Committee endorses plan for criminal justice reforms

The Ulster County Legislature’s Law Enforcement and Public Safety Committee have endorsed a criminal justice reform plan.

The plan, committee members said, is designed to help end mass incarceration in Ulster County, improve police oversight and accountability, address systemic racial bias, and heal relationships between the county Sheriff’s Office and county residents.

The plan, developed by the Ulster County Criminal Justice and Reform Commission, comprises nine initiatives, including measures to address police accountability, expand restorative justice programs, and better address how law enforcement interacts with people suffering from mental health and addiction issues.

It includes immediate actions the county government can take through resolutions, budget amendments and executive orders, as well as a five-year plan in each of four broad categories that would enable county officials to track whether the county is taking the incremental steps needed to achieve long-term goals.

Among the plan’s recommendations are expanding the county’s restorative justice program to include 18- to 26-yearolds; expanding job training programs to Ulster County Jail inmates; and requiring the jail to develop discharge plans for inmates that connect them to housing, mental health treatment and jobs.

The plan also calls for reducing the staff and inmate population at the jail, creating more transparency within the Sheriff’s Office, and creating regional community advisory boards on policing.

While the plan passed out of committee by a unanimous vote Wednes

day, Legislator John Parete said it does little to address public safety in the community.

“I did not see anything in the report concerning public safety. Nothing. Zero,” said Parete, D-Boiceville. He said the report also didn’t acknowledge the good work of the Ulster County Sheriff’s Office.

“I’m just jaundiced about where we’re going with this,” Parete said. “It’s like a wish list that may be implemented or may not be.”

The plan was developed as a result of a directive last year by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, requiring that every municipality in the state with a police force perform “a comprehensive review of current police force deployments, strategies, policies, procedures and practices,” and file with the state by April 1, 2021, a plan “to improve such deployments, strategies, policies, procedures and practices.”

The full county Legislature is slated to vote on the plan at its March 16 meeting, but law enforcement committee Chairwoman Eve Walter said the Legislature simply will vote to accept the plan, not endorse its recommendations.

“This is aspirational,” said Walter, D-New Paltz.

She said the Legislature will have to vote separately to enact recommendations in the report.