Hundreds of people rallied in Princeton on Nov. 4, 2023, to call for a ceasefire in Gaza as the Israel-Hamas war continues. (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)

Two Camden County officials overreached when they called upon a local school district to halt a protest opposing the war in Gaza, the American Civil Liberties of New Jersey said Tuesday.

A letter the civil rights group sent to the county’s board of commissioners says the county officials must uphold students’ rights to freedom of speech and expression. While the ACLU of New Jersey does not take positions on international affairs, the organization opposes all efforts to censor political speech, it said.

The commissioners’ demand undermines “foundational constitutional principles and the value of free speech,” wrote Sarah Fajardo, ACLU of New Jersey’s policy director.

Commissioners Jeffrey Nash and Melinda Kane sent a letter April 22 to the Eastern Camden County Regional School District’s superintendent as students were planning a walkout in support of a cease-fire in Gaza. Administrators at the district’s high school, which has nearly 2,000 students, were aware of the protest plan.

The duo called on the district to call off the protest, which was set to coincide with Passover. They said common chants at pro-Palestinian rallies like “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and others are antisemitic because they call for the elimination of Israel and accuse the country of genocide.

“Not all speech is protected speech,” Nash and Kane wrote.

The commissioners said the walkout would invite anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric and suggested the district could lose federal funding for violating civil rights laws.

In recent weeks, New Jersey college students set up at least three encampments protesting the war in Gaza, aping encampments seen at colleges nationwide. Rutgers New Brunswick students dismantled their tents last week after the university set a deadline for protestors to clear out, and agreed to eight of the 10 demands from students. An encampment remains active at Rutgers’ Newark campus. And at Princeton University, students have spent nearly two weeks camped out in a courtyard and have launched a hunger strike.

Eastern Regional students agreed to postpone their walkout and instead are planning a rally in support of human rights later this month, according to NJ.com.

Fajardo notes in her letter that a 1969 U.S. Supreme Court ruling protects public school students’ free speech rights. She urged the board to publicly disavow Nash’s and Kane’s letter.

“To be clear, it is critical for schools to combat antisemitism. The harassment of Jewish students is wrong and illegal. But it is also wrong and dangerous to suggest that all speech in support of Palestinians, the cessation of bombing, and human rights is necessarily antisemitic harassment,” she wrote.

Nash, Kane, and the school district’s officials did not respond to a request for comment on the ACLU letter.

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Community health worker Ron Sanders, right, helps a patient at San Francisco’s Southeast Family Health Center, part of the Transitions Clinic Network that assists former inmates navigate health care after release. A new policy allows states to provide Medicaid health care coverage to inmates for specific services 30-90 days before their release. (Photo courtesy of Transitions Clinic Network)

A new policy that allows states to provide Medicaid health care coverage to incarcerated people at least a month prior to their release has drawn bipartisan interest and a slew of state applications.

Federal policy has long prohibited Medicaid spending on people who are incarcerated in jails or prisons, except for hospitalization. As a result, when people are released, they typically don’t have health insurance and many struggle to find health care providers and get needed treatment. In a population that is disproportionately likely to have chronic conditions such as heart disease and substance use disorders, that can be deadly.

Some states terminate residents’ Medicaid coverage when they’re incarcerated, while others just suspend it. Either approach can cause delays in seeking health care for people recently released from incarceration, with sometimes disastrous outcomes: A seminal 2007 study found that former prisoners in Washington state were 12 times more likely to die from all causes within two weeks of release, compared with the general population. The leading causes were drug overdoses, cardiovascular disease, homicide and suicide.

Because a disproportionate number of Black, Native and Hispanic people are incarcerated, lowering their death risk after release might reduce racial health disparities in the overall population.

In 2022, about 448,400 people were released from prison, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Under federal guidance released a year ago, states can connect prisoners with case managers 30-90 days before they are released to develop plans based on their health needs. The case manager can help the person make post-release appointments with primary care doctors, mental health counselors, substance use programs, and housing and food assistance.

States that want to extend Medicaid coverage to people in prison or jail must request a federal waiver to do so. At a minimum, participating states must provide case management, medication-assisted treatment for people with substance use disorders and a month’s supply of medication upon release, though states are free to do more.

The Health and Reentry Project, a policy analysis organization focused on health care for former prisoners, called the new policy “groundbreaking.”

“What these waivers enable states to do is build a bridge to access to health care — a bridge that starts before someone’s released and continues after their release,” said Vikki Wachino, executive director of the Health and Reentry Project and a former deputy director of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

“It’s about starting the process before they leave prisons and jails, so that they can have stronger connections to health care providers and treatment providers after they leave prison and jail.”

As of last month, federal officials had approved waiver applications from four states — California, Massachusetts, Montana and Washington. Nearly 20 other states, including New Jersey, are waiting for approval, according to health research organization KFF.

Jack Rollins, director of federal policy at the National Association of Medicaid Directors, said states that want to participate are focusing on different incarcerated populations and medical conditions. Some would start with jails, others with state prisons or youth detention facilities. Some states would provide coverage to all inmates, others just to those with a substance use disorder.

Washington, for example, will cover people incarcerated in jails, prisons and youth correctional facilities beginning three months before they are released, an estimated 4,000 people each year. It will connect them to community health workers, bring in doctors and counselors for consultations, and provide lab services and X-rays.

Montana will limit its program to people in state prisons who have a substance use disorder or mental illness and will provide services beginning a month before release. It did not give an estimate of how many people would receive help each year.

California, where an estimated 200,000 people will be covered each year, also included community health workers in its plan. Dr. Shira Shavit, executive director of the Transitions Clinic Network, a California-based national network of clinics focused on formerly incarcerated people, said ex-prisoners are especially well suited for that role.

