Suffolk County has gotten word that it won’t have to construct a 250-bed expansion at the county correctional facility in Yaphank for at least three years, thanks to a reduction of incarceration rates, Sheriff Vincent DeMarco said today.
The project would have cost the county’s taxpayers upwards of $300 million over the next 20 years, the sheriff said. The county openedthe first phase of a 400-bed expansion at the Yaphank facility in 2013. But incarceration rates are at their lowest in more than a decade, according to county officials, due to dropping crime rates and measures now in place to provide alternatives to incarceration. The county’s average daily inmate population fell from a high of 1,783 in 2011, to 1,435 in 2014.
The state corrections agency will review the situation again in three years.
“Suffolk County residents are tired of paying some of the highest taxes in the nation, and if there is a better, cheaper and smarter way to do correctional work and keep people from cycling in and out of jail, we should devote our resources to those initiatives and not to building more jail capacity,” DeMarco said. “This is not only a rational approach, it’s less costly and it works.”
Youthful offenders convicted of nonviolent misdemeanor offenses are being diverted to community placements in supervised environments at Hope House or Timothy Hill Children’s Ranch.
A second program, youth felony court, offers youthful offenders counseling for substance abuse in a community based setting. They have special probation officers assigned to them as well, said Kristin MacKay, public relations director for the sheriff’s office.
“The youth has to follow it to a T. If they’re successful, great. If they’re not, they go to jail,” MacKay said.
A supervised release program for offenders of all ages allows for their release from jail. Offenders can get counseling and training and are assigned probation officer to supervise them, MacKay said.
The supervised release program has tripled in size in the past five months. There were 35 people in it in March and 97 people enrolled now, according to MacKay.
“We work closely with the courts to coordinate a lot of these programs,” she said.
DeMarco said he has long argued that the county should focus its attention on reducing the jail population through the use of community-based correctional alternatives and inmate rehabilitation, and through the years he has developed and championed the kinds of programs that have led a significant drop in incarceration.
