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Alternative to Revolving Jail Door
The Times Herald-Record, July 06, 2001
By Heather Yakin
In his three-pronged rehabilitation program, the Rev. Peter Young employs counselors who have been through the mill. Addiction. Crime. Prison.
"I didn't have any idea what was going on in my life," said Lance Davis, a former addict from Monticello. "I just thought they (police) didn't like me."
He did time in Sullivan County Jail. His mother died there in 1970. Now, almost 13 years of sobriety, Davis directs aftercare at the Altamont Program, a rehab that's part of Peter Young's Housing, Industries and Treatment of Albany. He got clean in prison – in Young's program.
Yesterday, Young and Davis met with community members and officials at the Sullivan County district attorney's office. They spoke to the county Legislature's Public Safety Committee. Young's programs provide counseling to inmates in county jails and prisons. Once they're released, they get more counseling, safe and sober housing and job training.
Young, a former chaplain for the state Senate and state Division of Correctional Services, was invited to speak by Better Community Justice, a grassroots group. A member of the group, Sandra Oxford, said that her first concern is for the people who might be victimized by repeat offenders.
Young said he came to Sullivan County in the late 1950s to early 1960s to check out public intoxication arrests that were being recorded at a rate 28 times the state average. The local hotels were busing up people from New York City, Young said, but hiring only a handful. The rest, he said, were left to find their own ways.
Assistant District Attorney K.C. Garn said as the hotels began to fold in the 1970s, a number of the unemployed, unskilled workers turned to heroin; in the 1980s, the drug of choice was cocaine.
Addiction warps the addict's mind, Young said.
"The emotions are now out of control," he said. "The drinking and the drugging will lead him to do a lot of stupid things."
Young said his people screen potential clients carefully, to make sure the ones they take really want to change their lives. Federal and state funding is available to the county, if it wants any of these programs.
District Attorney Steve Lungen said he wanted to be sure the program wouldn't "coddle" violent criminals, but agreed that something is needed.
"There is no issue that we have a drug problem in the community," he said. "We put the same families in jail. Now I'm here long enough that we're putting the second generation in jail for the same things."
After Young spoke to legislators, the Public Safety Committee asked Sheriff Dan Hogue and Public Safety Commissioner Genevieve Dainack to see if there's a need for the program in the county.
"I feel like we do have the need here in Sullivan County for at least one of his programs, and that's the one in (the jail)," said Sharon Miller of Better Community Justice. If that program is in place in the jail, maybe we can save some people."