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."

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."