Shavit said her group consults them on where to locate new clinics and on strategies to reach recently released inmates, because the workers are adept at “knowing where people are when they come out into the community and finding them there.”

Research suggests that connecting recently released people with others who know what it’s like to be incarcerated makes it less likely that they will end up in the emergency room.

“They know how to connect with people, and people trust them, and will follow them to come to clinic and feel comfortable coming,” Shavit said.

Alfonso Apu, director of behavioral health services at Community Medical Centers Inc., a California network of neighborhood health centers that serves patients in San Joaquin, Solano and Yolo counties, said it’s easy to “lose” people once they are released.

“The complexity of these patients is so intense that they are going to need three, four, five hours of encounters with primary care every month, at least,” Apu said.

“Imagine if we had three months to prepare,” he said. “Having a plan of action and even having appointments already scheduled for their needs — it’s going to be game changing.”

Dr. Evan Ashkin is a physician who founded the Formerly Incarcerated Transition Program at the University of North Carolina, a network of community health centers that works with local health departments, clinics and community health workers to connect former inmates with health care. He agreed that employing community health workers who share the experience of previous incarceration is essential.

“I’m hoping we’ll be able to expand this workforce,” Ashkin said. “In our state, North Carolina, there’s not a lot of folks focusing on access to health care for people post-release.”

North Carolina is awaiting word on its application.

Ashkin added that “racial equity issues are really important.”

“We have to have our eyes wide open on the type of services we provide, that they are set up to bring in the communities most impacted,” he said.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to more accurately describe the Health and Reentry Project.

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Hundreds of Rutgers University students held a four-day Gaza solidarity encampment on the New Brunswick campus, dismantling the camp Thursday, May 2, 2024, after they said university administrators conceded to some of their 10 demands. (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)

Rutgers University students peacefully dismantled their pro-Palestine encampment on the New Brunswick campus Thursday evening after university administrators agreed to some of their demands.

Dozens of tents first erected Monday came down shortly after 4 p.m. Thursday — the deadline Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway set earlier in the day for students to end their encampment on Voorhees Mall’s lawn near Scott Hall or face possible arrest.

Rutgers New Brunswick Chancellor Francine Conway said the resolution was “achieved through constructive dialogue” between protesting students and administrators. The agreement “opens the door for ongoing dialogue and better addresses the needs” of the 7,000 Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian students who attend Rutgers.

Protestors made a list of 10 demands for the university, listing their two top priorities as getting Rutgers to divest its financial holdings from companies with ties to Israel or benefitting from the war, and to sever its partnership with Tel Aviv University.

Organizers said administrators granted all their demands except those two, which Conway said “fall outside of our administrative scope.” The divestment request is under review, she added.

The university also did not explicitly call for a ceasefire, as students demanded.

Conway agreed in a three-page response to the protestors that the university would grant some of their demands, including welcoming 10 displaced Palestinian students to finish their education at Rutgers, developing a plan by the fall to create an Arab Cultural Center with a designated physical space and staff, and reviewing Rutgers’ relationship with Birzeit University, a public university in the West Bank.

University officials also will convene a working group to identify gaps in faculty and conduct a study on the creation of a Department of Middle East Studies.

“Our commitment to our students is paramount. I am grateful for our faculty’s role in guiding and supporting the students toward this peaceful resolution. At Rutgers-New Brunswick, we are dedicated to fostering a community prioritizing safe and peaceful resolution through open dialogue,” she said in a message to the university.

A mixed reaction

Cheers erupted on the tent-strewn campus lawn after students learned many of their demands had been granted, and some quickly began tearing down tents and tables and gathering protest signs. A few dozen students, though, angrily continued to chant slogans like “There is only one solution! Intifada revolution!” and refused to leave for an hour.

Campus police sent an alert just before 6 p.m. ordering everyone to clear the Voorhees Mall area due to police activity. By 7 p.m., the encampment was fully cleared.

Students declined to talk with the New Jersey Monitor, citing concerns about university discipline and attacks or doxxing by Israel supporters.

Dozens of faculty joined the encampment and helped form a human chain between the pro-Palestinian students and a smaller group of Israel supporters who waved Israeli and American flags. Police stood guard all around the green.

Todd Wolfson is a media studies professor president of Rutgers AAUP-AFT, which represents 5,000 full-time faculty, graduate workers, counselors, and librarians.

He said the university’s unions support the students’ calls for the ceasefire although not necessarily all their demands. Still, he said, faculty were prepared to “put our bodies on the line” and get arrested to protect students’ right to protest.

“We think our students must have the right to speak, and across this country, we have seen awful repression of students,” Wolfson said. “We will stand with the students to force the administration to stand by the commitments they made to the students.”

He pushed back on reports that there was antisemitic behavior and outside agitators at the encampment. Holloway earlier Thursday said some protestors are individuals “not from our community.”

“Antisemitism’s been weaponized — weaponized! — to stop people from fighting to stop an unjust war,” said Wolfson, adding that he’s Jewish.

Ronald Chavez Hassan, a teacher, lecturer and mental health specialist at Rutgers University Behavioral Health, has dropped by the encampment throughout its four days.

“I like the fact that you have such a diverse group of people, regardless of religion or race, ethnicity, coming together to stand up for what’s right, for freedom and human rights and the protection of the innocents. Doing this is a microcosm of we should be doing all around the world, whether Ukraine, or Rohingya, or the Uyghurs in the Xinjiang province. We have to take a stand,” Hassan said. “Rutgers is the flagship university of New Jersey, and we should be representing and trying to encourage people to look at the truth.”

