A bill before the Monroe County Legislature would require the Sheriff’s Office to disclose how it spends fees charged for phone calls and tablet use in the jail.
Payments made by incarcerated individuals and their families for phone and tablet use are placed into a trust fund, which the Sheriff’s Office can use for various purposes. What the limits to those uses are and what currently is being purchased is not clear.
The Sheriff’s Office declined to answer lawmakers and WXXI News’ questions about its use of the fund. The legislation requiring the office to provide a biannual public accounting of revenue, expenditures, and the fund balance is slated for a committee vote Tuesday evening.
County Legislator Rachel Barnhart first requested records of the trust fund's usage in May 2025. The Sheriff's Office has thus far provided expenditure records for 2024, but not 2025.
This past May, Barnhart asked the New York State Comptroller's Office to perform an audit of the trust fund. Officials in Albany forwarded that request to the Rochester regional office in July, records show.
"Nearly $8 million has been spent out of this fund since 2020,” Barnhart said. “We only have one year's worth of expenditures. We know that there has never been any audit of this fund for at least 10 years, and we know that there are some very questionable expenditures."
The list of expenditures provided to Barnhart, and shared with WXXI News, shows that in March 2026, the Sheriff’s Office reported its 2024 fund expenses were $558,103 . However, this past July, Deputy County Executive Amy Grower wrote to Barnhart and tallied the 2024 spending at $644,217.
The lesser provided total showed $118,000 going to unspecified legal services from Bond, Schoeneck and King. Other major expense items included $244,635 for jail uniforms, $32,870 for tracking devices, and $27,699 for five-gallon water tanks.
Hotel stays, travel expenses, gasoline, baby supplies, and power tools round out the itemized list of purchases.
The Sheriff's Office declined to answer questions about its spending. Instead, a spokesperson shared a June letter from the office’s legal counsel Kim Hinkley to Legislature Majority President Michael Yudelson.
In the letter, Hinkley said Barnhart's narrative is "misinformation" and argued that while commissary funds must be used for the welfare and rehabilitation of incarcerated individuals, the phone fund can be used for anything.
Jail phone funds have been a subject of concern nationally for the Prison Policy Initiative, a non-profit thinktank focused on criminalization and incarceration. A 2024 report argued phone funds are often used as "slush funds" used as "shadow budgets" for things that do not materially benefit incarcerated people's conditions.
Michael Wessler is communications director for the Prison Policy Initiative. He said there's been instances where jails have used the funds to pay for gun range memberships, gift certificates to restaurants, or simply just sit on the funds, allowing the money to pile up year over year.
"The big takeaway is there's just not enough oversight over these funds at all, and they're ripe for abuse," Wessler said.
