By Kevin Shea
nj.com
TRENTON, N.J. — Prisoners without pillows, sightings of rodents and bugs, cell temperatures over 90 degrees in the summer and meals served without drinks.
And the kitchen where inmate meals are prepared at Garden State Youth Correctional Facility “has been in extraordinary disrepair for decades.”
Even the kitchen for corrections officers “had clogged drains and pools of water mixed with food scraps and trash on the floor. Large open drainage holes in the floor were also inadequately covered to prevent workers from accidentally stepping into them.”
That was the assessment of an inspection of the state prison by New Jersey’s Office of the Corrections Ombudsperson. The office made four visits to the prison in northern Burlington County last summer and made its report public on Tuesday.
The prison, for legally adult but young male offenders, usually in their 20s, can house about 1,000 inmates. It’s in Chesterfield Township, just outside of Bordentown.
Despite the often-decrepit conditions found at the facility, the report says the Department of Corrections has responded “quickly and decisively” to conditions and concerns.
For example, more than 70% of the inmates had no pillow during the inspection dates, in July 2024. The ombudsperson inspectors made several return visits and found the prison had ordered a full inventory of 1,200 pillows. And they replaced expired fire extinguishers.
The safety of your personnel, your facility and your inmates depend on inspections. In the video below, Gordon Graham talks about the importance of performing necessary inspections regularly to avoid future problems.
By March 2025, the facility’s administration had repaired showers, requested proposals for professional cleaning services, and started working to create an incarcerated person work detail for deep-cleaning with more powerful tools, the report says.
Kitchens were cleaned and organized, meal service changes began, including juice cartons being served with meals. The department now has an approved capital project for $13 million for the kitchens and food service.
“This is an extraordinary level of responsiveness and has led the Ombudsperson Office to significantly narrow the focus of its policy and practice recommendations,” the report said of the department’s response.
Initially, the inspection gave the prison’s conditions a score of 72.9%, putting it in the ombudsperson grade of “some criteria unmet.” The response by the department led the ombudsperson’s office to upgrade the facility’s score to 85%, placing it in the “meets most criteria in standards.”
The ombudsperson’s office said the prison still could use additional capital funding for additional repairs.
The report also recommends: a long-term plan to limit the number of inmates in double-bunked cells; goals to increase inmates’ participation in job assignments, school, and other programming and rewarding staff if the goals are met; creating a proactive and recurring cell-to-cell inventory of maintenance needs; and tasking a new food services supervisor to routinely inspect and audit kitchen staffing, sanitation, and food control.
—
©2025 Advance Local Media LLC. Visit nj.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.