Hundreds of Rutgers University students held a four-day Gaza solidarity encampment on the New Brunswick campus, dismantling the camp Thursday, May 2, 2024, after they said university administrators conceded to eight of their 10 demands. (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)

Hundreds of Rutgers University students held a four-day Gaza solidarity encampment on the New Brunswick campus, dismantling the camp Thursday, May 2, 2024, after they said university administrators conceded to eight of their 10 demands. (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)

Hundreds of Rutgers University students held a four-day Gaza solidarity encampment on the New Brunswick campus, dismantling the camp Thursday, May 2, 2024, after they said university administrators conceded to eight of their 10 demands. (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)

Rutgers University professors Todd Wolfson, president of the Rutgers AAUP-AFT, and Howie Swerdloff, secretary of the adjunct union of Rutgers-AAUP, celebrate the end of students' Gaza solidarity encampment. The students agreed to end their action after they said university administrators conceded to eight of their 10 demands. (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)

A Rutgers University police officer stands guard over the Gaza solidarity encampment students erected on the New Brunswick campus. Students dismantled the camp Thursday, May 2, 2024, after they said university administrators conceded to eight of their 10 demands. (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)

Hundreds of Rutgers University students held a four-day solidarity encampment on the New Brunswick campus, dismantling the camp Thursday, May 2, 2024, after they said university administrators conceded to eight of their 10 demands. (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)

Hundreds of Rutgers University students held a four-day solidarity encampment on the New Brunswick campus, dismantling the camp Thursday, May 2, 2024, after they said university administrators conceded to eight of their 10 demands. (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)

Hundreds of Rutgers University students held a four-day solidarity encampment on the New Brunswick campus, dismantling the camp Thursday, May 2, 2024, after they said university administrators conceded to eight of their 10 demands. (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)

Hundreds of Rutgers University students held a four-day Gaza solidarity encampment on the New Brunswick campus, dismantling the camp Thursday, May 2, 2024, after they said university administrators conceded to eight of their 10 demands. (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)

In his message to the university earlier Thursday, Holloway said the encampment’s early morning protests forced Rutgers to make the “unprecedented decision to postpone morning exams on the College Avenue Campus.”

“We value free speech and the right to protest, but it should not come at the cost of our students’ education and safety. We strive to balance these rights and maintain a safe and secure environment for our students to learn and succeed,” he said in the email.

The postponements affected 28 final exams scheduled for Thursday morning, impacting 1,000 students, Rutgers officials said.

The governor’s office declined to comment.

The New Brunswick encampment was at least the third in New Jersey, after students at Princeton University established a camp there last week. An encampment at Rutgers’ Newark campus remains ongoing.

Students across the country have set up such solidarity encampments and taken over campus buildings to push universities to divest from companies with ties to Israel. Some have turned tense, with more than 2,000 protestors arrested around the country.

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Rutgers students pitched tents near Scott Hall on the university's College Avenue campus on April 29, 2024. (Sophie Nieto-Munoz | New Jersey Monitor)

Hundreds of students pitched tents Monday on Rutgers University’s campus in New Brunswick, joining a nationwide movement of pro-Palestine solidarity camps that have sprung up at colleges in recent weeks amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. 

Dozens of neon green and white tents popped up on the College Avenue campus after a pro-Palestine rally that drew more than 1,000 students. They called for Rutgers to divest financial holdings linked to Israel, including its partnership with Tel Aviv University. The protests are organized by Students for Justice in Palestine Rutgers and the Endowment Justice Collective.

“It’s a very peaceful movement. It’s meant to educate and organize, but it’s also meant to disrupt, and we plan on disrupting this campus until we get a response from the administration and meet our demands,” said a student organizer, who declined to give his name out of fear of retaliation from university officials, pointing to arrests and discipline students have faced elsewhere. 

More than 40 pro-Palestinian encampments have cropped up on college campuses across America where student activists are urging universities to divest from Israel, showing their support for the Palestinian people, and demanding a cease-fire. Some have turned chaotic as police arrested hundreds of protestors at colleges clamping down on the encampments. 

Few police were on scene at Rutgers’ “Liberated Zone” Monday afternoon. Students were playing music, carrying food and water bottles from cars, studying for finals, and making signs for the encampment zone. People were still arriving as of 6 p.m. Monday to pitch tents. 

Student organizers said Rutgers administrators hadn’t approached them by late Monday afternoon, and emphasized they expect the encampment to remain peaceful. They said they would remain on the lawns of Voorhees Mall until Rutgers divests — even if it means staying after the semester ends in three weeks. 

Rutgers officials said University President Jonathan Holloway has no direct role in any Israel investments but has clearly stated his personal opposition to the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and reiterated his support for the partnership with Tel Aviv University. 

“Our students want to make a difference in a struggle that has cost far too many innocent lives and that threatens so many more. I respect their right to protest in ways that do not interfere with university operations or with the ability of their fellow students to learn,” Holloway said in a message to students Monday.

