Massive $192 Million Jail Facility For Duchess County Approved By Legislature…

Like a thief in the night, the Dutchess County Legislature voted 19 to 6 to move ahead with building a new jail and facility to house the county Sheriff’s offices.

Early Tuesday morn­ing, March 22, the Legislature approved mov­ing for­ward with the $192 mil­lion bonds to fund the long-dis­cussed project. According to esti­mates, the 30-year bond will see the coun­ty pay­ing back an esti­mat­ed $9.9 mil­lion annu­al­ly with a total cost with inter­est amount­ing to $274 million.
According to the Poughkeepsie Journal, at issue is the pro­pos­al for a new, 569-bed jail and sher­if­f’s office. This comes after decades of dis­cus­sion of a per­ma­nent solu­tion to the coun­ty jail over­crowd­ing. Dutchess is under state pres­sure to per­ma­nent­ly address the issue since the North Hamilton Street jail can only house 250 inmates. Nearly 200 addi­tion­al inmates have been housed in out-of-coun­ty facil­i­ties, at the cost of about $8 mil­lion annu­al­ly to Dutchess tax­pay­ers. The coun­ty installed pods at the jail to house some inmates in mid-2015 to reduce costs, but that is only a tem­po­rary fix. Officials have argued that if the pro­pos­al did­n’t pass the leg­is­la­ture, the state could pull the vari­ance that allows the coun­ty to use the pods.

Monday evening, res­i­dents opposed to the project demon­strat­ed in front of the leg­isla­tive build­ing on Market street. They argued that Poughkeepsie’s city needs treat­ment cen­ters for drug users and men­tal­ly ill peo­ple, not jails. The Republican-dom­i­nat­ed leg­is­la­ture pushed back, argu­ing that drug offend­ers and men­tal­ly ill peo­ple will be giv­en the nec­es­sary care once the facil­i­ty is built.
In oth­er words, the drug-addict­ed and men­tal­ly ill will have to con­tin­ue to wrack up arrest records to get the treat­ment they need, which makes no ratio­nal sense.
In a chill­ing arti­cle titled “Portrait of an epi­dem­ic,” the Poughkeepsie Journal peeled back the fright­en­ing real­i­ty of what obtains in Dutchess County with peo­ple addict­ed to drugs.

This is the sto­ry of a list, thick with flawed heroes and tragedy, of 63 peo­ple, the lives they nev­er got to fin­ish, and the rea­sons they died. They were moth­ers and fathers, the gain­ful­ly employed and not, sports and dog lovers, addicts. They all died in 2013 when they acci­den­tal­ly over­dosed on drugs. This is a sto­ry of Dutchess County because each one died there. But it is also a sto­ry of America, where it is being writ­ten from coast to coast, the out­growth of painkillers dis­pensed for years in what gov­ern­ments now know was an uncon­trolled and all-too lais­sez-faire man­ner. Portrait of an epi­dem­ic.

It’s dif­fi­cult for any­one asso­ci­at­ed with Poughkeepsie not to know or know of some­one who died from a drug over­dose. Though not a res­i­dent of the city, this writer oper­ates a busi­ness there. Consequently, my wife and I have seen far too many instances where peo­ple with whom we have inter­act­ed lose their lives as a result of drug addic­tion… We have also seen far too many instances where inad­e­quate recre­ation­al out­lets for city youth force them into the streets, where they often end up get­ting killed. Through her vol­un­teer work with shel­ters and oth­er projects, my wife Cheryl has also gained valu­able insight into this prob­lem which now dri­ves her pas­sion for see­ing a non-incar­cer­a­tion solution.
The solu­tion to this prob­lem is not to build more jail cells to ware­house non-vio­lent offenders.

