In a settlement this month, Albany County and the city of New York agreed to pay four inmates close to $1million and also agreed to follow the Rules of the City of New York concerning punitive segregation although Chief Deputy William Rice, of the Albany County Sheriff’s Office, told The Enterprise in May, “We don’t have solitary confinement.”

“It’s easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”

ALBANY COUNTY — A suit brought by four young men, transferred from jail on Rikers Island in New York City to Albany County’s jail while awaiting trial, alleges they were routinely assaulted, including sexual assault, by prison officers upon their arrival and that they were then forced to live in solitary confinement for months on end.

Albany County’s jail is one of 17 county jails in New York State that will receive funds for treating substance use disorder and for transition services, according to a release from the Heroin Task Force, which advocated for, and secured, $3.75 million in the 2018-19 state budget.

Most people masturbate, and always have. Prehistoric cave drawings from around the globe confirm this.

The problem comes in our modern society when it’s done in public. It hurts people.

Dogs that few want to adopt — most of them are pit bulls — get training from county jail inmates, which helps the inmates as well as the dogs.

How you are treated makes a difference in who you are — that's true of dogs as well as people, including prison inmates.

Adam Rappaport’s suicide last month in the Albany County jail embodies two nationwide problems for inmates today — drug addiction and self-harm.

Before he hanged himself in his jail cell, Adam Rappaport doodled on prison stationery, lightly penciling in one corner, in small capital letters next to a six-point star the word "hope" — only this and nothing more.

Phyllis Rosenblum grew up with nine siblings on a small farm and learned the value of self-sufficiency; she wants to pass that on to prisoners in the county jail and has started a garden for them to tend. We endorse the project.