Rutgers University students set up a "liberated zone" on April 29, 2024, near the university's Scott Hall on the New Brunswick campus. (Sophie Nieto-Munoz | New Jersey Monitor)

Students launched an encampment at Rutgers University's New Brunswick campus Monday, April 29, 2024, calling on the university to cut all ties to Israel and divest from companies tied to the war. (Sophie Nieto-Munoz | New Jersey Monitor)

Signs held by students during the rally held Monday, April 29, 2024, at Rutgers University against the war in Gaza. (Sophie Nieto-Munoz | New Jersey Monitor)

Students launched an encampment at Rutgers University's New Brunswick campus Monday, April 29, 2024, calling on the university to cut all ties to Israel and divest from companies tied to the war. (Sophie Nieto-Munoz | New Jersey Monitor)

Students launched an encampment at Rutgers University's New Brunswick campus Monday, April 29, 2024, calling on the university to cut all ties to Israel and divest from companies tied to the war. (Sophie Nieto-Munoz | New Jersey Monitor)

Signs at Princeton University's sit-in to demand the school divest from Israel. (Amalie Hindash for New Jersey Monitor)

Signs at Princeton University's sit-in to demand the school divest from Israel. (Amalie Hindash for New Jersey Monitor)

This is at least the second encampment at New Jersey college campuses. Princeton University students erected tents early Thursday in McCosh Courtyard in the heart of the Ivy League school’s sprawling campus, but the encampment morphed into a teach-in and sit-in after two graduate students got arrested within minutes of its start. Students face being barred from campus if they disobey police orders after a warning, the Daily Princetonian reported.

Earlier this month, Rutgers students overwhelmingly voted in favor of Rutgers divesting from companies that do business with Israel and cutting ties to Tel Aviv University in a referendum conducted by the Rutgers University Student Assembly, the student governing body. Students also previously staged die-ins to call attention to the casualties in Gaza, where over 34,000 have died since the war started Oct. 7.

Todd Wolfson is the president of the Rutgers AAUP-AFT faculty union. He stressed the union’s support for students to exercise their rights to free speech and assembly. The union has not co-signed the list of demands and is not officially part of the encampment, but called for a cease-fire and urged university officials to refrain from suppressing students’ speech, Wolfson said. 

“New Jersey and Rutgers can lead this country and show how we do this — allow our students to speak, allow our students to make demands to the university and be a model. It does not have to follow … the model of beating up students who are trying to speak their mind,” Wolfson said.

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NIANTIC, CT - MAY 24: Prison inmates make one of their daily allotment of six phone calls at the York Community Reintegration Center on May 24, 2016 in Niantic, Connecticut. The center is part of the York Correctional Institution, which houses all of the state's more than 1,000 female inmates. The unit is designed to prepare prisoners for successful reintegration into society after serving out their sentences. Criminal justice and prison reforms are taking hold with bi-partisan support nationwide in an effort to reduce prison populations, while saving taxpayer money. The state's criminal justice reforms are part of Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy's 'Second Chance Society' legislation. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

For people in prison, phone calls can reduce feelings of isolation, improve behavior behind bars, and ensure a smoother return to society after they’re freed, research has shown.

Yet state Department of Corrections officials have yanked the phone privileges of thousands of incarcerated people as punishment for disciplinary infractions, sometimes for a year or even far longer, a state watchdog has found.

A 21-year-old man at South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton lost phone privileges for almost nine years, while a 32-year-old man at New Jersey State Prison in Trenton got denied phone access for nearly five years — sanctions that extended beyond his maximum prison release date.

Such practices deserve scrutiny and should be changed, state Corrections Ombudsperson Terry Schuster wrote in a report released Thursday.

“While the Department has broad discretion to utilize sanctions and incentives, the current practices may be experienced as another form of isolation, potentially undermining the goal of ensuring that people come out of prison with the community supports needed to succeed upon release,” Schuster wrote.

Officials revoked phone privileges of 2,475 people for 4,925 disciplinary infractions last year, impacting about 19% of the incarcerated population, researchers in Schuster’s office found. In 89 cases, people were barred from phone access for a full year, while another 475 people lost access for six months to a year, they found.

Most of such sanctions were unrelated to people’s behavior while on the telephone, and were imposed instead to punish assaultive behavior, refusal to follow orders, threats or weapons, drug possession, and other offenses, researchers found.

For family members who don’t hear from incarcerated loved ones without explanation, such sanctions feed anxiety, panic, and mistrust of the system, Schuster noted.

Schuster urged department officials to revise disciplinary policies to limit when and for how long phone privileges can be taken away and to notify incarcerated people’s loved ones when access is revoked.

He recommended that lawmakers act to limit punishments that remove phone access for people in prison.

Spokespeople from the Department of Corrections did not respond to a request for comment.

Phone calls were among the most popular ways for incarcerated people to keep in touch with loved ones, according to surveys Schuster’s office did with people incarcerated in four state prisons.

People imprisoned in the state system made about 10.4 million phone calls last year — averaging about two calls per person per day, with calls lasting an average of 10 minutes, according to the report. Calls cost 4 cents a minute.

Incarcerated people also made 11,000 video visits, wrote 3.3 million electronic messages via telecommunications provider JPay, created 300,000 short video grams, and sent hundreds of thousands of letters and photos, according to the report. Video visits cost $9.95 for 30 minutes, and email, 35 cents.

Researchers also examined in-person visits and found visits remained down 36% at the end of last year from prepandemic levels.

Correctional officials also revoke visiting privileges for misbehavior, with more than 1,300 people (10% of state prisons’ population) losing contact visits for at least a year as a zero-tolerance sanction for disciplinary violations in 2023, Schuster’s office found.

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(Illustration by Alex Cochran for New Jersey Monitor)

For two days, Morgan Neilio, incarcerated at the Camden County Correctional Facility, did not have toilet paper.

Neilio said she had to find other items to use in replacement, like pads or ripped-up shirts.

Jail policy says officials should have responded to her official complaint about the lack of toilet paper within 10 days — by Feb. 28, 2022. Instead, it took them five months. 

“It was extremely upsetting and degrading,” she said.

As recently as January 2024, White House officials praised the jail and its then-warden, Karen Taylor, for the facility’s medication-assisted treatment program to help incarcerated people conquer opioid addiction. 

