Onondaga County is facing some major decisions about what to do with its crowded correctional facilities.
On any given day, Onondaga County’s Justice Center and the Janesville Penitentiary are at, or close to, capacity, according to county Sheriff Gene Conway. There are about 700 inmates on any given day in Onondaga County’s jails.
It’s a situation created in part, by the shutdown of mental health facilities across New York state in recent years. That ends up often pushing mentally ill individuals into the criminal justice system, because there is nowhere else to go.
Conway says among the options the county has, it to try to keep individuals out of jail in the first place.
"If we can have a program that diverts people that we -- meaning law enforcement -- come in contact with, before it leads to a criminal charge, then it benefits everyone. It benefits the individual, so they can get the services they truly need and it benefits law enforcement,” said Conway.
Conway says that could include everything from quicker reviews of charges to see if jail time is warranted, to the use of home confinement devices. He also is looking for ways to expand mental health beds in central New York.
Onondaga County Executive Joanie Mahoney says in the past governments have tended to build new jails to deal with overcrowding, and that’s the choice the county has now.
"Whether we should take that easy way out and build more jails or whether we should look at what’s driving the population and see if there are better ways from a human standpoint and an economic standpoint,” said Mahoney.
Running the jail is a big part of the county budget. Mahoney is proposing spending $62 million on corrections in her $1.2 billion 2016 budget.
