“It’s time for the county to make this transition to funding only one facility,” said Colleen Kristich, principal author of a report by the Partnership for the Public Good called “Shrinking Jails, Rising Costs: Erie County’s Wasteful Jail Budget.”
 
Right now, the two facilities combined have about 700 personnel guarding around 500 inmates, a ratio unseen in the state prison system, where inmates outnumber their guards, the report said.
 
Looking at salaries alone, Kristich projected that over $26 million could be saved by closing the Holding Center downtown, and $15 million or more could be saved closing the Correctional Facility.
 
The Partnership for the Public Good recommends plowing some of that money into mental health programs or drug treatment.

For every dollar that county government spends on mental health, $2 is spent on jails, the report says.
 
Sheriff Timothy B. Howard’s top jail officials had no immediate comment about the partnership’s report. Their budget request for next year shows they expect to spend about $10 million less on jail salaries than budgeted for this year.
 
With jail populations in decline because of the state’s bail reforms and early releases during the pandemic, the Jail Management Division said earlier this year that it was considering moving most inmates to Alden and keeping only a few functions at the jail downtown.

The suggestion, however, met with resistance because of logistical reasons. For one, it’s more difficult for families, friends and lawyers to visit inmates at the remote Correctional Facility on Walden Avenue in Alden. For another, Alden is a long way from courtrooms in downtown Buffalo.
 
In its report, the Partnership for the Public Good said it heard from former Correctional Facility prisoners who were discharged in the middle of the night having to walk miles to the nearest bus stop.

April N.M. Baskin, the County Legislature chairwoman and a frequent critic of the sheriff, also opposed closing the Holding Center. “Multiple studies show that a detainee who maintains regular contact with family and friends is less likely to be a repeat offender,” she wrote in a newspaper article. “The proposed action will make it much harder for detainees to maintain contact with their family by significantly increasing the distance between their neighborhoods and where they are being detained.”

Read the full article on the Buffalo News website here.

Read the PPG policy brief here.