Camden County Jail Pursuing Alternatives for Nonviolent Offenders

The Camden County Jail is pursuing a portion of a new $75 million grant by creating new alternatives to imprisoning low level nonviolent offenders.

The jail seeks to become one of 20 facilities nationwide to share in the MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Grant.

The MacArthur Foundation is sponsoring a competition to design and implement plans for creating a fairer, more effective local justice system using innovative, collaborative, and evidence-based solutions.

“The jail and our law enforcement partners will apply for the grant in collaboration with the prosecutor, the courts, local law enforcement and the public defender’s office,” Camden County Freeholder Michelle Gentek, liaison to the Camden County Correctional Facility, said. “The Freeholder Board has continually explored alternatives to incarceration to reduce the facility population, and supports the efforts of the warden and our law enforcement partners to consider further options.”

Previously, the Freeholder Board, in cooperation with the courts, created the home electronic detention program (monitoring bracelets) for non-violent offenders.

The bracelets allows those in the program to be contributing members of society without having taxpayers fund housing and food for inmates. According to the Freeholder Board, implementation of the bracelets has helped avoid even short periods of incarceration.

Additionally, Camden County was the first court system to implement drug court giving low level offenders with addiction the guidance to get help and stay out of the jail.

The MacArthur Foundation hopes its five-year, multi-million dollar investment will reduce over-incarceration by changing the way America thinks about and uses jails.

The goal of the Safety and Justice Challenge is to support cities and counties across the country seeking to create fairer, more effective local justice systems that improve public safety, save taxpayer money, and lead to better social outcomes.

“This challenge grant will also provide us with the ability to continue to work on the important tenets of our operation by being able to reduce recidivism through reintegrating current inmates back into society,” Gentek said. “This grant will provide our team with the technical assistance to implement innovative operations and expand current practices of making the justice system more effective for the public.”

According to a National Institute for Justice study of more than 400,000 inmates in 30 states, almost 57 percent of the study population was rearrested in one year after their release from a correctional facility.

Furthermore, over the course of three years almost two-thirds of prisoners were rearrested at 67 percent.

Jail populations have more than tripled since the 1980s, as have cumulative expenditures related to building and running them, according to the MacArthur Foundation.

The MacArthur Foundation is one of the nation’s largest independent foundations, according to its website. It seeks to strengthen institutions, improve public policy and provide information to the public.