crimes? County jails would be blocked from acting as ICE detention centers. But Hochul isn’t proposing that.

Beyond 287g

287g and even housing of detainees is however but the tip of the iceberg of state and local support for ICE’s deportation drive. For hidden beneath the surface are insidious law enforcement processes to identify, capture and incarcerate undocumented persons. These take at least three, overlapping, local law enforcement operations: custodial transfers, street level stops, and surveillance and data collaboration with Federal agencies.

Getting from Jail and Prison to ICE

Custodial transfers are the easiest to grasp. A few counties like Broome, headed by a longstanding Trump supporter, directly work with ICE to incarcerate and turn over undocumented persons. When faced with disruptive protest, the Broome County Sheriff quite openly says this is his duty.

Sheriff Frederick Akshar: “This is where I am today. If tomorrow, ICE said ‘we need your assistance’ in some effort, I would help them… I do want to be abundantly clear though, that if any one of our federal partners, regardless of what letter the agency starts with, asks me for help today, tomorrow, a week from now, the answer would be yes.” WSKG, March 28, 2025 “Broome County Jail opts into federal immigration enforcement program”

For most counties standard procedures simply facilitate ICE identification of undocumented persons leading to deportations. It’s straightforward: arrest someone for the lowest level misdemeanor, and their fingerprints and arrest record are forwarded to other local and federal agencies, including ICE. ICE then turns to county sheriffs to take hold of undocumented people as they are scheduled to be released. Some counties do refuse to hold people after they have served their sentences. But almost all do turn over to ICE undocumented persons at the end of their sentence. These are very large numbers, a significant proportion of those detained and deported. Even in Minnesota, touted as center of resistance to cooperation with ICE, thirty percent of those detained by ICE last year were turned over by local jails and prisons. Half of national ICE arrests were custodial transfers.

Stop and Frisk and Deport

Transfers from local jails and prisons are supplemented by a second area of police work: street and car level surveillance and stops. Persons in cars are especially vulnerable given that persons in cars, unlike homes, have very little protection from unreasonable searches. Everyday traffic violations, such as speeding or broken tail lights, often trigger identification checks of the driver and then passengers, resulting in fingerprinting or database queries (NCIC) that reveal immigration status. Automated networks of license plate readers that scan all cars passing on major and now minor roads are another source. Details as isolated as bumper stickers are now able to be identified and tracked across cities and towns. Capture a car license plate registered to someone who has lost previously legal, temporary protected or asylum status, and that potentially flows automatically across law enforcement networks.

It’s a rapidly expanding system. Binghamton first introduced license plate readers in 2017 at entrances to the city and updated the system in 2023 with more advanced cameras made in Vietnam by Flock (see the deflock campaign here). Since then the state has promoted significant growth and integration of surveillance. In 2022 Governor Hochul stood in front of 800 law enforcement leaders and announced a $20 million program for new police surveillance technology. By the time the awards were made in 2024 the amount had ballooned to $127 million and 400 police agencies got whatever they had applied for including those in the Southern Tier. The Broome County Sheriff applied and was given $834,118, the City of Binghamton Police Department $468,668, the Johnson City Police Department $136,100, Endicott Police Department $770,000, and the Vestal Police Department $211,700 (the applications and related details obtained by FOIL may be found here).

Centralizing Surveillance Policing and Deportation

New technology and the integration of surveillance networks promise to radically advance data collaboration–and nullify municipal and county efforts to constrain ICE. Scans of over a million cars a week in Westchester County, where sanctuary laws are on the books, unwittingly permitted ICE to obtain information on individual migrants and their movements. New York State’s own License Plate Reader Model Policy—developed in association with police chiefs, sheriffs, and the state police—bluntly says “LPR data and search results may be disseminated to any law enforcement agency or official”. This past month Broome County legislators voted unanimously to approve the Sheriffs new $644,484 license plate reader contract with Motorola. When asked what he did with the data, the Sheriff told legislators that all information could be accessed by any law enforcement agency. The City of Binghamton Police Department remains equally explicit in section 413 on immigration in its policy manual, prohibiting any attempt to prohibit data sharing with any federal, state, or local government agency.

License plate data is but a small fracton of the arrest, stop metrics, investigative, biometric, geographic, and intelligence data police departments and sheriffs collect on individuals. This and much more finds its coherence and distribution in New York State’s 10 regional intelligence centers, aka “crime analysis centers,” created with tens of $ millions of state funding.

Broome County’s regional intelligence center is housed on the ground floor of the Binghamton Police Department and has a board of directors including representatives of the State Police, the Broome County Sheriff, and police chiefs from the City of Binghamton and the State University of New York at Binghamton.