But people imprisoned in Camden’s county lockup say conditions there are downright inhumane. They say there are often no recreational opportunities, they have limited access to social workers, meals are inadequate and unhealthy, and there is no access to alcohol and drug addiction recovery services — even as the majority of those incarcerated at Camden struggle with addiction.

Neilio and several other women incarcerated filed a lawsuit in federal court last year alleging that the jail, its warden, law librarian, and others have committed a “failed duty of care” that violates their constitutional rights.

“We all know that jails and prisons are not intended to be a trip to Disneyland,” said Racquel Romans-Henry, policy director for the racial justice group Salvation and Social Justice New Jersey. “But what we’re seeing at these facilities are a real dereliction of duty around the agencies who have been charged with custody, security, and wellness of the human beings.”

Camden County spokesman Dan Keashen said state inspection reports show Camden’s jail “is in compliance with all of the standards governing correctional facilities throughout the state.”

Keashen said jail logs show Neilio had toilet paper and supplies delivered to her within one day of her 2022 grievance, which he called “ficticious.”

Waiting long before trial

Neilio has been behind bars in Camden’s jail for almost four years awaiting her trial.

Seventy percent of people being held there have yet to have a trial, according to the most recent state inspection report — people the law considers innocent because a judge or jury hasn’t yet weighed their case.

Chanel Adams, a mother of seven, has been detained since July 2022, also in advance of her trial. 

“No one should have to be caged for 527 days. Like a f—king cow!” she said in a phone interview last year.

In 2017, then-Gov. Chris Christie signed a law intended to reduce pretrial detention, especially for people charged with minor, nonviolent offenses. Now, suspects must be deemed “a risk to community safety” by judges if prosecutors want to detain them before their trial. 

For Leslie McNair-Jackson, who heads the Camden County Office of the Public Defender, the new process makes it “a bit more difficult” for some people to be released before their trial.

McNair-Jackson said sometimes circumstances in a person’s case may change after they’ve been ordered detained before their trial, but judges are not always willing to reconsider their initial order of detainment. If a person isn’t released at their first court appearance, or their initial detention hearing isn’t successful, then they’re likely to remain behind bars until their trial, she said.

She said the criminal justice system across the country is “woefully underprepared” to deliver on the right to a speedy trial. Pretrial detention — especially when it drags on for months or years — can drive people to plead guilty just to get out of jail, she added.

Officials in the criminal justice system, she said, “expect that all the cases that are pending trial, some of those cases are actually going to plead.”

Inside the jail, Adams expressed a similar sentiment.

“They make you sit here long enough until you break, take a deal,” she said.

Audibly crying, Adams described the pain of missing each of her children’s birthdays since the beginning of her incarceration. 

“I don’t know who you’re supposed to ask for help in here,” she said.

Keashan said jail officials have no control over the length of time an individual is detained, adding that anyone being held for an extended period of time in the facility would be there because of a violent offense.

“That said, the criminal justice system, which includes the inmate, judge, prosecutor, defense attorney, own the responsibility for the length of stay at the CCCF,” he said.

Few resources behind bars

Those detained at Camden’s jail say resources behind bars are scarce.

Several incarcerated people told the New Jersey Monitor they were denied access to Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous. About a third of the charges brought against people in Camden County are related to drugs and drug paraphernalia, and jail officials say 67% of people who come through the jail struggle with addiction.

Acting Warden Rebecca Franceschini said in an email that upon intake, individuals are screened for substance use disorder. The jail has contracted with the Consortium, a local medical group, to provide care, she added.  

But Franceschini also confirmed the lack of Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous programs, saying those programs should start in mid-April. In an earlier email, she blamed the delays on the “logistics” for bringing in volunteers to run the program. 

Franceschini took over the jail after Taylor stepped down in January. 

Jail officials told the New Jersey Monitor that the lockup offers a high school equivalency degree program, art therapy, and occasionally, a book club. Before the pandemic led to limits on who could enter the jail, Camden had other programs, including tutoring, but Franceschini confirmed that tutoring remained suspended as of early April because the jail is “working through the financial logistics.”

“The CCCF provides some of the most comprehensive substance use/addiction services in the nation which includes these services during reentry and transitional housing when an inmate leaves the jail,” Keashen said. “As far as AA is concerned, it starts up again this week and was not available for a period of time based the COVID pandemic and a dearth of volunteers for this service.

Incarcerated people say they also don’t get the daily recreation time the state recommends.

Neilio filed two grievances about this issue, in July 2020 and July 2022. The first time, a corrections official replied that “time out of your cell is recreation time,” and noted that “we do make every effort to get you to inside or outside rec.” In the second grievance, she said residents of her floor hadn’t been outside in a month and went outside just five times total in the prior five months.

“They never take us,” Adams said. “They always tell you they don’t have the staff.”

Keashen said recreational and leisure opportunities are available to people incarcerated at the jail and consist of access to televisions, phone use, games, tablet use, and yoga outside of the living quarters.

“As the seasons change and the weather gets colder, inmates will refuse outdoor recreational opportunities during the winter months. Based on weather in general- specifically snow and rain outdoor recreation can only be provided indoors on certain days,” Keashen said.

County jail conditions — ‘hazardous even to a dog’ — spur calls for independent oversight

Staffing

The pandemic exacerbated staffing issues at many prisons across the country, and Camden was no exception. 

State Department of Corrections records show that correctional staff in Camden fell during the pandemic, and has recently bounced back. The total number of corrections officers at Camden decreased from 300 total officers in 2018 to 246 in 2020, state inspection reports show, then rose to 286 in 2022. Inspections also show that in 2021, the jail had just one social worker and one psychologist, but in 2022, that changed to two social workers and three psychologists.

