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
yet another report of an unnecessary death in the BC jail due to medical maltreatment, in a story laying out the malfeasance of the jail’s private medical provider that pursues profit at the cost of death. This time 
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