Juvenile Justice Reform in New Jersey
By: Faith Franzonia
Tags: Njisj, Prison, Prison Reform, New Jersey, Youth

Boys Choir supporting the 150 Years is Enough campaign during a rally in June of 2017.

The State of New Jersey has been transforming their juvenile justice system in hopes of better serving their youth by prioritizing treatment, education, and rehabilitation and moving away from a strictly punitive system. State youth prisons decreased their average juvenile detention center population by almost 80 percent between 2003 and 2018 without impacting public safety, according to Advocates for Children of New Jersey . But, advocates say, New Jersey still has a long way to go to achieve what could be considered a fair system that effectively rehabilitates our youth.

New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, a Newark-based nonprofit organization, is working to transform New Jersey’s youth incarceration system into a community-based system of care by closing the State’s three youth prisons. According to their vision document, Investing in Kids, Not Prisons, New Jersey currently has the largest black-white youth incarceration gap in the nation and second largest for latino-white. To put that into perspective, a black child is 30 times more likely to be detained than a white child in New Jersey. This disparity exists regardless of the fact that offenses occur at similar rates between black and white youth in New Jersey. In addition, the current system is incredibly expensive, with each child costing the state $289,287 per year to incarcerate.

I spoke with Andrea McChristian, Law and Policy Director at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice and Retha Onitiri, Director of Community Engagement at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice about their 150 Years is Enough campaign.

How many youth prisons are in New Jersey?

Retha: There are 3 youth prisons in New Jersey, New Jersey Training School (Jamesburg) being the oldest and largest all male prison, Juvenile Female Secure Care and Intake Facility (Hayes), the only girls youth prison in New Jersey, and Juvenile Medium Security Facility, a high security facility center.

How many youths are currently imprisoned? What is the recidivism rate for youths in these prisons?

Retha: The Juvenile Justice System report from July 2019 said that 222 youths were committed to juvenile justice commission facility with only 22 white youths.

A 2014 report said that of 377 young people released from New Jersey youth facilities, 76.9% had a new court filing, 58.9% had a new adjudication or conviction, and 23.9% were recommitted within three years of release.

What are the goals of the 150 Years Is Enough campaign?

Andrea: The purpose of our campaign, which was launched on June 28th, 2017, the 150th anniversary of the opening of Jamesburg, the state’s largest youth prison for boys, is to close all three of NJ’s youth prisons and to invest funding into effective community-based youth programs to keep young people out of the youth justice system at all.

What has been achieved so far?

Andrea: About 6 months after we had the launch, former Governor, Chris Christie, announced the forthcoming closure of Jamesburg and Hayes, the girls youth prison, and the development of two smaller youth rehabilitation centers in the southern and central regions of the state. While we were very excited about the closure announcements we weren’t thrilled that there would be development of new facilities at a time when our state already has 11 non-secure youth residential homes that are at half capacity and so currently every young person who is listed as being incarcerated in a state youth prison this year could be moved into an empty bed in one of those 11 existing facilities, all but two. There isn’t a need to develop anything new.

Have these prisons been shut down yet or are they still in the process?

Andrea: All 3 youth prisons still stand. While Gov. Christie announced Hayes and Jamesburg would close, the task force and the legislation are both to set closure dates, but those are still in process. Both the task force and the legislation are also to consider closing JMSF — the state’s most secure youth prison for boys — which was not part of Christie’s closure announcement.

When was this task force formed and what are its explicit goals?

Andrea: Our President, Ryan Haygood, had recommended that there be developed a youth justice task force to oversee the closure process, make sure that there are no new youth prisons being built, and that we’re fully investing in community at the front end. That was in early 2018, several months later we still had not had any kind of progress by the state in calling this task force and so we launched what we called The Movement for the 94%, which was representative of the 94% of black voters who voted for Gov. Murphy. And we had our major rally in October of 2018, the day before our rally Gov. Murphy issued Executive Order #42, creating the Task Force for the Continued Transformation of Youth Justice.

What is one thing this task force is working on?