Massive, bipartisan increases to the ICE budget from $8 to $10 billion, and $170 billion for anti-immigrant agencies overall, have linked these networks across state boundaries and introduced a leap forward in technology. Recent ICE contracts to tech giant Palantir seek use AI to merge facial, social media, and law enforcement data to track individuals for deportation. Contracts with other firms, including Paragon, an Israeli technology company, seek to take remote control of cellphone location, messaging data, and calls. And all promise to draw on and integrate state and local data.

Hochul and the Justice Retreat

While Governor Hochul speaks of opposition to ICE her new state budget speaks to realities: it beefs up yet again funding for crime analysis centers and policing, while turning back a package of justice reform laws passed in the wake of a nationwide outcry over correctional officers’ brutal beating to death of Robert Brooks and Messiah Nantwi, two shackled, incarcerated men. Hochul’s rejection of measures to increase oversight of prisons and especially jails was particularly dismaying.

These actions followed a pattern however: the Governor has in recent years rolled back bail reform three times, rejected parole reforms, and weakened controls on solitary confinement. State lawmakers and reform activists who had worked long and hard to pass reform bills were outraged and publicly denounced the reversals. Noting Hochul’s call for the resignation of U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem following the fatal ICE shootings in Minneapolis, a new campaign has started demanding she fire her man who oversaw the killings in NYS prisons, Daniel Martuscello III, the Commissioner of the State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.

The Governor knows that the residents of New York State are overwhelmingly and fiercely opposed to ICE operations. Her latest publicity drive should not cover up her continual support for mass policing and incarceration that have been so central to the expanding power of ICE.

Why is Broome County Jail So Deadly?

January 18, 2026 / Bill Martin / 1 Comment

Twice as Deadly as Rikers Island?

In 2025 the death rate in the Broome County Jail was over twice that of New York City’s notorious jails. Why? What can be done about it?

In New York City rising death and abuse rates drove a tidal wave of protest. The result? New York City’s jails were put under a Federal monitor while protest continued at the doors of City Hall and Rikers Island. New York State prisons—with death rates also lower than Broome County—are also under attack. The trigger here was dramatic, unexpected, and successive video footage of the brutal beating to death of two incarcerated and shackled men, Robert Brooks and Nanti Messiah. A statewide storm of protests ensued. Reforms and more oversight funding have been promised by the Governor and legislators.

No such inquiries much less oversight has emerged in Broome County or other rural and upstate counties. And these counties hold twice as many women and men as New York City.

Why so much death?

The number of deaths in prisons and jails vary considerably year by year. One might speculate that 2025 was an exceptional year in Broome County and New York City. But death rates are rising in many jails. Why? Reporters, activists, and state officials all look for explanations by turning to medical care. Has that been a factor in Broome?

It’s hard to know. No public explanation has been offered by the Sheriff, County Coroner, or the State Commission of Correction (SCOC) for the 2025 deaths of Chelsey Davis and William Warnock Jr. We may not know for years, if ever. The SCOC is required by law to issue a report on all deaths in jails and prisons, but it often takes years before the SCOC releases death reports to families and the public. And these are so heavily redacted as to render them, to be charitable, useless. Are there coverups? We don’t know

Take for example the last published report for Mitchel Lindow, who died in the Broome County jail on November 4^th, 2022. The SCOC report was issued much later, in March 2024. It is almost wholly redacted as you can see here:

What can family and friends and the public learn from this? What little text is visible admits repetitive medical malfeasance on the part of the jail administration, medical provider, and County Coroner. In short brief sentences we learn that Lindow was not given a medical examination and history upon admission to the jail as required by state law. We also find out that physicians should have been informed of Lindow’s dangerous high blood pressure results—but were not. One wonders what the blacked-out paragraphs might tell us. Most damning however is the revelation the SCOC could not hide: Broome County misdiagnosed the cause of death. It was not due to a heart attack: “The attending pathologist misdiagnosed the cause and manner of death and that Lindow’s death was attributed to a fentanyl overdose.”

Wilson Hospital, from which jail physicians have been drawn, was told to revise the official cause of death in its files. The Broome County Jail physician and the private, for-profit medical contractor, PrimeCare Medical, were told to examine and report back on why medical records and assessments were so faulty. One wonders if that report has ever been produced.

Apparently no one read and acted upon the June 2023 SCOC report of the previous person to die in the jail, Brandon Loori, which bluntly stated that “there was a complete failure by the medical staff to properly assess and provide treatment for a gravely ill individual… had Loori been timely sent to the hospital for a diagnosis and treatment, his death could have been prevented.” That report was heavily redacted as well:

And where did the fentanyl that killed Mr. Lindow come from? If you can attribute Lindow’s death to a heart attack, one need not apparently pursue the matter. Doing so has proven to be inconvenient. In the previous year an officer was discovered smuggling in meth, Adderall and other substances into the jail–but was tried and convicted only for bribery. He served no time, pleading addiction due to a past sports injury and ongoing treatment. This is defendable: substance use is an illness and people need treatment and not criminalization. The all too obvious contradiction here is that neither the Sheriff nor District Attorney apply this principle to other county residents. Far from it: they have launched a new drug war which has contributed significantly to increasing the daily jail population by fifty percent over the course of 2025.