Camden’s staffing issues are not unique. The Marshall Project said in a January report that prisons in almost every state are struggling to add staff. Franceschini didn’t respond to a question about how staffing changes have impacted jail operations.

“It’s a challenge at Camden County. They just don’t have the manpower. That’s what I’ll say,” said Chris Parry, co-director for compassionate outreach at St. Andrew the Apostle in Camden. Her group used to run Bible studies in the jail.

In March 2020, Parry said, she and other volunteers were told they couldn’t enter the jail because of COVID-19 restrictions. Between August and December 2021, women from the church ran virtual Bible studies over Zoom. Then the visits stopped.

“They said, we just don’t have the manpower here. We should be back after the New Year,” Parry recalled. But the virtual visits never resumed. 

Jail officials pointed to recent recruitment efforts on social media and at job fairs to fill correctional vacancies. 

“Not everyone wants to be a law enforcement officer these days,” Taylor said in an interview conducted before her retirement. “We have to be in the community — let people know what we have to offer, what we’re doing, how we help the community, the different programs.”

Taylor denied that staff shortages significantly impacted day-to-day jail operations.

“We make sure that we have the staff as necessary to operate the facility. At times, we have vacancies, but we minimize the impact by reallocating people to different positions,” she said. 

For Adams, who has been jailed for nearly two years before her trial, the women incarcerated at Camden’s jail “really just need someone to listen.” Neilio, in the lawsuit she filed against jail officials, quoted a 1975 decision from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals that found in favor of incarcerated people who sued over crowded conditions at two New York City jails.

“Correctional institutions must be more than mere depositories for human baggage and any deprivation or restriction of the detainees’ rights beyond those which are necessary for confinement alone must be justified by compelling necessity,” the ruling says.

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UNITED STATES - APRIL 28: Zahid N. Quraishi, nominee to be U.S. District Judge for the District of New Jersey, testifies during his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing in Dirksen Senate Office Building on April 28, 2021 in Washington, DC. Ketanji Brown Jackson, nominee to be U.S. Circuit Judge for the District of Columbia Circuit, and Candace Jackson-Akiwumi, nominee to be U.S. Circuit Judge for the Seventh Circuit, testified on the first panel. (Photo By Tom Williams-Pool/Getty Images)

A federal judge has granted Rep. Andy Kim’s request to bar the use of the county line in June’s primaries, finding weight to the congressman’s arguments that New Jersey’s unique ballot structure is unconstitutional.

The decision sent shockwaves through New Jersey political circles and is likely to reshape the state’s primaries. It may spell the end of the county line, a ballot design that experts say gives party-endorsed candidates an advantage at the polls and affords party leaders an outsized say in who wins their party’s nomination.

“Today’s decision is a victory for a fairer, more democratic politics in New Jersey,” said Kim, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in June. “It’s a victory built from the incredible grassroots work of activists across our state who saw an undemocratic system marginalizing the voices of voters and worked tirelessly to fix it.”

U.S. District Court Judge Zahid Quraishi’s order bars clerks from using grid ballots that support organizational lines or bracketing, or ballots that allow candidates to be tucked away alone in the far reaches of a ballot, commonly called ballot Siberia.

The order requires the use of office-block ballots, which group candidates by office sought. It also mandates clerks to conduct draws to determine ballot placements for every candidate, regardless of the office sought.

One of Kim’s attorneys, Yael Bromberg, celebrated on social media.

“WE DID IT! A PEOPLE’S VICTORY,” Bromberg wrote. “May this be a rebirth for democracy in NJ.”

The preliminary injunction does not end Kim’s case against the line.

Kim and his co-plaintiffs, congressional candidates Sarah Schoengood and Carolyn Rush, had argued the county line violates constitutional rights by requiring candidates to bracket to avoid being at a disadvantage on a primary day and, in some cases, bracketing candidates with their opponents.

They charged that the design violates the election clause of the U.S. Constitution because it is likely to affect the outcome of an election.

Kim, who is seeking the seat held by embattled Sen. Bob Menendez, lodged his suit after a group of Passaic County Democratic leaders awarded their county line to First Lady Tammy Murphy. At the time, Murphy was Kim’s chief rival for the Democratic nomination, but she withdrew from the race on Sunday.

As party conventions wore on, Kim largely won lines in counties that allowed all county committee members to vote to award their lines using secret ballots, while Murphy took lines in counties with more closed processes. In some cases, county chairs unilaterally awarded her their line, like in Hudson.

Democratic State Chairman LeRoy Jones, who is also Democratic chair in Essex County and endorsed Murphy, said the party would work to educate voters on office-block ballots.

“While the legal process likely will continue in this case and others, I am looking forward to moving past this important process-oriented discussion about ballot design and refocusing our work to make sure we beat Donald Trump in November,” Jones said.

Quraishi’s opinion acknowledges the enormity of his decision, which could upend the politics surrounding New Jersey’s primary elections and sap power from party leaders who sometimes resemble kingmakers.

“The integrity of the democratic process for a primary election is at stake and the remedy Plaintiffs are seeking is extraordinary,” the judge wrote. “Mandatory injunctive relief is reserved only for the most unusual cases. Plaintiffs’ burden on this Motion is therefore particularly heavy. Nevertheless, the Court finds, based on this record, that Plaintiffs have met their burden.”

John Carbone, an attorney representing clerks, reiterated concerns about the feasibility of a move to office-block ballots clerks raised throughout proceedings.

“With ballots required to be printed in one week and voting starting in 20 days, many County Clerks have significant concerns about the feasibility of compliance with the Court’s order. Counsel are evaluating their options to appeal,” Carbone said in a statement on behalf of the defendants.