Andrea: This task force is working with legislators to introduce the NJ Youth Justice Transformation Act in May of this year and that bill, s3701, includes everything that the institute has laid out in our vision document for transformative youth justice. That has everything the executive order has but with the legislation to make sure that if the task force doesn’t fulfill its duty in making sure we have full transformation that we have legislation as another tool in the toolkit. We are explicitly asking for the creation of a $100,000,000 lockbox fund for community-based youth programs. Right now the state is spending $54,000,000 on youth incarceration and $16 million on youth-based programs so our position is that if you’re spending that much, you can find $100,000,000 to fund effective youth programs for our kids to make sure they don’t become system-involved and that they have effective alternatives to incarceration.

Where will that $100,000,000 you’re asking for go?

Andrea: It would go to this community-based system of care Retha is developing and for those young people who do need to be at a home for continuing public safety reasons. Our position is that they should first look to the 11 non-secure facilities we already have, look to make those more secure if need be as they’ve already done with one in Atlantic County and not develop new youth prisons, expanding the juvenile prison footprint at a time when our numbers are so low.

How can people support the 150 Years is Enough campaign?

Retha: They can support the 150 Years is Enough campaign by going to our website. We’re also asking folks in the community to help us push for the signing of NJ Youth Justice Transformation Act, Bill A5365 and S3701.

New Jersey currently has the largest black-white incarceration gap and the second largest latino-white incarceration gap for youth in the country, what do you think can be done to close this gap?

Andrea: There are a number of different supportive agencies, programs, organizations that aren’t talking with each other. One is community schools, which are across the state, another is youth services commissions (YSCs), each county in NJ, so 21 counties, have a YSC, which is a county body that receives money from the state to fund effective community-based youth programs. YSCs get $16 million to fund these effective youth programs for prevention, diversion, alternatives to incarceration, all the way to re-entry, but no one knows about that. So we have community schools, youth services commissions, we also have family success centers which are supposed to provide treatment and wrap-around services that involve the whole family. Those are important organizations that don’t speak to each other. So in Retha’s framework, each major community, and our work focuses in urban communities, those three would be in synergy, speaking together to provide holistic, wrap-around treatment for these young people. That is the kind of community-based programming we’re advocating for.

Have there been people pushing in the opposite direction of your work?

Andrea: There were plans to build a new youth prison in Newark on the Pabst Blue Ribbon site which is near some schools, churches, right next to a graveyard, is on an environmentally compromised toxic site and they were moving forward with it with no community input, involvement, or even knowledge. But at the same time, just a few blocks down the street, Newark has one of those residential community homes I mentioned, it can fit up to about 25 boys, currently has about 8, it is small, they have treatment and services provided, it’s community-oriented, so our position is look to what you already have! Look to fill that up if needed instead of building a new youth prison you’re going to be incentivized to fill up. And what we’ve heard in terms of pushback is “Iif you move the kids who need to be at a home into those facilities, where are the kids who are currently there going to go?”

OAnd our position is that they don’t need to be there! If a young person is already in something that is billed as non-secure residential community home, maybe that’s somewhere where they would be better placed in a community program where they can stay at home with the treatment and services they need rather than to be at a home. Our whole vision is the push-down model. We are pushing as many kids as possible out of youth facilities, out of youth prisons, and into intensive and treatment-focused community-based youth programs.

So the building of a new youth prison in Newark is not going to proceed?

Andrea: Correct, the day before our rally the state held a public meeting in Newark where they said they would not proceed with the Newark site.

Is the reasoning for some individuals wanting to open more prisons as simple as profit?

Andrea: We have our suspicions, I can’t speak on the record what those reasons are, but I think it speaks for itself the question you’re asking.

How would these prisons being shut down affect jobs?

Andrea: What we made very clear in the legislation is that there is going to be a workers transition plan. Obviously we don’t want to put anyone out of jobs but we aren’t willing to uphold a racist system just for jobs. And so our position is that as many workers as possible that can be retrained for these more rehabilitative out-of-home placements or for community-based youth placements should be retrained. And for those who can’t, consider for them to be moved to other agencies. Maybe the DLC or something like that. IF we want to make space for workers to transition, but we also know we need to transform the system, that is our first priority.

More Information + How to Support

New Jersey Institute for Social Justice’s Vision Document: Investing in Kids, Not Prisons: The Urgency of Transformative Youth Justice Reform in New Jersey

Visit buildupkidsnj.org to ask your legislators to support the The New Jersey Youth Justice Transformation Act (S3701/A5365) mentioned in this article (available here).

Sign the youth justice open letter: https://www.njisj.org/support_youth