Nor are the irregularities around Loori’s and Lindow’s deaths isolated cases. The Broome County Jail, its private medical provider, and the Sheriff have lost successive lawsuits over wrongful deaths (Alvin Rios, Salladin Barton, Thomas Husar), sexual and racial abuse (most recently the Holland case), and the beating of youth (the Vega and Legal Services youth case). Many cases have been settled out of court, with the county government refusing to reveal financial losses—despite rulings by the State Committee on Open Government that payments cannot be shielded by non-disclosure agreements with individuals.

This is the residue of entrenching mass incarceration: too many ill people are classified as criminals and incarcerated when they need medical treatment instead. County funding for the health department has been severely cut while jail funding and staffing have been dramatically expanded. Jails have now become responsible for drug and mental health treatment. But jails are not medical centers and cannot be turned into them. The evidence is all too clear that these county policies are deadly.

How might the tide of abuse and death be turned back? People have turned to multipole state and local agencies and met, so far, only obstacles and obfuscation.

State Commission of Correction?

One might start with the state institution charged with oversight of jails, the State Commission of Correction (SCOC), which has for years been composed of Sheriffs and jail administrators. It is charged by state law to conduct regular inspections of all jails but has in practice long failed to do so as documented by state audits (e.g. State Comptroller here) and successive investigative media reports (e.g. by NYFocus here). Its ways are mysterious, with few public meetings and little transparency as state legislators and community activists have long known and shown.

Indeed, the SCOC has been most effective in supporting Sheriffs and dictating the building and staffing of ever larger jails. Recent public protests have led to a new law that gives the SCOC more funding and the appointment of two part-time commissioners. The reform was so watered down however that advocates for the bill, the Jails Justice Network, organized a December 23, 2025, protest against the Governor’s and legislative leadership’s evisceration of the legislation.

If the state has failed to exercise oversight, what of local authorities who oversee and fund the jail’s daily operations?

County Health Department?

One might take the next step and approach the County Health Department. State law requires the Sheriff to request annual inspections by the County Health Department. But no inspections take place. The Sheriff simply tells the SCOC that “the facility is consistently requesting the health department inspection, however the Broome County Department of Health has yet to complete such inspection” (2022 inspection p. 6).

March 2022 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.”

Audits?

The Broome County Audit of the jail regularly reports inadequate financial accounting. The 2024 audit focuses only on profits from the commissary fund (which had a balance of $496,202 effectively a slush fund for the Sheriff) and found no policies or procedures to track revenue and expenditures. Revenue-generating contracts for food, health, and hygiene products were all long expired. No regular auditing of the jail’s out-of-state medical provider Correctional Medical Care and now PrimeCare Medical appears to take place. Financial losses due to court actions over inadequate care by PrimeCare Medical are frequent in Broome and surrounding counties.

A subsequent audit of PrimeCare Medical operations in Broome discovered that PrimeCare had long been charging the county for hours of services not rendered to the incarcerated, covering dental to mental health care. But this was oddly not determined to be fraud. Why CMC officials did not face felony charges under Theft of Services and Grand Larceny laws was never explained. CMC was simply allowed to pay back the funds—slowly over twelve months, with no interest.

Elected Officials?

One might finally turn to elected state officials who guard both the purse and health of county residents. By state law elected state representatives are empowered to conduct oversight visits to county jails, unannounced and with staff in hand. Some legislators in other counties have done so. But large demonstrations and protests at the Broome County Jail, in Albany, and at successive County legislative meetings have not persuaded Broome County’s Senator and Assembly representatives to ever make an oversight visit.

ICE Enters

Recent overcrowding in the jail due in large part to an expanding influx of ICE and Federal detainees has put yet further pressure on medical care. As an official ICE detention center, the jail has witnessed rapid, short inflows and outflows of ICE detainees. For detainees it is an immediate problem: how can you get adequate medical care? People go to the medical unit to find no one speaks their language. Local residents in the jail are fearful too, with one attempting to file a grievance over inadequate screening of new arrivals.

Sheriff Frederick Akshar : “This is where I am today. If tomorrow, ICE said ‘we need your assistance’ in some effort, I would help them… I do want to be abundantly clear though, that if any one of our federal partners, regardless of what letter the agency starts with, asks me for help today, tomorrow, a week from now, the answer would be yes.” WSKG, March 28, 2025 “Broome County Jail opts into federal immigration enforcement program”

In the last two months, whole sections of the jail have gone into masked isolation mode, including pods containing ICE detainees. After at least one person was taken to hospital and tested positive for TB, rumors arose of active TB cases in the jail. In this instance the Health Department, so absent otherwise in jail medical dilemmas, held an extraordinary joint press conference with the Sheriff at which the Broome County Health Department Medical Director, flanked by the Undersheriff, Sheriff, and County Executive, told the public not to worry, there is no confirmed case of TB, “there is no outbreak.”