Another attorney representing clerks asked Quraishi late Friday to stay the ruling in advance of an appeal to federal appeals court.

The judge rejected a series of motions filed by the clerks that sought to bar Kim’s expert witnesses from testifying on procedural grounds, with the judge citing relaxed rules for evidentiary hearings on preliminary injunctions.

A series of expert witnesses who told the court New Jersey’s existing ballot design confers advantages to candidates on the line and testified a move to office-block ballots was feasible were credible, the judge found.

Quraishi found another witness, printing house vendor David Passante, had low credibility. Passante testified that an order to move to office-block ballots would create chaos, but later acknowledged he could complete the task if asked by a clerk.

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Governor Murphy delivers remarks at the Islamic Society of Central NJ Iftar in South Brunswick on Friday, May 31st, 2019. Governor’s Office.

Gov. Phil Murphy called for a cease-fire in Gaza Wednesday, lamenting the tens of thousands killed and scores more at risk of starvation in a statement that one prominent Muslim critic called an “empty gesture of support.”

Murphy noted that the death toll continues to mount during this month of Ramadan, a holy time for Muslims, causing “deep pain and despair” in Palestinian, Arab American, and Muslim communities.

“Today, I am adding my voice in support of the Biden Administration’s efforts to secure an immediate and sustained ceasefire by all parties that includes the release of the remaining hostages being held by Hamas,” Murphy said in a statement. “Such an agreement will allow desperately needed humanitarian aid — food, water, medical supplies, and more — to flow into Gaza, saving potentially thousands of lives.”

The governor also called for the “dismantling” of Hamas and the release of hostages Hamas has held since attacking Israel in October.

“At this pivotal juncture, we must recognize that the current course of conflict is taking too great of a toll,” he said. “A ceasefire by all parties will end immediate hostilities, help pave the way for meaningful stability in the region, and set us on a path to a two-state solution, which will ensure long-term peace and security for Israelis, Palestinians, and the entire Middle East.”

The New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said they welcome any call for a cease-fire and appreciated the governor’s successful effort to bring home some Palestinian Americans from Gaza. But the group’s executive director, Selaedin Maksut, called Murphy’s statement an “empty gesture of support” because it comes “nearly six months and several thousand Palestinian bodies late.”

Israel’s campaign in Gaza has come under intense criticism, with critics accusing it of blocking humanitarian aid even as it bombs bakeries and other food infrastructure. Israel has blamed United Nations officials for delaying aid to the people in Gaza and Hamas for stealing supplies.

More than 32,000 Palestinians have died in Gaza, about two-thirds of them women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry. New Jersey’s Palestinian community has had nearly 3,000 family members killed, according to CAIR-NJ.

“While it is important and necessary to call for a ceasefire, it is no longer enough,” Maksut said. “Governor Murphy must do better to fight for justice for his American-Muslim constituency.”

Maksut also questioned Murphy’s motive, saying several Muslim and Palestinian groups have called for a boycott of the iftar — an evening meal after daily Ramadan fasting — the Murphy administration typically holds annually at Drumthwacket, the governor’s mansion. CAIR-NJ and more than 40 mosques and Muslim groups are participating in the boycott.

“The Governor’s words also deflect from the root cause of violence in Gaza and continues to play a role in the anti-Muslim bigotry we see by shifting blame,” Maksut said. “To call Israel’s war on Gaza a ‘humanitarian crisis’ is to erase history. This is not a natural disaster; it is a genocide with a government to hold accountable.”

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(Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

People incarcerated in New Jersey’s prisons had a rare reason to celebrate last year when Gov. Phil Murphy included $2.6 million in the state budget to pay them more for the work they do behind bars.

It would have been their first wage increase in more than two decades.

But nearly nine months into the current budget year, the state Department of Corrections has yet to pay out a dollar of those funds. If they don’t use it by June 30, they’ll lose it, because state funds unspent the year they’re allocated return to the general fund, a Treasury spokeswoman said.

Now, some incarcerated people are crying foul, and advocates are urging state officials to act.

“It’s crucial that they get that money out the door of the DOC and the governor’s office to the people it was promised to,” said Bonnie Kerness, coordinator of the American Friends Service Committee’s prison watch program. “The whole issue of reentry is very tied up with a person’s economics, and what they walk out of prison with. So any raise in state pay has very deep meaning.”

Department officials insist the raises will happen.

They’re now “evaluating all job categories and pay rates across facilities to determine wage increases that are fair and equitable for the thousands of incarcerated persons employed within the Department,” said Amy Z. Quinn, a department spokeswoman. She had no target date for when the raises would occur.

A spokeswoman for the governor’s office declined to comment.

People in prison are growing impatient. They make $1 to $7 a day for jobs ranging from food service and laundry workers to paralegals and clerks. That rate has been flat for at least two decades, even as inflation and commissary costs have soared.

One incarcerated man, who asked for anonymity for fear of retaliation by staff, wondered whether officials ever intend to give them the money.

“Even if one were to take their reasoning of ‘working on a new pay scale’ as truth, does it take over six months to do that, in this day and age of computers?” he asked the New Jersey Monitor.

Almost a year ago, department officials said in budget documents that the pay for prison jobs would increase between 25 cents and a dollar per day, depending on the job, with a larger bump or commissary stipend for positive behavior. Officials also tweaked departmental policy to require officials to review wage rates every two years to ensure they’re “appropriate” in comparison with commissary and communication costs.

It’s unclear why it’s taking the department so long to distribute the raises.

Kerness regards the poky pace as evidence of a worrying trend.

