Vacancies, diminished duties of prison oversight boards spur demands for change

An advocacy group that recently found New Jersey prisons routinely flout restrictions on solitary confinement recommended a reasonable reform — more oversight, with every facility getting its own independent board of trustees to address its unique needs.

What many reformers don’t know is that the state’s prisons already have civilian boards of trustees tasked with such oversight.

Yet the boards — one for the women’s prison and one for eight men’s prisons — have multiple longstanding vacancies that critics say have undercut their watchdog role. And the men’s board has had its duties pared down so much and become so inactive that even one of its own members questioned his place on it.

“We’ve never been really reappointed,” said William T. Curry, who was first added to the board in 2015. “Some of us get a little bit nervous that, you know, your term is expired and you’re making decisions on stuff like, ‘Am I really a board member anymore? Do I really have jurisdiction over this?’”

Now, reformers and formerly incarcerated people are demanding action, saying the vacancies and diminished role of the men’s prisons’ board indicate a systemic indifference and contribute to entrenched problems behind bars.

Dameon Marquese Stackhouse, a justice fellow at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, said he had no idea how anemic prison oversight was when he was incarcerated.

“Given all of the unacceptable problems in New Jersey’s prisons, which I know well from first-hand experience, this is extremely disturbing and should be addressed immediately,” said Stackhouse, who was freed in 2016 after a decade in prison.

The Rev. J. Amos Caley is an organizer with New Jersey Prison Justice Watch and pastor at the Reformed Church of Highland Park. In an October report, his group urged the state Department of Corrections to create boards of trustees at every state prison, given their unique needs.

Tasking a single, short-handed board with overseeing eight prisons scattered across the state “smells like window-dressing to me,” Caley said.

“It’s a joke,” he said. “It isn’t enough to have one oversight board over all of the men’s prisons.”

A man incarcerated at the Adult Diagnostic and Treatment Center in Avenel sued over the issue in 2021, saying the state was breaking the law by not appointing trustees nor having a separate board for his prison, which incarcerates sex offenders. But an appellate panel tossed the case, writing: “Unfortunately, we cannot compel the DOC to appoint trustees.”

Larry Hamm, founder of the People’s Organization for Progress, has long called for civilian oversight of police and other criminal justice systems. He said the vacancies should be filled immediately.

“Civilian oversight of prisons is very important, particularly since New Jersey has one of the largest prison populations, and particularly since (more than) 70% of the state’s prison population are Black and Latino,” Hamm said. “The enforcement and fair application of justice is essential for democracy and when you don’t have proper oversight, it inevitably leads to unfairness and injustice.”

A spokesman for the state Department of Corrections did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The department has not complied with the New Jersey Monitor’s public records requests for the boards’ meeting agendas, minutes, and decisions.

Each board should have seven members, who get appointed by the governor for three-year terms. But the positions are unpaid, which can fuel departures, observers say. The board at Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in Clinton, where almost 400 women are incarcerated, has three vacancies, while the board that oversees men’s prisons, where more than 11,000 men are serving time, is short four trustees, according to board membership lists the New Jersey Monitor obtained through public records requests.

The last appointments to the men’s prisons’ board were made in 2017, when former Gov. Chris Christie appointed one new trustee and reappointed four more. Gov Phil Murphy has made more than 1,800 direct appointments during his nearly seven years in office, including naming seven trustees in 2022 and another in 2023 for the women’s prison. He has made no appointments to the men’s board.

A Murphy spokeswoman declined to comment.

A long history, a diminished role

The New Jersey State Prison Complex board of trustees has been around for decades. Newspaper articles from the 1980s and 1990s show the board doing everything from confirming new prison administrators to weighing in on prison construction and vocational programs.

The 1971 state law that outlines the powers and duties of the boards directs them to “advance long-range planning for the medical care, correctional and training programs at their respective institutions; and maintain general oversight of the institution.” It also lists 15 things trustees are authorized to do, including visiting institutions to scrutinize operations in person, advising officials on budget requests, and reviewing and offering recommendations on parole requests.

Curry said the board overseeing the men’s prisons does just one of the 15 tasks the law charges them to do — determining how to spend inmate welfare funds, which includes money from commissary sales, charitable donations, and inmate trust fund investments.

“You have money that’s being generated that somebody needs to oversee and make sure it’s being used properly and advocate for its where it’s supposed to go,” Curry said.

Such decision-making “has tremendous value,” Curry said. Still, he agreed, the board’s role is ripe for reexamination.

“I just think it needs time to dust off the old cobwebs and really look at it in a different lens, different light now, and formalize it, update it, you know?” Curry said.

The board’s work now, he added, “is not a heavy lift of a job.”

He couldn’t recall when or how many times the board met, guessing “seven or eight, nine times” in the last three years.

Edna’s board, on the other hand, is busier — at least since it was charged with overseeing conditions after an abuse scandal there, trustee Bonnie Kerness said.

Kerness, who’s also coordinator of the American Friends Service Committee’s prison watch program, said Edna’s trustees meet and visit the prison on a monthly basis.

She said the board largely does everything the 1971 law tasks it with doing, except reviewing parole requests. Among its successes are persuading officials to reduce strip searches and audit medical services, pushing for changes after a transgender policy adopted in 2021 led to increased assaults at Edna, and pressing the department last year to appeal the reappointment of an officer fired for sexual misconduct. The state Supreme Court in July backed the dismissal.

“It really is effective,” Kerness said of the board’s oversight.

She said she has recommended to corrections officials candidates she thinks should fill board vacancies and hopes to see new appointments early next year — though she doesn’t think being short members has hampered the board’s work.

“As long as we can get on campus and talk to the women, and those messages are being carried into our agenda at the board of trustees meetings, it doesn’t make any difference whether there’s two of us on campus or seven of us on campus,” she said.

A legal mandate? 

Caley, though, does find the vacancies concerning, as well as board members’ backgrounds and the public’s lack of awareness about what they do.

The boards should include formerly incarcerated people, reformers, and other stakeholders — “and not just sycophants that say, ‘Hey, all’s ship-shape, great, good job!’” Caley said.

Al-Tariq Witcher, who has served time in New Jersey and now runs a reentry group, echoed that sentiment, saying trustees should not be “handpicked by politicians or special interests.” He recently recommended candidates to corrections officials for the men’s board, he added.

Edna’s current trustees are Kerness; Kathleen Witcher, a former NAACP president in Irvington (and Al-Tariq Witcher’s aunt); Johanna Foster, a sociology professor at Monmouth University; and La’Nae Grant, a social worker and transgender activist.

The three active members of the men’s board are public employees in corrections and human resources. Curry worked in juvenile and adult corrections and parole and now is director of Burlington City’s public works department; Ronald L. Charles now heads Essex County’s department of corrections after almost 40 years in county corrections in Essex and Union counties; and D. Craig Stevens has worked in human resources in the public sector.

Critics attributed board vacancies and the diminished role of men’s board to pandemic disruptions, the shifting priorities of new state officials who replace old ones, widespread vacancies on state boards and commissions in general, and the 2022 appointment of a corrections ombudsperson, who is also tasked with prison oversight.

Still, the ombudsperson’s office has more work than they can handle, said Caley, who serves on an advisory board for that office. And the successes of Edna’s board show what good oversight can do, he added.

“We think that they’re capable of doing that with every facility,” Caley said.

To Hamm, officials are not only capable of ensuring robust oversight — they’re legally required to do so.

“These are legally constituted bodies that require a certain number of members, and so it’s a deficiency if the seats are not filled now,” Hamm said.