Looking forward

Broome County regularly achieves the distinction of having the highest incarceration rate of all 62 New York Counties. Community organizations, activists, and families have mounted impressive campaigns in the last ten years against racialized mass incarceration and mass policing, ranging from rallies at the jail, to court watches, to marches for the treatment and not criminalization of those with disabilities and mental health and substance use illnesses. To date state and county legislators have failed to listen, continuing to entrench the long-term trend of decreasing funding for local health resources while steadily increasing funding for the jail. As long as these commitments and policies hold, it is hard to be optimistic about the health of county’s residents outside as well as inside our supersized jail.

Support ICE or Free Gendri Ortiz?

November 22, 2025 / Bill Martin / 0 Comments

ICE is back in the local news: Binghamton and Long Island communities and media are now responding to last week’s revelation that the Broome County Jail is caging a Long Island teenager, Gendri Ortiz Paredes, for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). How does Ortiz end up in Binghamton? Well the Broome County Sheriff, an ardent Trump supporter, has a formal agreement to house ICE and Federal detainees, signed and paid for without consulting County legislators. So Gendri was transported from Long Island to overnight in an ICE Manhattan center and then onward to the Broome jail where he has been for over four weeks.

Local newspapers in Binghamton and Long Island are picking up the story. Gendri is uncertain about what is going on, anxious, puzzled, and visibly shaken. Not a single staff person can speak his language. His school superintendent wants him back in school. His mother is distraught. His soccer teammates miss him (he is a midfielder, wearing number 17). His teachers speak admirably of his work and want him back in school. His English teacher simply states “To be honest with you, he’s a great student…very respectful, honest, hardworking,” someone who “got along great with everybody, even with the other teachers, too …. I consider him a friend.”

In one sense he is not alone: he is just one of scores of persons captured from around the state and then bundled in and out of the Broome jail for days, weeks, months. Like others he was kept incommunicado, in this case in solitary, for the first two weeks. How many more are there? What are conditions inside? ICE doesn’t easily reveal who these people are, where they are captured, or where and how long they are in our jail. The Sheriff doesn’t provide any details either. Their names and numbers are not listed on the Sheriff’s app’s inmate roster. Local and regional farm workers and roofers are often only discovered when persons visit the jail. Jailing Ortiz is of course part of wider drive to capture and hide ICE detainees of all ages.

Where are your family from?

Hidden away, its easy to pretend this a distant problem. Most people presume ICE detainees are from faraway Mexico or central America. Don’t believe it. It’s a much wider sweep ranging across Africa, the Caribbeean, Europe and Latin America. Here are a few of the locations represented by people held for ICE in the county jail (list below). Where are your family from?

While Gendri and other teens and kids fester in ICE detention centers, an organized campaign is growing to expand the number of all teens, citizens or not, tried in adult courts and held in adult jails. It’s worrisome: there is a long history of abuse of youth in the Broome jail. The County lost successive lawsuits over the beating of Black teen (see here) and the tear gassing and housing of a naked youth (see here). The County no longer houses people under 18. The Sheriff along with others—including District Attorneys around the state and NYPD Chief Tisch under NYC Mayor Adams and soon to be mayor Zohran Mamdani—would like to change this by rolling back the “raise the age” law, bringing teens less than 18 back into adult courts and presumably the jail. This battle is accelerating into the new legislative year.

Note

*Albania, Angola, Bangaladesh, Brazil, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Czech Republic, D.R. Congo, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, India, Iran, Israel, Liberia, Malawi, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Romania, Russia, Spain, St. Lucia, Taiwan, Tajikstan, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkiye, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Venezuela.

This map was generated from government data provided by ICE in response to a FOIA request to the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by Justtalk. The dataset on detentions (here) is incomplete. The dataset runs only to September this year, missing continual flows since then. It excludes lists of persons who had detainers requested by ICE. And some people who are held in the jail aren’t recorded under ICE but under other Federal charges (even if held only on deportation charges). So the numbers and countries are assuredly more numerous than this map suggests; Jamaica and Eritrea for example also likely belong to the list.

How Broome County Subsidizes ICE

September 6, 2025 / Bill Martin / 1 Comment

What does Broome County spend to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)? It’s hard to know, for the figures of the number of daily ICE detainees in the County jail and their food, housing, medical care, and transport costs remain hidden, largely folded into the total number of persons caged on Federal–and not county–charges.

