Forum addresses proposed jail expansion

Jen Dixon News Editor

A gathering at the Family Partnership Center of Poughkeepsie on Saturday, March 26 drew approximately 60 to 70 people for a discussion of the proposed expansion of the Dutchess County Jail. A group of Vassar students, many of them also members of Hunger Action, the Student Activist Union, and PEACE, also attended the event sponsored by a group called Dutchess Justice. Anya Groner ’04 received a grant from AmeriCorps to work with Dutchess Justice. Many of the current Vassar students who attended Saturday’s event are also Dutchess Justice members.

Dutchess Justice opposes the proposed expansion of the Dutchess County Jail, and instead supports the expansion of community programs that address the sources of crime proactively rather than reactively.

In the last decade, New York Governor George Pataki has been lowering the number of people in state prisons by sending people to county jails instead. As a result, jails are extremely overcrowded and the State Commision of Corrections has mandated that action must be taken to improve the situation. Approximately 33 counties have been told that they must extend their jails; the Dutchess County jail is one of them.

The original Dutchess County Jail was built in 1985, with 186 beds. In 1995, they expanded the jail by 100 beds. It was full the day it was opened because of the demand. The county has been ordered to increase this count by 300 beds.

The Criminal Justice Council formed by the county issued a proposal that the jail be expanded by just 150 beds, with additional funds going to alternatives to incarceration such as youth services, houses for the mentally ill, and counseling. Several weeks ago, the State rejected this proposal.

Dutchess Justice, an organization not officially linked to the county government, has taken this proposal further by suggesting that the jail not be expanded at all, with the funds that would go to a larger jail being used instead for other services. Currently, the recidivism rate, or the number of people who return to jail after being released, is 60 percent. The recidivism rate for people in a transitions program is 30 percent. Statistics such as these are used by opponents of the jail expansion to argue that social programs are much more useful in combating crime than enlarged jail facilities. The perspective of Dutchess Justice, according to Chris Freimuth ’06, who attended Saturday’s meeting, is “why invest more in a system that’s not working.” The proposed jail expansion would cost between $50 and $130 million to construct, plus $13 million annually to maintain.

Saturday’s forum featured five speakers, including Tim Joseph of nearby Tompkins County, a county that received a mandate for jail expansion similar to that of Dutchess County. The county fought the mandate and won by building up social programs while taking a full two years to draw blueprints for the expansion, to “buy time,” according to Freimuth. By the time the proposal was done, the jail was no longer overcrowded and the physical expansion was not necessary.

Joseph said in his speech, “You have to make it possible for people to be elected into office that believe in releasing prisoners and changing the system.”

Interested students can contact Dutchess Justice at dutchessjustice@yahoo.com.