Guest Viewpoint: New Sheriff, new jail? Don’t believe the hype
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.
This article originally appeared on Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin: New Broome County Sheriff, new jail? Don’t believe the hype