It’s a longstanding practice: since at least 2002 when a contract was signed with the U.S. Marshalls service, Broome County has held Federal detainees. The number used to be 20 or so persons a day. Since Trump took office and the County Sheriff signed an additional cooperative contract with ICE, the number of Federal detainees has ballooned to now 60 or more a day. On some days busloaeds of persons are brought into the jail by ICE in shackles, required ever more food, medical and correctional staff overtime, laundy, etc.

It’s a wonderful deal for Federal agencies like ICE: Federal reimbursements are only $110/day per person, less half the cost the County government pays. The average daily cost of incarcerating someone in the jail in 2024 was $278 (Broome Jail budget of $33 million divided by avearge daily population of 395). The average daily number of persons caged in the first seven months of 2025 rose to 405, lowering the daily cost to $230–still more than double the Federal payment.

Do the math and Broome County is gifting the Federal government over $1 million so far this year.

Perhaps it is time for county legislators to stop voting as they have for years on the food, housing and other jail contracts that hide these subsidies—and cancel the contract with the U.S. Marshalls service has turned the County jail into a detention center for ICE and other Federal agencies.

Yes the BC Jail is an ICE Detention Facility: ICE Says So

August 18, 2025 / Bill Martin / 0 Comments

Yes, the Broome County Jail is an official Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility. And who is being held there for ICE? We don’t know for sure, but it has included people from Azerbaijan to China, from Ecuador to Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey and Venezuela–among others.

The Sheriff repeatedly tells us that the 287g agreement he recently signed with ICE is only to allow his ICE-trained deputies to serve warrants in the jail. All quite accurate. But thats a diversion. The jail has held scores of persons for ICE this year, presumably under the contract with the U.S. Marshalls Service that has for decades included caging ICE detainees—often seized in the past through raids conducted by ICE alongside joint task forces of the Sheriff, Johnson, and Binghamton police departments (see for example Press and Sun Bulletin January 2011, p.3).

Who is being detained now? We don’t know. What does ICE say? As little as possible.

As reported here previously, the Deportation Data Project among others has been collating information from ICE through multiple Freedom of Information Requests. Their data sets located here reveal that the Broome County Jail is listed on ICE datasets as an ICE “Detention Facility”. The datasets are small and list few persons among the scores or hundreds held in the Broome County Jail at one time or another in recent months. But look at this clip from just one ICE data set, and you can see the Broome County Jail holding ICE detainees, predominantly Black and Brown people, from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the Americas.

The dataset is seriously incomplete. Other datasets on the site which cover ICE detention to detainer to arrests operations have persons from Iran to Russia and Mexico in the Broome County Jail. No one knows what a full accounting might reveal.

These persons are held without due process or legal representation which led a Broome County Legislator to resign from the jail’s advisory group. Our elected officials have nvertheless signed off on all the jail funding with few if any questions–for years.

Can our County Legislators make few inquiries on what is being done in their name, and report back to us on what is going on?

And if any county legislators want to stop acting for ICE (and save the County lots of money), they should act to cancel the contracts that allows the jail to be at the beck and call of Federal authorities and pass the additional costs of housing hundreds of persons.

The next stop? The City of Binghamton and local police departments.

They should stop reporting to ICE, through the surveillance center housed in the Binghamton Police Department, the status of persons spotted on our streets by local surveillance devices and those stopped, interrogated and held on local charges.

Will city and council members and our mayors keep ICE out of our community, our data, our literal biometric faces?

Act yourself:

Locate and write your Broome County Executive here, and your legislators here, with some sample questions here
Locate your municipal/city representatives through these links
- Binghamton Mayor and Council Members
- Johnson City Mayor and Trustees
- Endicott Mayor and Board

What’s Driving Broome’s Popping Jail Population?

August 15, 2025 / Bill Martin / 0 Comments

Maxed out?

Why would Broome County need to build a new jail, again? Reflecting steadily falling crime levels and rising justice reforms, the Broome County Jail’s population has been falling for five years. After a peak of 500 ten years ago it has hovered around 310 in the last two years.

Source: New York State, Division of criminal Justice Services (DCJS), “Jail Population”

This year however the number of incarcerated has been radically accelerating, approaching 500 and heading further upward as a chart of the daily population since January 1, 2025 shows.

Source: “Average Daily Population” reports of Broome County Jail as sent to NYS DCJS, via Freedom of Information Request.

Why? What’s driving this forward?

Is it ICE detainees? The big jump in late March was the influx from ICE raids to the north of us, with ICE suddenly dumping busloads of persons, with the Sheriff’s blessing, into the Broome County Jail under a longstanding Federal Marshalls contract. Most of those folks left within a few days. In a July 23, 2025 statement to the local NPR station WSKG (he declined an interview), the Sheriff stated that the average number of ICE detainees in the first six months of the year was 7 to 8 a day. This number thus cannot account for the numbers we see in state data.

Was it “state readies”? The illegal strike by state prison guards led to a rising number of convicted and sentenced persons being kept in the jail rather than being sent to state prisons. These so-called “state readies” rose from 10 on an average day in recent years to 60 by the end of June. But those numbers have fallen by 50% and continue to decline.

