Broome County Jail must resume in-person visitation, judge rules

In-person visitation at the Broome County Jail is scheduled to resume next month after a New York State Supreme Court ruled in favor of a lawsuit filed by a Broome County advocacy group.

In a decision handed down Thursday, Judge Oliver Blaise III said “irreparable harm will result” if in-person visitation “is not resumed promptly with adequate safety protocols.” The lawsuit was filed in May on behalf of Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier and several family members of current jail detainees.

In-person visitation for detainees awaiting trial is ordered to resume no later than Sept. 5.

As in many other public settings, including schools, nursing homes, courthouses and hospitals, in-person visitors were barred from the Broome County Jail at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.

❱❱❱ Read the judge's decision at the bottom of this story

Instead, inmates were offered opportunities for virtual visits, either by video or by phone on electronic tablets, according to the case filing.

Nearly two and a half years following New York’s initial pandemic response – which included a string of executive orders limiting crowd size, hours of operation and available services in settings both public and private – nearly all facilities, including state-run correctional institutions, have resumed in-person visits.

Failure to do so on the part of the jail’s chief administrator, Broome County Sheriff David Harder, violates the New York Constitution, according to Blaise.

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Blaise dismissed Harder’s claim in court filings that the ongoing “blanket prohibition” of in-person visitation was justified as part of an ongoing effort to stem the spread of COVID.

“While this may have been sufficient justification for restricting all in-person visitation at the Jail in March 2020, [Harder] has failed to account for significantly changed circumstances since that time,” Blaise wrote in his ruling, citing “the prevalence of vaccines in the general population,” the “relative decline” of COVID cases and hospitalizations and “enhanced scientific knowledge” concerning the virus and its transmission.

“The Sheriff and the county lawyers desperately wanted to keep the jail closed and hidden out of sight,” JUST said in a statement Thursday. “But the denial of basic human rights was so blatant that a ruling came relatively quickly and decisively.”

The lawsuit is the latest in a spate of claims filed against the Broome County Jail and its administrators in recent years.

Harder and Broome County were found at fault in a series of wrongful death lawsuits and state investigations, and still more cases are pending, including a $5 million wrongful death suit brought by the family of Thomas Husar, a 40-year-old man who died in the jail in 2019, and Makyyla Holland, a 23-year-old transgender woman alleging assault, unwarranted strip searches, denial of medications and improper housing classification at the hands of Broome County Jail staff.

“That it took another lawsuit is a testimony to how the Sheriff and the County have increasingly resisted basic human rights for those under their control,” JUST said in its statement. “It is time to put an end to these injustices, open up the jail, and let more people await trial at home where they belong.”

This article originally appeared on Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin: Broome County Jail must end COVID in-person visitation ban