Holding Center deputies are like the inmates in this respect: Sometimes the deputies can’t leave either.

Jail deputies are forced to work up to 72 hours a week so the Holding Center can meet state-imposed supervision levels. The guards report to work to find that an eight-hour shift will become a 12-hour shift or even a 16-hour marathon.

Inmates are assured an hour of exposure to the outside each day. Deputies get a half-hour lunch each eight hours. The lunch break provides their only spell outside the building.

Deputies say the stress is growing. So are the costs, according to the county’s number-crunchers. At midyear, Sheriff Timothy B. Howard’s Jail Management Division had spent $4.2 million of its $6.6 million overtime budget for 2010.

Summer-season vacations for the most senior deputies will create the need for even more overtime. At its current pace, Erie County this year will spend some $2 million more than it budgeted for jail overtime.

Workers in other departments — chiefly the Health Department and the Buildings and Grounds unit — also have logged extra hours helping to improve the jail’s health care and the jail’s physical needs.

Countywide, overtime wages have consumed $2.1 million more than budgeted for the first half of 2010, Budget Director Gregory G. Gach said in a report on county finances at midyear.

Brian D. Doyle, a top aide to Howard, told county lawmakers recently that a class of 16 future jail deputies now in training might alleviate forced overtime.

Deputies who spoke to The Buffalo News on the condition they not be identified said the class is actually smaller, but they said even 16 more workers will barely nick the level of forced overtime because so many employees quit from burnout.

The Jail Management Division has outrun its overtime budget for years, despite assorted studies into ways to control it. At times, county budget-makers met the overruns with indifference because the overtime wages cost about as much as hiring more deputies and paying their benefits.

In the current climate, forced overtime has taken on new relevance. The U. S. Justice Department, in its

lawsuit alleging that Erie County fails to protect inmate rights, cited episodes when deputies beat inmates or looked the other way when inmates fought.

People focused on the facilities say that exhausted deputies have less patience with inmates and are more likely to use force.

“An overworked staff can’t possibly do its best to provide the kind of professional service that we would like to see at both the Holding Center and the Erie County Correctional Facility,” said Karima Amin, the founder and a director of Prisoners Are People Too, a group advocating for better jail conditions.

“There are situations where poor performance could negatively impact a life-and-death situation,” she said. “Forced overtime is not something that meets with the approval of most deputies either.”

Taxpayers are hit in other ways. With forced overtime, jail deputies become some of county government’s highest-grossing employees, eligible for larger taxpayer-supported pensions when they retire.

Teamsters Local 264, which represents Holding Center deputies, has urged County Executive Chris Collins to change course and offer county workers, especially jail deputies, the early-retirement incentive being offered to public employees with local governments statewide.

In a letter to Collins, the Teamsters representative to the Erie County Deferred

Compensation Committee, 'Michael J. Smith said that if 30 Holding Center officers retire, the

county could save $1 million in salaries. Smith also circulated the letter to the County

Legislature.

Savings also would come as senior officers with several weeks of vacation retire and are

replaced by newcomers with less vacation. The Legislature called on Collins to explain the

analysis behind his refusal to offer the retirement incentive.

Collins spokesman Grant Loomis said an early-retirement incentive will cost more than it could save, since the county must pay for the health insurance of many new retirees as well as the workers who replaced them.

Prisoners Are People Too and a related organization, the Erie County Prisoners Rights

Coalition, have urged the County Legislature to re-establish a "Community Corrections Advisory

Board" made up of people who want to study jail issues, including the forced overtime, and

advise the sheriff.

Disputes about the board's composition have locked up the Legislature. Public Safety

Committee Chairwoman Christina W. Bove, D-West Seneca, proposed a nine-member board,

acceptable to the sheriff, that lets Howard and County Attorney Cheryl A. Green appoint

members.

Prisoners' advocates and some lawmakers saw that as unwise because many of the board

members would be beholden to the county executive, sheriff, county attorney and Legislature,

and the panel could hardly be considered a "community" board. The Prisoners Rights Coalition

floated an alternate plan for 15 members, many from organizations familiar with jail issues,

such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness and Hispanics United of Buffalo.

With their version going nowhere in the Legislature, the Prisoners Rights Coalition last

week offered an 11-member compromise, which also allows representatives from the union

representing corrections officers at the Correctional Facility and/or deputies at the Holding

Center.

With the sheriff still enjoying the support of several county lawmakers, it is unclear

whether the compromise will pass when the Legislature meets at 2 p.m. Thursday.