Is it persons held under the longstanding Federal Marshall contract? The numbers of those being held for the federal government is indeed a better bet, reaching around 60 in recent weeks–well above the average of 20 in recent years.

Still, this doesn’t account for the rise from 300 to 500. And it’s a losing bet: it costs over $250 per day to keep someone in the jail, and the County gets only $110/day from the Federal government. Right-sizing and shrinking the jail to only county residents even under current laws and courts could generate real savings.

Whose figures count? Daily numbers in the jail are also reported on the Sheriff’s app. But there is a problem here: the totals there are running 60 less than what he is reporting daily to DCJS (and received here after a freedom of information request).

	Sheriff App Numbers	DCJS Numbers
7/29/2025	418	478
7/30/2025	419	480
7/31/2025	423	481

Who are the missing persons?

We don’t know . Is it ICE prisoners? Maybe, no one reports their presence and they are reportedly held without due process or legal representation. Or new ways to circumvent bail reform, as in targeting people on parole, particularly after the Governor’s rollback of bail and other criminal justice reforms? Might be . Perhaps its due to more aggressive policing and task force operations, inspired by Trump and NYS increases in police funding? Is it more road stops and checkpoints made possible by $ millions spent on local surveillance cameras with everything integrated into the downtown intelligence center linked to local, state, federal police?

We don’t know, yet. City and county legislators don’t know apparently and don’t respond to protests and inquiries from residents.

What we do know is there is a clear trajectory ending in a carceral crisis crisis in the jail and the call, as predicted here in May, of a call to expand the jail yet further, again.

Build It and They Will Come?

Broome County Jail 1908, 1930

As community activist and scholar John Eason and colleagues have argued, it was the building of new prisons in poor rural (and largely southern Black) communities that drove forward mass incarceration. In crude terms, it’s a case of “they built it and mass incarceration came”. This observation stands in direct opposition to the common media and academic view that understands mass incarceration as phenomenon driven by urban racism and urban crime–with New York City featuring most prominently in the 1990s prison industrial complex boom. Analysis and activism alike have far too long been restricted to prisons and not jails, and individuals and not the large penal complex rooted in communities and neighborhoods. And of jails, we only hear of big city jails.

Might “build-it-and-they-will-come” also be true of jails? It’s no small matter: jails are the gateways to prisons, far more numerous than prisons. They incarcerate more individuals than prisons given the larger number of persons that cycle in and out jails on a daily basis.

Might this be true of Broome County Jail? In 1988 the jail housed less than 200 persons. A brand new jail was then funded, located outside the city, and opened in 1996 to hold 536 persons. Jail numbers rose. In 2016 the county legislature in voted $6.8 million, over a protest in county chambers, to expand the jail to a capacity of 600 with a new medical wing.

County Legislature Rally vs Jail Expansion 2014

After falling in a subsequent wave of protests against mass incarceration and mass policing, jail numbers are now rising to 500 and beyond. Broome County regularly claiming the distinction of having the highest incarceration rate of all 62 New York counties. Calls for a new expansion are likely to ensue, a common refrain often resisted but rarely prevented.

Will county legislators once again vote and fund more incarceration? We are likely to soon find out.

Broome County Jail

Where are the Southern Tier’s ICE detention centers?

July 7, 2025 / Bill Martin / 0 Comments

We are puzzled: what county/city facilities along the Southern Tier are now official ICE detention facilities?

The Broome County Jail has worked with and housed ICE detainees in the past under its regular Federal Marshalls contract, but is not an official jail detention facility.

But Bloomberg ran a story today suggesting otherwise (7/7/2025) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-07/trump-administration-adds-60-facilities-for-detained-immigrants?srnd=undefined (behind a paywall also on New Republic here):

“Trump Administration Adds 60 Facilities for Detained Migrants
The expansion has added thousands of beds to ICE capacity, as the department prepares for an influx of cash from Congress”

The takeaways are:

immigrant-detention sites are expanding across the country through agreements with local jails and private contractors.
The goal is to achieve at least 100,000 available detention beds, with capacity of over 59,000 people as of late June.
The expansion includes new facilities, such as “Algator Alcatraz” in Forida a tent complex

And the story contained a map of new and old facilities but what are these three ones along the Southern Tier of NY state?

ICE’s list of detention centers. the source of Bloomberg’s data apparently, at https://www.ice.gov/detention-facilities includes only these in NY state, none along the Southern Tier:

USCIS online https://www.uscisguide.com/state-regulations-and-laws/detention-centers-and-immigration-facilities-in-new-york/ offers up a different list of faciltiies at Otisville, Southport, and Buffalo but none are along the Southern Tier either.

So who is working with ICE officially in any capacity? Might it be them?