Monday night Cheryl and I were among the throngs of peo­ple who attend­ed the pub­lic hear­ing on the pro­posed jail con­struc­tion project. Ironically though, Black res­i­dents of the City of Poughkeepsie will like­ly be most neg­a­tive­ly impact­ed by this mas­sive expan­sion of the project; blacks in atten­dance could be count­ed on both hands with maybe a fin­ger or two to spare.
Cheryl and I got our turn to address the Legislature, mak­ing the case that what the coun­ty ought to be doing was not adding to the prison indus­tri­al com­plex but, in prac­ti­cal terms, should be invest­ed in find­ing ways to decrim­i­nal­ize drug-addict­ed res­i­dents and those with men­tal disability.
Cheryl and I knew that essen­tial­ly what we were doing was tan­ta­mount to shout­ing in the wind. Cheryl had spo­ken at that very podi­um on a pre­vi­ous occa­sion as part of a pro­gram called “jobs, not jail” she was emo­tion­al as she remind­ed the leg­is­la­ture that on that occa­sion, she received noth­ing but blank stares.
Last night was no dif­fer­ent. The Legislature, which Republican white men dom­i­nate, already had their minds made up. Nothing that the long lists of peo­ple who spoke in oppo­si­tion say would change the out­come of that vote.

The Republican response to the mas­sive jail project is unan­i­mous. Still, it may be summed up in the state­ment of coun­ty Legislator Angela Flesland, R‑Town of Poughkeepsie, who vot­ed in favor of the pro­pos­al. “We are final­ly mov­ing for­ward with a pro­pos­al to tru­ly solve the prob­lem of jail over­crowd­ing in a way that respects tax­pay­ers, staff, and inmates.” “Being able to build and staff the new facil­i­ty and still save an esti­mat­ed $5.3 mil­lion per year speaks to how inef­fi­cient our cur­rent facil­i­ty is.”
In oth­er words, the only qual­i­fy­ing com­po­nent wor­thy of Republicans’ con­sid­er­a­tion is “mon­ey”!!!
None of the Republicans in the leg­is­la­ture spoke to the cit­i­zens’ con­cerns who spoke about not incar­cer­at­ing drug users and the men­tal­ly ill. Their sole con­cern was the almighty dollar.

What Republicans did not speak to is the issue of Federal moves to reor­ga­nize the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem by President Obama. In my few min­utes at the micro­phone, I point­ed out that fed­er­al pro­grams are actu­al­ly releas­ing non-vio­lent offend­ers from incarceration.
Even with­out these fed­er­al releas­es, Jails have insuf­fi­cient inmates in some quar­ters. In 2013 A pri­vate prison in Arizona recent­ly sued the state for hav­ing a lack of pris­on­ers. For the sake of sav­ing over $16 mil­lion in back pay, the state set­tled by pay­ing the pri­vate prison $3 mil­lion. Arizona essen­tial­ly paid a com­pa­ny $3 mil­lion because few peo­ple are com­mit­ting crimes. According to (Wonderprogressive​.com).

In the State of Texas in 2011 ( able2​know​.org ) report­ed that Texas has too many prison beds not enough pris­on­ers.
A com­plex occu­py­ing almost an entire block at 4700 Blue Mound Road is now vacant large­ly due to reforms aimed at reduc­ing the state’s penal sys­tem costs.
 Starting in the ear­ly 1990s, Texas ignit­ed an almost $3 bil­lion prison build­ing spree, turn­ing to pri­vate prison oper­a­tors to house inmates as the prison pop­u­la­tion swelled beyond the capac­i­ty of state facil­i­ties. Now, state, coun­ty, and city bud­get cuts, a decline in crime rates, an old­er pop­u­la­tion, and penal and court reforms have all con­tributed to what some call a glut of inmate beds. Those fac­tors have result­ed in closed and half-emp­ty pris­ons and jails, able2​know​.org reports.

Even though there are instances where prison over­crowd­ing is ram­pant, there is a gen­er­al trend toward a less­en­ing of prison pop­u­la­tions across America. As has been the case in Texas and oth­er parts of the coun­try, com­mon-sense mea­sures to reduce prison pop­u­la­tions are bear­ing fruits.
Why, then is this rush to build a mul­ti-mil­lion prison facil­i­ty smack-dab in the cen­ter of the city of Poughkeepsie with­out any care or con­sid­er­a­tion for the objec­tions of city residents?

