Overcrowding

Overcrowding at the Erie County Holding Center A Third World Gulag in Our Backyard

Prison overcrowding. It's a topic that, from some people, elicits responses like, "they're prisoners, why should it matter -- what rights do they have?" But what happens if the people are pretrial detainees who are convicted of nothing? As author Fyodor Dostoevski once said, "The degree of civilization in society can be judged by entering its prisons." If Dostoevski ever entered the Erie County Holding Center, he would equate our society to a zoo -- only animals in a zoo are treated better than inmates at the Erie County Holding Center. The brutal, useless, vindictive wastefulness of prisons is just taken for granted. The possibility of keeping nonviolent offenders in the community where they could make restitution is ignored. Neither society nor the judicial system is interested in restitution. I do not think prisons are especially reflective of social callousness; any public institution will do for that. But people's approval of imprisonment does reflect their impotence, their fear and rage at their powerlessness to protect themselves against violence. The ordinary citizen approves of all of those black and Hispanic men being locked up and wasted and, even more gratifying, terrified themselves of something worse than their victim's muggings. Grim justice indeed. But what if these prisoners have been convicted of nothing, are merely in custody as pretrial detainees? What then?

The Erie County Holding Center in Buffalo has a maximum capacity of 551 people; yet on a daily basis, the head count at the Holding Center exceeds that amount by as many as three hundred people. The conditions that inmates are forced to endure would make animal rights activists cringe if it were a dog or a cat or livestock, yet because they are "inmates" no one seems to care. The Holding Center population is made up almost entirely of persons who not only have not been tried, but who are presumed innocent under the United States Constitution.

Some persons are in jail simply because they were accused of acrime and because of indigency cannot afford bail. As one Sheriff's Deputy recently told me, "Bail is supposed to ensure that a person will come back to court; it's not a punishment.

Yet some judges will set a high bail simply to punish someone so they cannot get out." He went on to say that the Holding Center is mandated to hold anyone who has been arrested until they can be brought before a judge. People can be found in the Holding Center who have been arrested on charges of driving while intoxicated (DWI), domestic disputes. There is even a person in the Holding Center who was arrested on a charge of not having an anchor in his boat. "Even if you're from Amherst, come from a good family, have a job, you could still find yourself on the floor of the bullpen at the Holding Center."

The Sheriff's Department has responded to this overcrowding by creating housing areas where they never existed before. Anywhere that a mattress can be thrown down, that's where you will find an inmate sleeping. From court holding pens to aisleways in cell corridors and places like the chapel and the gym, inmates are housed. Many of these areas do not even have proper sanitary facilities -- yet it becomes a housing area.

The Holding Center, 40 Delaware Ave., is the second largest county jail in New York State, even without overcrowding. While the average length of stay is only three days, that figure can be very misleading. Inmates have been held at the Holding Center for as long as two years while awaiting trial. I found myself a guest of the county for over five months while awaiting trial for a DWI.

The State mandates that inmates housed in a multiple occupancyunit be provided with a minimum of 50 square feet of floor space per inmate, yet each inmates in the court holds have only 18 square feet apiece. The state also requires at least one functioning toilet for every eight inmates, yet the court holding pens house anywhere from 12 to 25 inmates with one open toilet.

On August 8, 1995, a lawsuit was filed in United States District Court on overcrowding at the Erie County Holding Center. The complaint charged that "the overcrowded conditions and understaffing under which inmates are detained at the Erie County Holding Center are intolerable and inhumane [violating] rights protected by the First, Fourth, Sixth, Eighth, Ninth and Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, subjecting pretrial detainees to punishment in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment."

The complaint continues, "Inmates are crammed into court holds, being forced to sleep on the floor one on top of another with no room to walk and inadequate plumbing for the number of people housed there. Inmates are literally forced to sleep right next to toilets with no protection from someone using the toilet, who happens to miss the toilet and may urinate all over another inmate."

It is reported that the New York State Commission of Corrections is waiting for a major incident to occur at the Holding Center and on August 20, 1995, a "mini-riot" occurred on C long (housing unit). Inmates controlled the housing unit for six hours, destroying telephones and other county property before the goon squad rolled in on the inmates and broke up the disturbance. The facility disciplinary court placed the inmates involved in disciplinary segregation for six months because of the incident. And it was unreported in the press.

In July, Holding Center officials forced an inmate suffering from full-blown AIDS to sleep on the floor of the filthy bullpen for three days. The inmate, who has a history of suffering from opportunistic infections, was receiving his AIDS medications while housed in the bullpen, and Holding Center officials have known of his medical condition since 1993. It is reported that he will be filing a separate suit on this matter.

