Exploiting NJ Prisoners For Profit Must End: Essex Freeholders – Caldwells, NJ Patch

ESSEX COUNTY, NJ — Prisons have their place in society. But that doesn’t mean they have the right to turn human beings into free labor for private corporations, the Essex County Board of Chosen Freeholders says.

Last week, the freeholders passed a nonbinding resolution in favor of eliminating private, for-profit prisons in New Jersey. The symbolic legislation cites the “punishment clause” of the 13th Amendment, which ended slavery in the United States.

The resolution calls on Gov. Phil Murphy and the state Legislature to “stop delegating New Jersey’s police powers” and cut ties with private prisons that house inmates purely for profit, without helping them to reenter their communities.

“We certainly appreciate the need to have secure facilities that house members of society who are dangerous and have run afoul of the law,” said Freeholder Vice President Wayne Richardson, who helped to spearhead last week’s resolution.

“However, by adopting this resolution, the board states its opposition to the further construction, maintenance and use of facilities that prioritize profit at the expense of rehabilitation,” Richardson said.

Freeholder President Brendan Gill said it’s important to remember that inmates held in the prison system deserve treatment and rehabilitation while paying their debt to society.

“This resolution expresses the board’s position that the private for-profit prisons across the state, who do not provide rehabilitative services, should be eliminated,” Gill said. “I am pleased the board spoke with one voice in adopting this resolution.”

According to a joint statement from the freeholders:

“The resolution does not advocate for the elimination of the prison system. Conversely, it recognizes the utilization of private prisons to simply house inmates, without providing concurrent treatment or reintegration services, runs contrary to the spirit and intent of our criminal justice system.”

The freeholders continued:

“In just a few decades since its inception, the private for-profit prison system has become a billion-dollar market through the use of prison labor to contribute to their overall profits. Many of these prisons, however, do not provide valuable reentry, drug rehabilitation, and mental health services, which benefit both the inmates and the community at large.”

PRISON PROFIT IN ESSEX COUNTY

Essex County officials have faced their own accusations of prison profiteering in the recent past.

The county has been home to several prisons and private corporations that run them, including West Caldwell-based Community Education Centers Inc. (CEC), which reportedly had ties to former Gov. Chris Christie.

GEO Group Inc., one of the world’s largest for-profit prison corporations, acquired CEC in 2017.

Local prisons also include the Essex County Correctional Facility (ECCF) in Newark, which has been a long-running target of local civil rights advocates and families of inmates.

The county has been contracting with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to house undocumented immigrants awaiting deportation at the prison since 2011. It makes an estimated $15 to $20 million in profit from a contract that was expected to create more than $42 million in revenue last year, advocates say.

Family members and advocates have been relentlessly protesting for years to get ICE detainees released at the ECCF. Many of them have demanded that the county completely nix its federal contract to house detainees at the prison, calling it “blood money.”

Activists’ efforts have shifted into high gear over the past few months as COVID-19 continues to spread throughout prisons in New Jersey, including the ECCF.

But according to the freeholders, although they’re sympathetic to protesters’ demands regarding COVID-19 threats, the board doesn’t have the power to release ICE detainees – only the feds do.

“Although detainees are held in the ECCF while awaiting immigration proceedings, by law they are in the federal custody of ICE and can only be released if the DHS or ICE grants their release, or if an order for their release is issued by a federal judge,” the freeholders wrote in a joint statement in June.

While releasing prisoners may be out of their jurisdiction, county officials have been responding to the ongoing protests in recent years, making several changes to benefit inmates at the ECCF.

In July, the freeholder board approved a resolution opposing the transfer of ICE detainees to facilities in different states around the country.

“Many of the detainees in ICE custody are contributing neighbors to our communities who are being held without having committed a crime,” Gill stated. “Transferring them away to another state makes it more difficult for them to contest their immigration status in a court of law, and it will also contribute to the spread of the virus if they are transferred to facilities who do not have established testing and quarantining procedures for their inmate population.”

Last year, Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo Jr. and the freeholders said they planned to use a portion of the profits from the ICE contract at ECCF to hire free lawyers for undocumented detainees who can’t afford them.

The freeholder board recently passed a resolution increasing the county’s funding for the legal defense of undocumented detainees held in the ECCF to $900,000 per year.

The county has also launched a civilian task force that will help provide oversight at the ECCF, which has seen allegations of severe prisoner health and safety risks.

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