Beyond the promised pay raises, she pointed to the system’s entrenched resistance to the Isolated Confinement Restriction Act, a 2019 law that limits how long and under what conditions prisons and jails can hold someone in solitary confinement. A state watchdog found in a report released last fall that prisons routinely flout the law, with about 750 people held in isolation on any given day in New Jersey, often for minor infractions.

“These are things that have been passed legislatively or have been budgeted for that would benefit our imprisoned population that are not being paid attention to,” Kerness said.

Marleina Ubel, a policy analyst for progressive think tank New Jersey Policy Perspective, called prison wages “abysmal” and the department’s failure to implement raises “terrible.”

“We know that incarcerated people are already struggling to afford things like phone calls to their loved ones, emails with their loved ones. It costs them money to seek mental health care, medical services, all of that stuff. And it is so important that they’re able to make a fair wage, and right now they don’t,” Ubel said.

People used to have to pay $5 for a medical visit — that’s a week’s worth of wages for someone working one of the system’s lowest-paying jobs — although that charge was dropped during the pandemic and hasn’t yet been reinstated. Prisons do charge for some medications and other services.

And commissary costs have risen more than 10% since August 2022, further widening the gap between what incarcerated people earn and spend. The department, though, absorbed price markups made in January and February 2023 and again last month, instead of passing them along to the incarcerated population, Quinn said.

More than 11,000 people are incarcerated in the state’s nine adult prisons. Annual state spending on prison wages since 2018 has ranged from $9.2 million to $11.8 million as prison populations fluctuated, state budget documents show.

Beyond raising prison wages, lawmakers have proposed lowering costs in other ways for incarcerated people. A bill now before legislators would make calls and emails free for people in state prisons and county jails and their loved ones.

Bill sponsor Sen. Brian Stack (D-Hudson) noted in the legislation that the $1.4 billion prison telecommunications industry has been accused of price-gouging and profiteering off incarcerated people and their loved ones, and such calls can drive families into debt. Free calls and emails would ensure incarcerated people maintain a connection to their loved ones, which would help their reentry and reduce recidivism, the bill states.

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(Photo by New Jersey Monitor)

Documents from the state Attorney General’s Office show a program that pairs police with mental health professionals to respond to crisis calls resulted in few arrests and uses of force in two New Jersey counties.

The documents were released this month after the office fought the New Jersey Monitor and The Record of Bergen County in court for nine months to shield them from public view.

The program — Arrive Together, which stands for Alternative Responses to Reduce Instances of Violence and Escalation — partners a community-based mental health counselor or screener with a plainclothes police officer in an unmarked car during certain mental or behavioral health calls.

People in mental crisis or with untreated serious mental illness are likelier to interact with and be killed by police, with experts estimating at least a quarter of fatal police encounters involve people with mental illness. The Arrive Together program is intended to defuse such encounters, keep people out of the criminal justice system, and connect them with community services.

It launched in Cumberland County in December 2021 and is now operational in all 21 counties.

In his budget address last month, Gov. Phil Murphy announced he aims to spend another $9.5 million next year — nearly twice what’s now budgeted — to implement the program in more municipalities and expand the hours the teams operate. Crisis-response teams have reported more than 2,100 interactions since the program launched, according to a budget summary.

The Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit where Attorney General Matt Platkin once worked as a policy adviser, examined the program and issued a laudatory report last year. Researchers analyzed 342 calls in Cumberland and Union counties between the program’s launch and mid-January 2023 and concluded the program “shows much promise and should be expanded and examined across the country.”

Platkin’s office initially denied the New Jersey Monitor’s requests for the records Brookings based its study on, but a judge last month ruled they must be released, allowing redactions to protect the privacy of people the program has served.

A call log from Union County listed 626 calls made in 2022, with brief, misspelling-riddled descriptions for less than a third of those calls.

Another document contained narratives from 82 cases, where callers reported a hodgepodge of concerns. Mental illness, substance use, and domestic disputes were common threads in many of those cases.

Multiple calls arose from suicidal juveniles, people with dementia, people experiencing homelessness, missing people, neighbor disputes, nonviolent activity like shoplifting and panhandling, military veterans, and people with workplace and child custody frustrations.

Of the 82 cases, two cases resulted in uses of force, the reports show. In one, the crisis-response team used force to end “a struggle” and handcuff a suicidal juvenile who refused to get in an ambulance to go for a full crisis evaluation. In the other, an officer and screener responded to a report of a disorderly person at a school basketball game; the woman “became irate” during their psychological evaluation, expressed suicidal thoughts, and bit the knee of a trooper trying to handcuff her for medical transport.

Six cases resulted in arrest, half for outstanding warrants, one for shoplifting, and one for assault of a family member. A reason for the sixth arrest was not provided.

Crisis response teams more often interacted with people during proactive outreach and follow-up visits, rather than actual 911 calls, records showed.

In most cases, the teams provided information to connect people with community-based services or left after determining the people posed no danger to themselves or others. They also often ordered transport to hospitals for people in psychiatric crisis or sick from drug use. They responded mostly to homes, but also to group homes, nursing homes, Wawas, schools, motels, a mall, a gas station, and a bus stop.

There were also some unusual calls, like a team dispatched to check on someone who sent multiple letters to Rowan University. “Individual said he was exercising his First Amendment right and did not mean to cause alarm. No further action taken,” the narrative notes.

The documents show the interactions also had some unexpected outcomes.

In one case, a call for a welfare check on a woman with anxiety ended with the trooper picking up her new cell phone from the post office and fixing a broken toilet and the screener setting up her new phone.

Another call ended with the subject, who had previously interacted with the crisis-response team, writing the screener a poem.

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