POUGHKEEPSIE – The longtime home of the Dutchess County Sheriff’s Office is being demolished to make way for the new $155 million Dutchess County Justice and Transition Center. The new center is being built to rectify a decades-old problem of having an inadequate jail to house inmates.
Monday, April 8, marked the first day of the demolition of the building, making way for Phase 1 of new construction.
The old building was built in the 1920s and originally housed both the sheriff’s office and the county jail. When the original jail was constructed, the building was kept for the purpose of housing the Sheriff’s Office. Over the years, additions were added to create more space.
Sheriff Adrian “Butch” Anderson said the additions weren’t well planned and created a myriad of problems. Anderson spent more than 40 years working in the building prior to moving to the new Law Enforcement Center in March of this year.
When asked about seeing his building being destroyed, Anderson said “I see a lot of history being torn down. A lot of people have walked through those halls. One thing that can’t be demolished are the memories there; the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good far outweighs the bad.”
County Executive Marc Molinaro ushered in the demolition saying “Having completed the new law enforcement center on time and under budget, we now move forward with a model new transition center – more efficient and less expensive to operate, improving public safety and conditions for our corrections staff. Dutchess is leading comprehensive criminal justice reforms and this new facility will give us the ability to more fully help those in our care.”
The new center will house not only inmates but have room for programs necessary to prevent recidivism and help transition inmates back into society.
Completion of the multi-million dollar project is expected by December 2023.
