Sunday, June 17, 2012
Halfway to where
One of the new business models in the Prison-For Hire business is the halfway house.
After decades of tough criminal justice policies, states have been grappling with crowded prisons that are straining budgets. In response to those pressures, New Jersey has become a leader in a national movement to save money by diverting inmates to a new kind of privately run halfway house.Just like a real prison but without the security. The savings from that lack must be very large if Gov. Doublewide is involved in this.
At the heart of the system is a company with deep connections to politicians of both parties, most notably Gov. Chris Christie.
Many of these halfway houses are as big as prisons, with several hundred beds, and bear little resemblance to the neighborhood halfway houses of the past, where small groups of low-level offenders were sent to straighten up.
New Jersey officials have called these large facilities an innovative example of privatization and have promoted the approach all the way to the Obama White House.
Yet with little oversight, the state’s halfway houses have mutated into a shadow corrections network, where drugs, gang activity and violence, including sexual assaults, often go unchecked, according to a 10-month investigation by The New York Times.
Perhaps the most unsettling sign of the chaos within is inmates’ ease in getting out.
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