ALT has exclusively obtained copies of grievances filed by inmates in response to the overcrowding and, while jail administrators appear to be sympathetic to the plight of inmates in the press, what they respond on paper to inmates in a completely another story. Erie County Holding Center Assistant Superintendent and University District Common Council Candidate Willie Brown has stated, "The Commission of Corrections is aware of our overcrowding problems. They are aware as to what our capacity is, also what other areas we are using to house inmates. Housing areas mentioned in your grievance are temporary and are used until such time as inmates are classified and permanent housing is assigned. Safety and security dictate many of the procedures which must be applied to Court Hold areas. As soon as a bed (sic) free up you will be moved. What is your solution to problem? We have (sic) to many inmates and not enough space."

But, if it were Brown or Brown's family members who were forcedto live in such barbaric conditions, how would he feel? While we can only really guess at that, let's look back to 1993 when Brown's son Eddie was working in the kitchen of the Holding Center. Ed Brown was the target of a Sheriff's Department Internal Affairs investigation for smuggling drugs into the Holding Center for inmates. Although the younger Brown was in fact compromising the safety, security, and good order of the Erie County Holding Center by bringing in dangerous drugs for inmates -- allegedly to support his own drug habit, Sheriff's investigators saved the young Brown the "trauma" of a felony arrest and incarceration from felony charges of promoting prison contraband by simply arresting Ed before he stepped into the Holding Center. Let's face it, if it were you or me, they would have waited until we were in the building to arrest us but not for Willie Brown's son -- and guess what -- nothing more was said of the incident after the misdemeanor arrest. Was Ed simply slapped on the wrist because his dad was assistant superintendent? Did his father save him the degradation of being forced to sleep on the filthy floors of the bullpen? Perhaps, but we will never know.

When contacted by ALT for comment, Brown stated, "It's overcrowded, people are committed here by the Courts. There is very little we can do. People want criminals off the streets, we have to hold them. We can't put up a no vacancy sign, and we can't lock the doors." Mr. Brown is against building any further jail space for the Holding Center. "We can't build ourselves out of the problem. We're mandated to put people someplace. I don't have any comment."

The conditions at the Holding Center are not a recent development. In fact the overcrowding and forcing of inmates to sleep on the floors have been going on for several years. Many community organizations and area leaders have been up in arms over the situation. Daire Brian Irwin, director of the Western Regional Office of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said, "We are appalled at the conditions at the Erie County Holding Center. What people don't realize is that the vast majority of these people are innocent under the eyes of the law. They are pretrial detainees who have been convicted of nothing and yet the conditions to which they are being subjected are far worse then most of those experienced by people convicted and spending time in a state prison. And yet these people are being forced to sleep on the floor shoulder to shoulder, sometimes in a small room with only a single open toilet. The local NYCLU office has received numerous complaints from inmates subjected to these conditions and we are currently conducting an investigation and have great hopes of bringing a class action suit on behalf of the inmates at the Erie County Holding Center." Much comment has been made in the News recently of a similar case filed in Federal Court over the conditions at the Onondaga County Jail near Syracuse in 1985. While the conditions in Onondaga were similar, the amount of people being forced to sleep on floors was drasticly less. While the maximum numbers of inmates forced to sleep on the floors of the Onondaga County Jail were only 45 people per night, the number of inmates forced to sleep on the floors of the Holding Center has been upwards of 300 people per day.

The Court in Onondaga ruled that "Overcrowding amounts to punishment of detainees. The need or desire to house more prisoners than maximum rated capacity for county jail did not constitute legitimate governmental purpose which excused forcing pretrial detainees to endure hardship and privations resulting from overcrowding at county jail." How will the Federal Court rule in the case of Erie County? Only time will tell, but time is something that is not on anyone's side as conditions worsen at the Holding Center on a daily basis and as tempers flare. Could the Holding Center become the next Attica? Local Civil Rights attorney Nan Lipsitz Haynes has been following the overcrowding at the Holding Center for sometime and says that the merits of a lawsuit on overcrowding are so high that the matter need not ever go to trial. Ms. Haynes says that an application for a preliminary injunction against the County and Sheriff would be successful and the chances of winning are excellent.

In 1993, the County commissioned the National Institute of Corrections for a study on overcrowding at the Holding Center. At that time, the population of Erie County Holding Center was 668 inmates and the National Institute of Corrections concluded that drastic measures were necessary and yet two years later with inmates populations over 615 inmates, the County has yet to take any action except to find more closets and day rooms to stick inmates into.