USA

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Wednesday, April 1, 1992

The Record (New Jersey) | 5 Star | NEWS | B01

New Jersey Attorney General Robert J. Del Tufo said Tuesday that he is considering challenging federal court orders that limit the number of state prisoners in some county jails.

“I would prefer not to have a federal judge telling the state what it can and cannot do,” he said.

Del Tufo said he talked Monday with U.S. Attorney General William P. Barr about a new U.S. Justice Department policy to provide legal help to states that are trying to lift court-ordered limits on prison populations.

He said he wants to review the current consent decrees restricting the number of state inmates in the Essex, Atlantic, Burlington, Monmouth, and Union county jails, with an eye toward challenging those limits.

Bergen County Sheriff Jack Terhune said lifting the cap on state inmates at other jails might help the Bergen County Jail because some state prisoners could be removed, but that the problem would remain with the state.

“If the state realizes it has an overcrowding problem, then it must address it at the state level, not at the expense of the county jail system,” Terhune said.

The new Justice Department policy was first put forth by Barr in a Jan. 14 speech in which he said the ability of states in recent years to manage their own prisons has been hampered by lower federal court rulings that came out of lawsuits filed by inmates.

“Many courts went far beyond what the Constitution requires in remedying purported Eighth Amendment violations,” Barr said in the speech. “Caps, in particular, have wrought havoc with the states efforts to get criminals off the street.”

But on Jan. 15, the day after Barr’s speech, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that undercut his position, said Elizabeth Alexander, deputy director of the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The ruling, in a case originating in Boston, made reopening consent decrees easier, but put limits on how much they could be rewritten, Alexander said.

“I’m really surprised that Barr is continuing to make this argument,” she said. “In the face of the decision, I would have thought that he would stop, because it was so soundly rejected by the Supreme Court.”

The Bergen County Jail operates at an average of 235 percent of its rated capacity of 423 inmates, with its population hovering around 1,000 during the week and exceeding that on weekends. The county and state are co-defendants in a 1988 lawsuit filed by inmates who charged that their constitutional rights were being violated by conditions at the jail.

James Stabile, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections, said the state prison system currently runs at 135 percent capacity. Although the department removed 1,559 inmates from county jails in February, the caps in the five counties prevented the state from spreading that number out, he said.

For instance, the department removed 348 prisoners from the Essex County Jail, one of the jails under consent decrees, but only 72 inmates from Bergen County. The number could have been divided more evenly among the counties if the state could be flexible with the cap, Stabile said.

ID: 17373081 | Copyright © 1992, The Record (New Jersey)