The current list of ICE 287g agreements in NY State list these, which don’t fully answer the question either. Broome is not a listed jail detention site (only Rensselaer is):

So where has ICE come to an agreement with NYS county or city forces to become detention centers? Keep watching….

Broome County, ICE, and the Carceral Crisis

May 13, 2025 / Bill Martin / 1 Comment

We Need a New Jail!

Expect that call to come soon, for there is no question about it: the Broome County jail is filling up, steadily reversing declines in the jail’s population in recent years from well over 500 incarcerated to less than 300 local residents. While there is little information from county officials, reports from inside recount persons being haphazardly “double-bunked”, a second shift laundry shift being put in place, and buses arriving and departing with waves of new detainees.

What’s Up?

The most immediate cause behind the rising numbers? From press reports one suspects the new 287g agreement the Sheriff inked with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), one of just four Sheriffs to do so out of 62 counties statewide. After a protest out at the jail and a disastrous public townhall, Sheriff Akshar revealed that eighty-eight ICE detainees had in a short period been cycled in and out of the jail.

Who they were, what charges they faced, how long they were in jail, and where they went is unknown. It’s a bit mysterious. While in the jail ICE detainees were housed in locations without visitation. They were not recorded on the Sheriff’s app’s roster, nor the ICE locator, nor the Federal locator. Family and friends didn’t know where they were. Was this a momentary surge for a few days or a continuingtrend?

A Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request to the NY State Department of Criminal Justice (DCJS) for the daily reports points toward an answer (data attached here). Here is a plot of the occupancy figures for the jail from January 1 to March 31^,2025:

Overall, the jail population has increased by over 27% in the first 4 months of year and over 30% above the average for 2024 (323).

What’s driving the increase?

What stands out first is the abrupt peak in late March at 450 persons housed in the jail—attributable indeed to the quick influx of persons held for ICE who cycled in and out quickly. Where did they come from? From outside Broome county, following upon March 24-28^th ICE raids in the Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and surrounding areas that led to the capture of 133 people, overwhelmingly persons without any criminal conviction as has been the case for deportations nationally (ICE reports only eight of the 133 had a criminal record in their past—far below the one third of Americans who have a criminal record). For Broome County this was an unprecedented surge. While the county sheriff has for over two decades had an agreement to house persons on Federal charges, the daily average in the last ten years was eighteen. The FOIL data shows that in late March there were seventy-six people incarcerated for the Federal government.

Why the Broome jail? And where did they go after their short stay? ICE has only one detention center in New York, in Batavia outside Buffalo. ICE relies on jails to house detainees when Batavia is full up as it has been lately. Broome apparently offered up spaces in return for payments of about $100/day per person. From the Broome jail we know some individuals went to Boston, some to other jails (e.g. in Delaware county), and many to Texas for immediate deportation. It’s a common NY pattern as research published by the Deportation Data Project and mapping by Bloomberg reveal:

Bloomberg, May 1, 2025

While the March ICE surge moved in and out quickly, the number of Federal persons has steadily creeped up since them. The Sheriff for his part repeatedly states he will do all ICE asks of him, and he has sent officers off for extensive ICE training and certification. What they will do when their training is complete is unknown.

A second source for accelerating jail numbers is the state prison crisis driven by violence and strikes by correction officers. Statewide protests against the on-camera murder of Robert Brooks Sr, followed by the murder of Messiah Nantwi, were accompanied by an illegal strike by thousands of correctional officers who demanded more power, money, and the nullification of the HALT law that has limited solitary confinement. Faced with prisons with no officers, the Governor called in national guard troops to help run the prisons. This was costly, running an extra $100 million per month. Sheriff Akshar and Congressional Representative Josh Riley sided with the officers, joining them on picket lines outside prisons. After extended negotiations 2,000 officers decided not return to work and the Governor fired them–creating a continuing carceral crisis.

The state prison crisis dramatically increased persons in county jails as the transfer of convicted persons to state prisons, or “state readies”, was stopped by prison authorities. At the beginning of 2025 the number of persons waiting transfer to state prisons from the Broome County jail was less than five. Thereafter the numbers rose inexorably and are now ten times that number, adding to increases in Federal detainees. The upward trendlines in both are unmistakable when charted:

It is tempting to assume the rapid rise in ICE detainees and persons awaiting transfer to state prisons will reverse as staff is rebuilt at prisons and new ICE detention centers. The latest state budget includes at least an additional $500 million however to cover continuing costs to offset the 2,000 missing officers. Meanwhile current budget proposals in Congress propose an extraordinary 365% increase in ICE’s current $3.4 billion budget, with $12.4 billion for detention alone. It is unlikely current either of these trends will be reversed in the near future.

The future? Build more cells—or empty them?

A simple linear projection of current trends estimates the number of persons in the jail will by late summer hit 500, and by late fall the maximum capacity of 550 persons will be breached.

