Jail deputies are again regularly being forced to work shifts of 12 and 16 hours at

the Erie County Holding Center, straining the overtime budget and testing the staff during an

already tense time.

Mandatory overtime over the years has given jail deputies and corrections officers

six-figure incomes and placed them among Erie County's highest-paid employees.

But they also become burned out, according to front-line deputies and the findings of state

regulators. For breathers from 72-hour weeks, they take sick days, triggering a need for

someone else to work overtime.

"You want fresh deputies," said one jail staffer, who if identified would face departmental

charges for speaking publicly without permission.

"If someone is working a regular day off, that's a different story. When you are mandated

to work 16 hours, double-shifts, it doesn't matter how you are working it, you are tired."

"And it's not in the best interests of the inmates," he said. "Obviously you are

quick-tempered. Most of the guys, they do their jobs well. But it's just human nature."

Related: County attorney changes stance on jails lawsuit

By the end of March, Erie County's Jail Management Division had already spent a third of

its overtime budget for the year, according to the county comptroller's figures. The division,

which includes the Correctional Facility in Alden, is on pace to go $2.6 million over budget

for a total $9.2 million in overtime this year, the comptroller's office said.

The jail system has yet to enter the busy summer months, when the downtown Holding Center

and the Correctional Facility hold greater numbers of inmates, and staff people with the most

seniority take their vacations.

The two-week pay period that included Easter, when a number of deputies and corrections

officers took time off, indicates how overtime might grow even more over the summer because of

paid leave. The total paid in time-and-a-half wages shot from an average $350,000 for every

two-week period to more than $450,000 for the pay period spanning Easter Sunday, according to

county figures.

Those are large amounts even for Erie County's Jail Division, which each year overruns its

overtime budget by $1 million or more. But this year, with the U.S. Justice Department

alleging in a lawsuit that Erie County fails to protect the rights of its inmates, jail

operations and the treatment of inmates are under greater scrutiny.

In March, a Holding Center inmate committed suicide, the third jail inmate to take his own

life in 90 days.

With the Justice Department questioning the jail's suicide-screening effort, Sheriff

Timothy B. Howard announced a new protocol where he would place on constant watch any inmate

believed to be withdrawing from drugs. Constant-watch units drain resources because they

require one deputy to watch one or just a few inmates for an entire shift.

A new class of about a dozen deputies is expected to arrive in May, but will they put a

dent in the need for overtime?

Sheriff's administrator Brian Doyle did not respond to a Buffalo News inquiry for this

story.

At the same time, the "extreme jail makeover" created an overtime expense for taxpayers. In

the run-up to the Justice Department's inspection of the Holding Center on March 22-23, county

crews cleaned, painted and repaired the jail in a blitz to address years of slow-moving

maintenance.

Some of the work was performed by jail trusties, requiring a deputy to watch them, and by

blue-collar workers in the county's Division of Buildings and Grounds. The Buildings and

Grounds unit during the first three months of the year spent about three-quarters of its

overtime budget for 2010 — or $255,700.

A spokesman for County Executive Chris Collins, who controls Buildings and Grounds,

acknowledged the overtime was driven, at least in part, by the need to improve the Holding

Center and Correctional Facility to meet State Commission of Correction standards.

Jail overtime has been studied in the past, by Comptroller Mark C. Poloncarz, and could be

studied again, by a revived "community corrections advisory board" as proposed by Legislator

Christina W. Bove, D-West Seneca, and other members of her Public Safety Committee.

The panel would ask nine appointees to advise the sheriff and county executive on

improvements for the Holding Center and Correctional Facility.

While its revival was inspired by some prisoners rights groups, it would let legislators,

local judges, the county executive, the sheriff and the county attorney appoint members. The

sheriff's and county attorney's appointees would lack voting power.

But will appointees by those government players really represent the community?

"It's the same list of foxes we've had ravaging the henhouse all along," complained Jordan

Gerow, a chairman of the Erie County Prisoner's Rights Coalition. "So what indication does

that give us that the community will really be a part of it, or hold anyone accountable?"

Following the coalition's suggestion, a half-dozen Democratic legislators proposed a

different panel of advisers: 15 members from groups that have advocated for prisoners, such as

the National Alliance for Mental Illness and the University at Buffalo Law School Human Rights

Center, sitting with representatives for the sheriff and the Teamsters local that covers

Holding Center deputies.

Defending her bill, Bove said the legislators allowed to select members could turn to

relevant community groups. She said the legislators will have plenty of time to consider their

appointments because the panel would not meet until 2011.

"I am here to be a legislator, not to engage in political rhetoric," she said. "We don't

need this issue to be another endless "Peace Bridge' discussion. We need action. People are

tired of the politics. Let's work together and get results."