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There's Got To Be A Better Way
Sullivan County Democrat, 01/31/00
Week after week, I sit in legislative committee meetings hoping to glean enough information to provide my audience with information about their government.
It's a hard job. It's not the writing I mind; it's the lack of subject matter. The same papers and issues are shuffled, discussed, tabled, and reintroduced for the first time each week.
The bright spot last week came from a group of citizens who have concluded that the current criminal justice system does not work and costs too much money. I think we all agree.
What is unique about this group, known as Better Community Justice, is that they offer viable, tested alternatives. They just need a government OK.
Here's the plan:
Clergyman Peter G. Young recognized in the early '60s that recovery from
addiction requires treatment, housing and employment in order to succeed. Like a
three-legged stool, all parts are of equal importance. Most crimes are drug
and/or alcohol-related. Most of the current treatment programs offer counseling
while incarcerated, then release the "treated" addict back into his/her previous
environment without housing and employment.
Father Young advocates a treatment plan based upon individual needs, housing services offering a transitional "family" residence and employment skill training and placement. All of his programs are accredited, and most are subsidized by grants and federal programs. As an example of the program's potential, Father Young described Schuyler Inn in Albany. The Inn is a beautiful, historic building with 120 rooms and a culinary arts institute. The hotel and restaurant are run, successfully, by treated addicts, most with criminal histories, possessing a desire and will to change their circumstances.
The employees are trained
in classrooms and on the job. The curriculum covers
everything from job skills, behavior patterns, teamwork, and culinary arts to
hospitality, retail and entrepreneurial skills, basic education and parenting.
Forty years ago, recognizing that Monticello had more arrests than any of the
major upstate NY metropolitan communities; Father Young tried to bring his
program to the Concord Hotel. However, the program failed here because staff
housing had heavy drug and alcohol abuse, making it impossible for the
program participants to live there.
So Father Young's people left, and the drug addicts remained. Sullivan County Sheriff Daniel Hogue, a 40-year veteran with the Sheriff's Department, is seeing second and third-generation criminals in the jail. Most of the arrested are repeat offenders like their fathers (and mothers) before them.
"If the system was
working, you wouldn't have so many repeaters. Repeaters in
Sullivan County are staggering, unbelievable, and just too damn many. If the
program is feasible, we should do it," claims Sheriff Hogue. Genevieve Dainack,
Director of Probation and Commissioner of Public Safety, agrees that there is a
need to break the cycle.
"The county can benefit if people in jail have community and family support. People need to be clean and sober to make rational decisions; otherwise, they will wind up right back in jail."
This county currently spends $11,209,562 on law enforcement, judicial functions, and addiction control combined. This is not including the Social Services budget (17,423,115) or village expenses related to crime. And we can't walk on the streets!
There has to be a better way for community justice.
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