Barring any offsetting trends, expect the Sheriff and County legislators to launch a campaign for a major new jail expansion, extending efforts to increase jail populations by rolling back recent bail, parole, and earned time reforms.

What might counter such trends? New York State legislators could pass both the New York for All bill that would prevent all local law enforcement officers from collaborating with ICE, and the Earned Time Act that would extend release to more incarcerated men and women. State Senator Lea Webb and State Assemblyperson Donna Lupardo are among the many who support both bills. County legislators might move funding from jails as medical treatment centers to community treatment centers that have public oversight. And perhaps we might no longer accept that there is a “staff shortage” at state prisons and recognize–as even the Governor and the NYS Department of Corrections do when faced with the prison crisis–that prisons actually have a surplus of people incarcerated for far too long. It’s time to let them return home.

How Trump’s immigration policy could impact Binghamton, Broome County

November 15, 2024 / Bill Martin / 0 Comments

Binghamton Press and Sun-Bulletin Op-Ed, 11/15/2024

How Trump’s immigration policy could impact Binghamton, Broome County

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.

Enforce the laws: slave labor, abuse and illegalities at the Broome County jail

April 20, 2024 / Bill Martin / 1 Comment

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.

NYFocus, Sept 27, 2023: “‘Doom County Jail’: Dysfunction Plagues Program for Incarcerated Opioid Users. Men locked up in the Broome County jail describe an opioid treatment program so shoddy, they risk withdrawal, relapse, and overdose.

March 2022 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.”

Seek Justice

In NY Jails, Prisoners Must Submit Their Abuse Grievances to Their Abusers

March 24, 2024 / Bill Martin / 0 Comments

Legal victories by LGBTQ people and youth of color face rollbacks amid the rise of new, reactionary sheriffs.

By Bill Martin , Truthout Published March 24, 2024

New Sheriff, new jail? Don’t believe the hype

February 9, 2024 / Bill Martin / 0 Comments

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.

There have been changes in the jail. Visitation hours have been extended to every weekday. This comes after Sheriff Harder lost a lawsuit and was forced to reopen visitation hours. Medically assisted treatment for substance users, so needed as we face an opioid epidemic, is now in place. This too was also the result of years of protests by families and community activists and is required by a new state law. Still, recent investigations reveal, however, continuing serious medical mistreatment at the jail.

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.

****

(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]

NYCLU sues SCOC

February 3, 2024 / Bill Martin / 0 Comments

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.

Taej’on Vega Wins ‘I can’t breathe’ vs Broome County

October 1, 2023 / Bill Martin / 3 Comments

“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?

Indeed it is worth recalling that in the year before Taej’on’s beating, the County and the past Sheriff lost a major lawsuit over abuse of youth in the jail. As one expert witness who visited and talked to persons in the jail testified at the time,

“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.

As crime and incarceration goes down in NY, why are costs going up?

March 30, 2023 / Bill Martin / 1 Comment

OPINION reprint from Times-Herald Record (hyperlinks added; supporting data here)

William Martin

Special to the USA TODAY Network

Published 12:18 p.m. ET March 29, 2023

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”.

The process has begun in some counties. Duchess county has closed empty pods that housed 200 persons and downsized its new jail from 569 to 328 beds. The Albany Sheriff has repurposed empty cells into housing for the homeless including homeless community college students.

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.

Broome County’s ARPA Bonanza: Who Captured the $37 million?

January 25, 2023 / Bill Martin / 0 Comments

Published online at Binghamton Bridge, Jan 24, 2023

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.

Ansco “Sophisticated Luxury Living” $7.5m tax rebates

Fully open county jails to visitation

December 11, 2022 / Bill Martin / 0 Comments

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.

Where’s the Sheriff? In Contempt of the Supreme Court

October 31, 2022 / Bill Martin / 0 Comments

Binghamton Bridge
October 31, 2022
By Bill Martin

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 29^th, 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 22^nd, Harder was thus forced to finally reopen visitation.

Yet when the County finally opened up the jail doors on September 29^th, 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 29^th, 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 29^th, there was no social distancing or masking.

The excuse for the Sheriff’s actions put forth submitted in court by Behnke on October 28^th 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.

***

All court documents may be found at https://bit.ly/3fdmQET.

Further information and media coverage can be found the JUST website (www.justicest.com ), Facebook page, and Instagram pages. A report by WIVT is here and WSKG here.

Harder Loses (again)

August 20, 2022 / Bill Martin / 0 Comments

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 5^th 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

And so it goes…

Sheriff Harder is about to go too. State Senator Akshar, Harder’s former undersheriff and staunch Republican, for years stood by Harder’s side and openly proclaimed that he had an “unwavering commitment to do everything in my power to ensure that you remain the Broome County Sheriff”—until Akshar unilaterally announced Harder’s retirement at the Akshar for Sheriff campaign launch last year.

*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.