The New Jersey Institute for Social Justice is leading a campaign to close the New Jersey Training School for Boys, the largest youth detention facility in the state that is also known as Jamesburg.
The New Jersey Training School for Boys (NJTS) turns 150 years old Wednedsday, marking the day it opened to house troubled youth.
That is one birthday too many for the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice (NJISJ), a nonprofit Newark-based organization focused on economic mobility, criminal justice reform and civic engagement in urban communities.
Led by its executive director, Ryan Haygood, the organization believes rehabilitating young offenders for 150 years has not worked because too many of them -- disproportionately 90 percent black and Latino -- return to the facility within three years of release.
"We know that the way we do youth incarceration is failing our young people,'' Haygood said. "You see these kids come back home and they are far worse than before.''
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For instance, of approximately 500 young people released from state youth facilities in 2012, 80 percent had a new court filing/arrest; 68 percent had a new adjudication/conviction; and nearly 33 percent were recommitted within three years of release, according to a 2012 report on recidivism from the state Department of Corrections.
The answer to this staggering revelation is simple for NJISJ, which has joined forces with the Youth Justice New Jersey coalition of 40 organizations across the state to confront this issue.
They want the Monroe Township facility, also known as Jamesburg, to be shut down. The demand also applies to the female detention center: Juvenile Female Secure Care and Intake Facility (also known as Hayes) in Bordentown.
At noon Wednesday, NJISJ and the coalition will hold a rally outside the boy's facility and call for both youth detention centers to be shuttered and replaced with a community-based system of care.
The new system, which would have to be approved by the Legislature or the next governor, calls for smaller facilities to be developed and operated by the Juvenile Justice Commission. That state agency oversees Hayes and Jamesburg, the largest juvenile detention center in the state with 261 offenders.
Under the NJISJ proposal, the facilities would be located closer to many of the urban communities where most of the young people are from, which include Essex, Camden, Mercer and Passaic counties.
The new system, according to NJISJ officials, would continue to operate secure facilities for juveniles charged with serious offenses, but also include residential programs for non-violent offenders. Both programs would offer intensive wraparound services, such as counseling, mental health treatment, and educational services they believe young people need to increase their chances of staying out of detention.
Last week, Haygood sought the support of a Newark clergy alliance group, in anticipation of opposition from unions that represent workers at the facilities.
One of three unions, Communications Workers of America 1040, at NJTS has already met with Haygood and expressed opposition.
CWA President Carolyn Wade said Haygood's agenda is nothing more than an attempt at privatization that would replace her workers, a claim he said is not true. Haygood said his plan calls for the smaller secured facilities to be run by the Juvenile Justice Commission, which is already in charge.
Wade, however, believes the concept is short on details and an insult to the 100 employees that CWA represents at the facility. They are clerical employees, supervisors and certified teachers who have specialized training to deal with a criminal population that Wade said couldn't make it in society.
"There is a reason for a jail," she said. "It's to rehabilitate them and put them back into the community, but some of them will not be rehabilitated.''
Haygood disagrees. "There are no throwaway kids," he says. "All kids can be saved."
Kevin Brown, executive director of the state Juvenile Justice Commission, sees things differently. He said his agency runs successful programs that help young offenders. Most are over age 18 and have histories of serious delinquency, mental health, substance abuse and educational issues.
Over the years, Brown said, juvenile justice reform in New Jersey has brought about a "drastic reduction'' in the number of young people placed in secure detention and the number of youth sent to state facilities.
Since 2004, JJC said it has worked hard to implement the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI), a program of the Annie E. Casey Foundation that focused on decreasing the number of youth detained before trial.
As result, the foundation selected New Jersey in 2004 as a model for other states to follow for its effective use of JDAI. In 2015, a JDAI report showed that the average daily population in detention centers decreased by 65.1 percent. The reduction meant that 536 fewer youth were held in secure detention on any given day, with youth of color making up 89.4 percent of the drop.
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"We are very proud of our progress transforming New Jersey's juvenile system and the national recognition our efforts have brought us," Brown said.
But Retha Onitiri, the juvenile justice campaign manager for NJISJ, said the current system is far from adequate, considering the youth recidivism problem that is compounded by striking racial disparities.
Of the 261 young males incarcerated as of last Friday, statistics from the Juvenile Justice Commission show that 193 are African-American, 48 are Hispanic and 18 are white, one Asian and one other.
Of the 13 females held at Hayes, nine are African-African, two are Hispanic and two are white.
Onitiri said something is wrong with this picture, because research shows that black, Hispanic and white kids commit crime at about the same rate.
"Our kids are filtered into the system and white kids are not,'' said Onitiri, referring to a NJSIJ report.
For example, the report says that racial disparities persist even though juvenile incarceration rates have declined by 53 percent in the last 10 years.
"Black kids are 24.3 times more likely to be committed to a secure juvenile facility than their white counterparts,'' the report said.
When minority youth become adults, they continue to bear the brunt of their juvenile mistakes, said Erich Kussman, 37, of Springfield.
The second-year divinity student at Princeton Theological Seminary said a drug possession charge, for which he served six months at Jamesburg when he was 15 years old, still shows up when he applies for scholarships and grants for college.
"One of the biggest myths is that because they're juveniles people think that their criminal record is not going to affect them,'' said Kussman, who later served 10 years on an armed robbery charge.
He'll be one of several speakers at Wednesday's rally, calling for Jamesburg to be closed. So will Rev. Charles Boyer of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Woodbury.
"We know the right thing to do here,'' Boyer said. "We're willing to find collaborative ways forward, but we're not willing to comprise the fact that this must be changed.''
Barry Carter: (973) 836-4925 or bcarter@starledger.com or
nj.com/carter or follow him on Twitter @BarryCarterSL
A Newark Fire Division truck was involved in a crash in the city June 24, 2017 (Photo courtesy of JOSEPH JOHN RAMOS/twitter.com/THEMAJESTIRIUM1)
