By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Thursday, July 11, 1991
The Record (New Jersey) | Four Star B | NEWS | Page B01
Bergen County Sheriff Jack Terhune is warning the state Corrections Department that an overload of state inmates is making the county jail unmanageable.
“We have an authorized capacity of 423 between the annex and the main jail, and we run 230 to 240 percent above that, consistently,” Terhune said in an interview Wednesday.
“Now, when you take human beings and you put them in smaller space than was designed for them, you are going to have the potential for violence, the potential for problems.”
Terhune, who said he recognized the state’s prison overcrowding problem, wants some state prisoners removed from his jail.
County jails are supposed to house anyone sentenced to a term of 364 days or less, with those sentenced to a year or more going to a state prison. Of the jail’s population of 966, 429 belong in a state prison, Terhune said. The jail population often swells to more than 1,000 on weekends, he added.
Under a state executive order signed in 1981 and renewed every six months since, Bergen County must take 72 state inmates.
“We get $45 a day to keep state inmates here,” Terhune said. “The cost to the taxpayers of Bergen County is $63 to keep them, so we are losing money. People think we make money off this thing. We don’t.”
The sheriff has written two letters to Corrections Commissioner William H. Fauver expressing his concerns. A spokeswoman said Wednesday that the state removed 10 inmates following Terhune’s first letter in May and plans to remove 30 more this week.
Inmates in two Bergen County Jail annex cell sections were disciplined in a “lockdown” during the weekend following a food fight in one cell section and a gang attack on an inmate in the other. Overcrowding contributed to both incidents, Terhune said, adding that most of those involved were state inmates.
Fauver is aware of the overcrowding problem in all county jails, said Patricia Mulcahy, a Corrections Department spokeswoman, but the 15 state prisons with 23,518 inmates are running an average of 130 percent over capacity. About 3,400 state inmates are in county jails, with some of the jails running 300 percent to 400 percent over capacity.
To alleviate some of the problem, the state will take over the vacant 300-bed Hudson County Correctional Facility in Secaucus, with the first 100 beds available Monday, Mulcahy said. She said she did not know whether any beds would go to county jail inmates.
A 1988 lawsuit brought against Bergen County on behalf of jail inmates seeking relief from overcrowding, among other issues, is being negotiated for a possible settlement. None of the parties in the suit would comment on it this week.
Keywords: BERGEN COUNTY; PRISON; POPULATION; NEW JERSEY
ID: 17349186 | Copyright © 1991, The Record (New Jersey)
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