Breaking News - Juvenile Injustice is on the Rise

Two recent suicides at the New Jersey State Prison have led to renewed questions over whether the state Department of Corrections is following the three-year old law that limits the time inmates can be held in what used to be called solitary confinement.
A 36-year-old man, said to be suffering from mental illness, died by suicide last month, according to sources familiar with the corrections system who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Academic research indicates that inmates with mental illness should not be kept in isolated confinement for more than the briefest of time because doing so would exacerbate suicidal thoughts. The inmate who died by suicide had been in isolated confinement for almost two years, sources said.
The Isolated Confinement Restriction Act requires that people in these housing units get to leave their cells for at least four hours a day. But both a report from the Office of the Corrections Ombudsperson and more recent research by New Jersey Prison Justice Watch found that isn’t happening in New Jersey State Prison in Trenton and at least one other prison, South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton.
“It’s more than tragic, it’s unconscionable,” the Rev. J. Amos Caley, an organizer at New Jersey Prison Justice Watch, said of the man’s suicide.
What’s supposed to happen
“The spirit of the law was very clear,” said Caley, who worked to pass the law restricting confinements. “We defined it by its features in the bill, saying any time you use prolonged isolation in any space of your correctional facility, that has to be restricted to the most extreme examples and should never be used in a way that jeopardizes the health and safety of those who are living and working in the prisons.”
Corrections officials said they were still investigating the suicides and could not provide more information.
The inmate who died in January “told me on numerous occasions that the isolation was messing with his head,” Dyshon Ragland, currently incarcerated at the same prison, wrote in an email to NJ Spotlight News.
Isolated confinement in NJ prisons
The number of people housed in units considered isolated confinement by the state Department of Corrections, and incidents in those units, by quarter, since the Isolated Confinement Restriction Act took effect. The numbers for the second quarter of 2022 are the most current availableRather than four hours a day, Ragland and others at the prison say they are getting less than an hour a day out of their cells. Caley, associate pastor of the Reformed Church of Highland Park, said it can be as little as 15 minutes and sometimes the men must choose from a shower, a phone call or “going outside to a cage.” New Jersey State Prison is one of the oldest prisons in the nation with its original section that no longer houses individuals dating to 1798. It has an outdoor recreation area fully enclosed within bars.
The official stance
Daniel Sperrazza, a corrections department spokesman, said the state is doing its best to follow the law and give people the required out-of-cell time and created a committee 19 months ago that reviews compliance with and implementation of the law.
Details about the other suicide are unknown. Terry Schuster, the state’s corrections ombudsman, said both occurred in the last several months and both were of individuals held in restorative housing units, a form of isolated confinement used as a disciplinary measure, at New Jersey State Prison. He said he did not have “enough information to say what events, conditions and stressors may have led to their suicidal behavior.”Five people committed suicide while in custody inside state prisons in 2023, following two years in which there were no suicides, according to Sperrazza.
Four of the five occurred in nondisciplinary housing, and the fifth was in a restorative housing unit. There were 53 suicides in New Jersey prisons from 2001 through 2019 and the state’s rate of 12 per 100,000 prisoners was among the lowest in the nation, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Quarterly reports required by law limiting confinement show that between July 1, 2020 and June 30, 2022, the most recent data available, there were no suicides in housing units governed by the law.
What efforts are taken to prevent suicide?
The department takes many steps to try to prevent suicide, Sperrazza said. Its health care provider identifies people with physical and mental illnesses and provides care on an individualized basis. All inmates are screened for serious mental health conditions and appropriateness before being placed in disciplinary housing.
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