By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Wednesday, January 29, 1992
The Record (New Jersey) | 5 Star | NEWS | Page B01
In an ironic twist to a class-action suit seeking to reduce overcrowding at the Bergen County Jail, a high-ranking county official says the county could wind up a loser if it wins the case.
Jerrold B. Binney, chief of staff to county Executive William “Pat” Schuber, said Tuesday that the state might walk away from the jail’s problems, if the recommendation of special master James R. Zazzali goes against the Department of the Public Advocate. It filed the federal suit in behalf of jail inmates in 1988.
The state and county are defendants in the case. Hearings on the suit were scheduled to resume today, after negotiations on an out-of-court settlement reached an impasse late last year.
Of 984 inmates in the jail which has a rated capacity of 423 379 are state prisoners, said a spokeswoman for Bergen County Sheriff Jack Terhune.
Binney, who has been designated by Schuber to speak for the county on the issue, said that the county has maintained all along that the state is to blame for the overcrowding and a host of other problems at the jail.
If the state and county win, he added, the state would have no incentive to decrease the number of state prisoners in the jail, or to increase its per-diem subsidy for state prisoners.
Binney says the county may sue the state to get it to address the county’s concerns.
“We’ve already done that in one instance, on the per-diem issue,” he said. “We’ve joined the Gloucester County suit on the per-diem cost because, right now, it is draining our treasury.
“We get $45 a day from the state,” he went on. “That’s what we’ve been getting for about 12 years, and everybody knows the costs have been going up. We feel that at a minimum at a minimum it’s costing us $65 a day to house those state prisoners, and that’s not even including some capital costs.”
The Bergen County freeholders are to consider the per-diem issue at their next meeting, deciding how much to ask of the court in the Gloucester case.
Deputy Attorney General Patricia Leuzzi, representing the state Corrections Department in the suit, said she had not been notified that Bergen County joined the Gloucester suit.
Leuzzi also said she was reluctant to discuss the issues discussed during settlement talks, but that the state does not dispute that the per-diem rate needs to increase. The state Legislature is responsible for such an increase, she said.
“The budget is limited,” she said. “The governor and the Legislature are making difficult decisions on what can be funded. Things are being cut back. There are complaints from every constituent.”
Deputy Public Advocate Audrey Bomse, who is handling the class-action suit, said the state deliberately overloads the county jails in order to avoid having its prisons declared unconstitutional.
Bomse said that overcrowding exacerbates the violation of inmates constitutional rights, and that an expert for the public advocate would testify today that, with the exception of health care, “almost next to nothing has been done to ameliorate” problems at the jail.
Among the problem areas cited were lack of exercise, poor lighting, improper sanitation, inadequate protection of inmates from other inmates, and a rising level of violence between inmates and corrections officers.
Corrections Department spokesman James Stabile said that overcrowding results from state prisons taking in more inmates than they let out. In 1991, for instance, 11,559 inmates came into state prisons and 8,216 were paroled, leaving a monthly average surplus of 279 inmates.
New Jersey is one of only five states in the nation not under a court order to drastically reduce its prison population, said Betsy Bernat, a spokeswoman for the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. The project seeks to reduce prison populations.
Bernat said the reasons vary among the five states. Vermont, Montana, and North Dakota have no prison overcrowding largely because they are sparsely populated states, and Minnesota doesn’t because it imprisons only the most dangerous criminals.
She agreed with Bomse that New Jersey, which operates at about 135 percent of its prison capacity, was able to stave off a court order by “backing up its prisoners into the county jail system.”
ID: 17367308 | Copyright © 1992, The Record (New Jersey)
Leave a Reply