MONTICELLO - Commissioner William Moon from the Department of Family Services met with county officials last week to discuss the impending effects of New York's “raise the age” law, which will increase the age of criminal responsibility to 18.

Until recently, individuals in Sullivan County who are 16 or 17 years of age could be charged in adult courts and housed in adult jails.

New York is one of only two states that automatically charges 16 and 17-year-olds accused of non-violent crimes as adults. The other state is North Carolina.

“The ‘raise the age' law has now prohibited that,” said Commissioner Joe Todora of Health and Family Services. “The county will very shortly need to adjust how they treat kids who get arrested as 16 and 17-year-olds.”

County officials who attended this meeting with Commissioner Moon included County Manager Josh Potosek, Deputy County Manager Dan Depew, District Attorney Jim Farrell and County Jail Director Hal Smith.

“I think we had a great conversation about the implementation of this law,” Todora said. “We made our point of saying that they [law enforcement administrators] need to provide training to their officers on the street about how to deal with minors. In the old days they would just mirandize them and take them to the county jail. That's not the case any longer.”

County jail roof to be installed by month's end

The Sullivan County Jail is moving ahead of schedule, with a surprisingly low amount of change orders for a project of its size.

“We should have a full roof over the entire jail by the end of this month, at which point they'll be focusing on the inside work,” said Division of Public Works (DPW) Commissioner Ed McAndrew.

The site of the new county jail lost power briefly last week. McAndrew said NYSEC was at the site the next day to upsize the temporary transformer.

“We're keeping tight reins on this project,” said Legislator Joseph Perrello. “The change orders have been minimal.”

McAndrew agreed with that assessment. “Non-owner requested change orders have been less than $200,000 at this point,” McAndrew said as legislators knocked on the wooden conference table. “We're still going to have more coming, but for a $75 million project this has been done very well.”