Cost aside; this project is a County project which can be con­struct­ed any­where in the coun­ty. Why are there no sug­ges­tions to place the pro­posed mam­moth facil­i­ty any­where else but in the city’s cen­ter? Could it be that the envi­ron­men­tal impact would not be tol­er­at­ed else­where? Could it be that white Dutchess County res­i­dents would not tol­er­ate a mam­moth jail facil­i­ty near their homes? What about traf­fic, the impact on ground­wa­ter, air qual­i­ty, and a host of oth­er envi­ron­men­tal issues?
Democratic Legislator Joel Tyner Rhinebeck/​Clinton raised the issue of the poten­tial for seri­ous neg­a­tive envi­ron­men­tal con­se­quences with­out a top-to-bot­tom review done before construction.
Tyner point­ed out that some assur­ances were giv­en that the project would have neg­li­gi­ble envi­ron­men­tal fall­out. Still, he was wary of the source of those assur­ances because of the chum­my rela­tion­ship between the firm and County Executive Marc Molinaro and County Sheriff Butch Anderson.

Republicans con­trol the Dutchess County Legislature, so the mea­sure would pass. I believe every­one attuned to this issue knew quite well that regard­less of what was said, regard­less of the protest­ing, Republicans are gen­er­al­ly inter­est­ed in mass incar­cer­a­tion and mon­ey, peo­ple be damned.
What sur­prised this writer was the vote Democratic Legislator Barbara Jeter-Jackson cast in favor of the measure.
Jeter-Jackson, a Democrat from the City of Poughkeepsie, vot­ed to build the behe­moth of a jail com­plex smack-dab in the mid­dle of the city. She also vot­ed to declare the project will have no neg­a­tive envi­ron­men­tal impacts.
Jeter-Jackson cast these two votes even though a com­pre­hen­sive study has not been done on the full envi­ron­men­tal impact such a con­struc­tion project will have on staff, inmates, and even the larg­er community.

Republicans did not need Jeter-Jackson’s vote for the mea­sure to pass. The 19 – 6 vote would have been an 18 – 7 vote, an almost 3 – 1 mar­gin. What Jeter-Jackson’s vote did was to accord the dra­con­ian mea­sure some sem­blance of bipar­ti­san­ship that is not worth the paper the bill is writ­ten on.
In try­ing to jus­ti­fy her vote, Jeter-Jackson said, “Ever since I’ve been here as a leg­is­la­tor, I’ve been deal­ing with the (Commission of Correction),” she said. “Do I believe they will pull the third (vari­ance)? Yes, I do.”

In oth­er words, she believes that the State of New York will cut off its prover­bial foot to spite its body with­out any fur­ther delay, accord­ing to her rea­son­ing. I heard noth­ing from her regard­ing the salient points Joel Tyner and oth­er Democrats raised or the pub­lic’s concerns.
She did not speak to the seri­ous mass incar­cer­a­tion of our young peo­ple who are crim­i­nal­ized before they have a chance to mate­ri­al­ize. She did not speak to the chem­i­cal risks Tyner said would form part of the every­day life of the facil­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly to preg­nant women and staff work­ing in the facil­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the first floor.

In an unprece­dent­ed stroke of illog­i­cal rea­son­ing, Jeter-Jackson said she does­n’t believe the 569 beds out­lined in the pro­pos­al will be need­ed once the coun­ty begins con­struc­tion on the new jail itself. If it’s prob­a­bly not going to be need­ed, why vote to build it?
Furthermore, what is the ratio­nale behind giv­ing Republicans the veneer of cov­er they need­ed to cre­ate the impres­sion of bi-par­ti­san sup­port and to the detri­ment and cha­grin of the peo­ple who vot­ed her into office?

For County Executive Marcus Molinaro and Republicans in the Legislature, the lives of Drug addicts, poor and indi­gent minor­i­ty youth, and the men­tal­ly ill are dis­pos­able. However, Barbara Jeter-Jackson ought to know bet­ter. She must know that no per­son suf­fer­ing from men­tal ill­ness and drug addic­tion should have to com­mit offens­es giv­ing them­selves mas­sive rap sheets in order to get treatment.
She knows it’s a bunch of baloney, yet she vot­ed for it even though her vote was not needed.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.
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