Last year, Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz announced the county would earmark money to plan and build a new jail. This announcement raised important questions about our county’s priorities.
Phylicia Brown is Director, Black Love Resists in the Rust and Coordinator, No New Jail Campaign.
A new mega-jail is not the solution to the complex issues we face. We must focus our resources on investing in our community and addressing the root causes of crime.
The Erie County jails have long been a site of despair for incarcerated people who have suffered abuse, sexual assault and death in the facilities. Late last year, eight women filed lawsuits alleging they were sexually assaulted by corrections officers while in custody. These assaults are alleged to have taken place from 1996-2018.
Last year also marked the 38th reported death in the jails since 2005 with the death of William Hager in November. Shaun Humphrey’s death, just three months earlier, was declared a homicide by the county medical examiner. Seven community members have died in the jails during Sheriff Garcia’s short tenure, continuing the death rate of the previous administration.
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The fact of these deaths alone is enough to give us pause, but they are made all the more injurious due to the lack of transparency that has been a longstanding feature of the Sheriff’s Office. Despite all of this, the Sheriff’s Office received an 18% budget increase this year, adding more corrections officers, jail deputies, guards, sergeants and lieutenants to the Sheriff’s Office.
And although the county ended overtime for Sheriff’s Office employees in 2022, the Sheriff’s Office exploited a loophole in 2023 by giving its employees “holiday work pay” which County Comptroller Kevin Hardwick stated on the record was “basically overtime”.
It is against this backdrop that the Sheriff’s Office is asking taxpayers for hundreds of millions of dollars for a mega-jail. And to that we say: no! No to deadly, mismanaged jails and no to more and more funding to the Sheriff’s Office with nothing to show for it.
Not only is building a new mega-jail fiscally irresponsible, but it also doubles down on failed carceral policies. Both jails are half full. Erie County must close one of the facilities and update the remaining one to meet the needs of those who are incarcerated there.
The operational savings should be reinvested in community-based resources to combat housing insecurity and poverty, increase youth programming, and provide mental and behavioral health support.
Spending hundreds of millions of dollars for a shiny new building will not fix the personnel issues that make Erie County jails some of the deadliest in the State.
We need real investment in our communities. Anything short of that is a stopgap measure.
Phylicia Brown is director, Black Love Resists in the Rust and coordinator, No New Jail Campaign.
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