By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Thursday, March 12, 1992
The Record (New Jersey) | 5 Star | NEWS | B01
Bergen County officials on Wednesday opened their defense in a lawsuit charging that conditions in the crowded jail rob inmates of their constitutional rights, while acknowledging that improvements are needed.
Undersheriff Gary R. Buriello, who oversees operation of the jail, testified that the freeholders last year approved a $5.3 million bond to pay for extensive repairs and renovations throughout the Bergen County Jail Annex.
However, Buriello said he worried that the overcrowding could hold back that work.
“We have to have significant [state] inmate population reduction so that we won’t have to worry where to put the inmates while we are doing the work,” he said. He added that he was discussing such moves with state officials.
In testimony elicited by Deputy County Counsel Murshell Johnson, Buriello said 372 of 992 prisoners in the main jail and the annex Wednesday were state-sentenced inmates. He was the first witness called by the county.
The state Inmate Advocacy Office, on behalf of jail inmates, filed suit in 1988 against the county and state. The lawsuit charged that serious deficiencies exist in conditions, policies, and procedures at the jail, including in the areas of housing, health services, sanitation, food service, lighting, plumbing, ventilation, recreation, and security. The net effect of the deficiencies is to deny inmates their constitutional rights, the suit contends.
Buriello’s testimony Wednesday at the hearing in Newark was intended to counter those charges and testimony by witnesses called by the Inmate Advocacy Office, Johnson said. He also described the jail, how the Sheriff’s Department runs it, and the rules that govern inmate life.
Johnson said a measure of Bergen County’s seriousness in managing its jail is that it has increased the jail’s capacity every few years. A 72-cell, 144-bed addition to the jail was opened Wednesday, she said, and filling the addition will allow the county to move 135 inmates who slept on mattresses on the floor of the jail gymnasium out into other parts of the jail. The gymnasium has been used to house inmates for about three years.
“We are providing adequate level of services to the inmates,” she said. “We are actively trying to manage the population in the jail by instituting different programs, specifically the wristlet program,” which allows some people to serve their sentence at home.
Buriello testified that the county two weeks ago asked contractors for bids on the renovations and repairs at the annex. To begin this fall, the work will include expansion of the jail’s medical services section, complete renovations of several of the jail annex housing areas, and new electrical wiring, plumbing, a fire protection system, and a boiler.
He also said the jail is soliciting proposals on a new administrative building so that large areas of the annex could be used for the original purposes for which they were constructed.
If administrative functions are moved out of secured areas of the jail, opened areas may be used as intake housing, where new inmates would be observed as they adjust to jail life, he said.
Deputy Attorney-General Catherine M. Brown, who is handling the case for the state, declined to comment on any aspect of the case. Contending that the Inmate Advocacy Office failed to prove its case, Brown last week filed motions in U.S. District Court asking that it be dismissed. A hearing on her motion has been scheduled for April 13.
Buriello is expected to return to the stand Friday.
Caption: 1 – At the Bergen County Jail, inmates sleeping on mattresses on the gymnasium floor. COLOR PHOTO – CARMINE GALASSO/THE RECORD – 2 – (4s) Bergen County Sheriff Jack Terhune demonstrating a modular cell at the county jail annex on Wednesday. PHOTO – AL PAGLIONE/THE RECORD
ID: 17371248 | Copyright © 1992, The Record (New Jersey)