By Andrew Seidman
The Philadelphia Inquirer
GLOUCESTER COUNTY, New Jersey — Gloucester County is expanding its plan to outsource its entire inmate population beyond South Jersey.
Some inmates could be shipped to the Essex County jail in Newark — about 90 miles northeast of the jail in Woodbury.
The county Board of Freeholders voted unanimously Wednesday to enter into contracts with Cumberland, Salem, Burlington, and Essex Counties, to which Gloucester would ship its 270 adult male inmates starting June 1 at $100 an inmate. The controversial move drew scrutiny from Gloucester County corrections officers and beleaguered public defenders.
The contracts would last for two years and could be renewed through 2017, when the county intends to renegotiate them.
The board also rescinded a shared-services agreement it had adopted with Cumberland and Salem Counties in March that effectively made the same deal.
That resolution had prompted a lawsuit from three unions representing 120 Gloucester County corrections officers, alleging that the plan violated the Uniform Shared Services and Consolidation Act by failing to preserve the officers’ seniority, tenure, and pension rights should they be transferred to the other counties.
Wednesday’s vote followed similar ones in Cumberland and Salem Counties, where officials say that because they are now entering into contracts - not shared-services agreements — those requirements are no longer binding, meaning they won’t have to lay off any of their own personnel.
Mark Cimino, an attorney who filed the suit, called that semantics. “The deal still stinks and it’s still a shared service. It’s just changing the name of what it is,” he said. “They’re just grasping at straws at this point.”
The freeholders say the plan, which would reduce corrections officers and staff from 150 people to 46, would save $10 million a year through reductions in salaries, operating expenses, and the like. Housing inmates costs $28 million a year, or about 13 percent of the county’s budget.
Corrections officers, who could face layoffs, questioned the logistics of the plan. In an e-mail sent Wednesday to the five freeholder boards involved, Joe Amato, president of a corrections union in Essex County, said the jail there was already overcrowded and dangerous.
He accused the boards of “exploiting incarcerated human beings for political agendas and profit margins.”
Gloucester outsourced its juvenile and female inmates in 2009 and 2010 to Camden, Salem, and Cumberland Counties, and says those agreements have each saved $1.8 million annually. Freeholder Director Robert M. Damminger has said the county is facing record losses in revenue.
The plan adopted Wednesday would make Gloucester the first county in the state without its own jail.
“Don’t set that precedent,” said Reed McLeod Jr., a corrections officer from Mickleton. “You guys like to be trendsetters. Set a different kind of precedent. Take care of your people first.”
Under the plan, the Sheriff’s Department would transport arrestees to the Salem jail, which would house a minimum of 125 inmates. If that jail becomes too crowded, arrestees would be taken to Cumberland, which would house a minimum of 100.
Gloucester County corrections officers will take inmates to and from court.
The facilities in Burlington and Essex Counties would serve as “backups,” County Administrator Chad Bruner said. The county would try to send to Essex only “hard-core” inmates who have already been sentenced and need medium to maximum security, he said.
Bruner said that Essex County had not yet voted on the contract, but that he expected it would do so in a couple of weeks. Essex officials did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday. It was unclear whether Burlington County had voted on the contract.
Public defenders and the ACLU have called the plan logistically impossible and morally wrong. Defenders say they can’t provide adequate representation to inmates housed in Bridgeton, let alone Newark.
Moreover, the county has not responded to inquiries made by the Gloucester County Office of the Public Defender, said Fred Late, an assistant public defender. The county canceled a meeting scheduled for Thursday, he said.
The county has said it would transport inmates back to Woodbury to meet with lawyers upon their attorneys’ request.
Alexander Shalom, policy lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, called the plan to ship some inmates to Newark “insane.”
“I’ve never heard of anything happening like this in New Jersey,” he said, adding that it would limit inmates’ rights to counsel and wrongly keep them far away from their families.
“I don’t doubt, if you live in rural Montana, it takes time to get to your client,” he said. But in a densely populated state like New Jersey, he said, “the public defender system is not set up to accommodate vast geographical expanses they’re talking about.”
Copyright 2013 Philadelphia Newspapers, LLC
All Rights Reserved
The Philadelphia Inquirer