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| N.Y. County Jail Alternative Programs Face Uncertainty |
| By Ithaca Journal |
| Published: 10/30/2002 |
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A 20 percent cut to its annual budget won't kill the county's Alternatives to Incarceration programs, only change the way they look, program administrators said this week. The Tompkins County Board of Representatives voted unanimously this week to trim another $107,000 from the programs' budgets, citing the county's dismal budget forecasts for next year. County legislators are still combing 2003 budget requests in an effort to reduce the impact of a possible 18 percent increase in the property tax rate. '(The cut) is not as disappointing as it could have been,' said County Board of Representatives Chairman Tim Joseph, D-Town of Ithaca. Joseph has long been an advocate of the alternative programs. The Alternatives to Incarceration programs include a buffet of services designed to keep certain nonviolent criminals out of the crowded county jail, with a goal of rehabilitation. So far, there's no hard evidence to suggest the programs have reduced the jail population, but Joseph and others say they're encouraged by the fact that numbers of inmates at the county jail have dropped in recent months well below the jail's capacity of 72. Just a year ago, population figures were consistently over 90. The alternatives programs include the county's Felony Drug Court, and programs at the Community Justice Center. Under the deal struck this week, the Drug Court programs will remain intact, while the Community Justice Center programs will shrink. The center includes the Day Reporting program, where people referred by the courts attend daily programs at the center designed to help them with life skills like money management and job searching skills. Now that $100,000 has been cut from its $600,000 annual budget, Probation Director Kathy Leinthall said it's difficult to gauge what the impact will be. 'We're hoping it will change the capacity, not the quality of the programs,' she said. Since its inception in 2001, the Community Justice Center has received about 200 referrals, and deals with an average of 14 to 16 people per day. Joseph said the center wasn't running at its capacity yet, anyway, so he's hopeful the cuts won't be felt too strongly by the residents who use the services. One casualty of the budget process is Becky Richmond, the director of the Community Justice Center, whose job was cut in the budget process. 'People have said the programs have been bled. Will they survive? I don't know,' she said. 'Maybe not at the same level of intensity, which is too bad because they do good work,' she said. |
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