\nThe U.S. Justice Department, after an almost two-year investigation,\nfinds that Erie County’s two jails routinely violate the constitutional\nrights of their inmates and subjects them to brutality as well poor care\non several levels.\n\nIn a 50-page report, the Justice Department says the Erie County Holding\nCenter in downtown Buffalo and the Correctional Facility in Alden have\nfailed to correct their numerous problems, even after being warned of\nthem for years by other regulatory agencies.\n
\nThe Justice Department called the effort by Sheriff Timothy B. Howard’s\nJail Management Division to run the two facilities as “woefully\ninadequate” and said it has led to a “pattern of serious harm to inmates,\nincluding death.”\n
\n“We conclude that the conditions of confinement violate the constitutional\nrights of inmates,” the Justice Department said in a letter to County\nExecutive Chris Collins, who had refused to cooperate with the probe.\n<\/blockquote>\nIt turns out the Erie county government went well beyond just not cooperating.\n
\nMaybe if we weren’t locking up more people than any other country in the world<\/a>, we might not have so many problems with jails.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lest anyone think jail problems are just a southern phenomenon, the Buffalo News reports that Erie County, New York’s two jails have a few problems, too: The U.S. Justice Department, after an almost two-year investigation, finds that Erie County’s two jails routinely violate the constitutional rights of their inmates and subjects them to brutality as […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1888],"tags":[1923,1925,324,1903,1922,325,1924],"class_list":["post-591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-incarceration","tag-buffalo","tag-county-executive-chris-collins","tag-erie-county","tag-incarceration-2","tag-jail","tag-new-york","tag-sheriff-timothy-b-howard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Gj0O-9x","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![](\"http:\/\/media.buffalonews.com\/smedia\/2009\/07\/29\/12\/939-holding_center.embedded.prod_affiliate.50.JPG\")
<\/a>\nLest anyone think jail problems are just a southern phenomenon,