By PAUL BRUBAKER
North Jersey Media Group
PASSAIC COUNTY, N.J. — The Passaic County Jail faces the same overcrowding that led to conditions that a federal judge called “shameful” last year.
The state Department of Corrections has stopped issuing waivers to the jail, meaning the county must build additional space in the jail or break ground for a new facility.
But Sheriff’s Department officials said conditions are “adequate” at the jail, despite a citation for not providing sanitary eating areas, and said they are working with the state toward a solution.
In its annual inspection in May, the state Department of Corrections cited the jail for seven instances of noncompliance, most pertaining to inmate overcrowding.
The 54-year-old jail with a capacity of 896 had a population of 1,531 on Monday, including 93 state inmates and 195 from Philadelphia, said Bill Maer, Passaic County Sheriff’s Department spokesman.
A reinspection date has been scheduled before the end of the year, said Deirdre Fedkenheuer, a state Department of Corrections spokeswoman. If the jail still has not alleviated the crowding, Corrections Commissioner George Hayman could order it closed under the state’s administrative code.
Maer said that the department has been in constant contact with the state Department of Corrections.
“They’re reasonable people, and we’ve acted in good faith,” Maer said. “We feel we have significantly improved the already adequate conditions of the Passaic County Jail. It is our feeling that a continued dialogue will ultimately broker an agreement that all parties involved can live with.”
The inspection report cited the jail for not providing the minimum of one shower with hot and cold water for every 16 inmates, and said the jail lacked a sanitary space for group dining.
“Increased inmate population requires inmates to eat on bunks,” the report stated.
The jail failed this year to meet the state’s standard of having no more than 64 inmates per sleeping unit and providing 25 square feet of unencumbered floor space per inmate, according to the report.
The jail also failed to provide enough space in its dayrooms, or indoor recreation areas.
In previous years, the state granted waivers that exempted the jail from these standards. But now the waivers have expired and the Sheriff’s Department’s requests to extend them have been denied, the report states.
The jail also lacked a written procedure for keeping cutlery and other hazardous kitchen utensils secure.
Corrections officials inspected the jail for three days in May, after the U.S. Marshals Service had withdrawn its prisoners from the jail, and before the jail began housing nearly 200 Philadelphia inmates.
In March, the Marshals Service pulled its inmates from the jail, citing U.S. District Judge Katharine Hayden’s decisions in 2007 to reduce the sentences of three federal inmates because of the conditions they faced at the jail.
In addition to overcrowding, Hayden cited excessive mold due to poor ventilation and toilets close to eating areas.
Before those decisions, Warden Charles Meyers had testified in an evidentiary hearing in 2007 that the jail was built in 1954 and had a capacity of 896 inmates.
“If there were the proper number of inmates in there, there would be no issues,” Meyers said, according to a hearing transcript.
Meyers also said in court that the jail faced overcrowding problems since it first opened. The jail has been embroiled in controversy since 2005, when allegations surfaced of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees being abused.
The detainees were removed from the jail by the end of that year, ending a multimillion-dollar revenue stream for the county. The county’s budget took a second significant hit this year when the U.S. Marshals Service withdrew its prisoners.
Joseph Hartmann, the Department of Corrections’ director of county services, said at the same hearing that the waivers had been issued because the Sheriff’s Department indicated it planned to build a new facility or expand the jail.
On Monday, Maer said the Sheriff’s Department administration understood the state Department of Corrections’ desire to work toward either one of those two solutions, but gave no indication of any progress.
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