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Bayside State Prison
Cumberland, New Jersey
Correctional Medical Services
May 13, 2004
A New Jersey inmate infected with potentially deadly hepatitis C has filed a federal lawsuit against the state Corrections Department and its medical contractor, contending that his disease was left untreated for a decade after it was detected.  The suit by Jose Lopez, 49, an inmate at Bayside State Prison in Leesburg, Cumberland County, is the latest to allege that New Jersey neither treated inmates for the liver disease nor told them that tests had found they were infected.  Lopez, whose family lives in Lindenwold, was one of 421 inmates notified 
in July 2002 that they were infected with the hepatitis C virus. The state's mass notification came in response to an Inquirer investigation of its handling of the disease, which can destroy the liver.  "The conduct of prison officials and medical providers was outrageous. Not to inform Mr. Lopez of a life-threatening disease is tantamount to watching a person having a heart attack and sit idly by," said Lopez's Philadelphia lawyer, Mark B. Frost, who filed the suit Friday in Camden.  The Department of Corrections declined to comment on the lawsuit. A spokesman for the department's medical contractor, the St. Louis-based Correctional Medical Services Inc., said he had not reviewed the lawsuit and could not immediately comment.  Lopez, a career criminal who has been in prison since 1983, tested positive for the hepatitis virus in 1992, the suit said. By the time he was notified 10 years later, it said, his health had seriously deteriorated.  He has since developed bleeding ulcers, a sign of liver cirrhosis caused by hepatitis C, medical records show.  In addition to Lopez, several other current and former New Jersey prisoners have sued the Department of Corrections and Correctional Medical Services - the largest prison health company in the nation.  (Times Leader)

Camden County Jail
Camden, New Jersey
Prison Health Services
April 29, 2004
The family of a Cherry Hill man killed in Camden County Jail filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday, charging county correctional officials with "reckless and deliberate indifference" in his death.  The suit charges that Joel Seidel's constitutional rights to medical care, due process and to be free from cruel and unusual punishment were violated while the former stockbroker was in custody.  The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court on behalf of Seidel's daughters, Sharon Clark and Devra Seidel, co-administrators of his estate.  "This tragedy was preventable and we intend to prove that the reckless and deliberate indifference of the prison guards and officials led to the death of Mr. Seidel," said Tom Kline, of Kline & Specter of Cherry Hill, attorney for the Seidel daughters.  County officials had not been served with the lawsuit late Wednesday and because of that were unable to comment, according to a spokesman.  The suit alleges "negligent, reckless, intentional, wrongful, deliberately indifferent and unlawful conduct" on the part of prison officials.  The suit cites overcrowding at the prison in general and the failure to move Seidel to a hospital, psychiatric facility or his own cell and failure to provide adequate observation.  The suit names as defendants the Camden County Jail, Camden County Department of Corrections and Camden County; and Prison Health Services Inc. and Steininger Behavioral Care Services, both of which had contracts to provide services to inmates.  (Courier-Post)

Community Education Centers
Roseland, New Jersey
May 21, 2007 New York Times
A company based in New Jersey that provides training and treatment programs to prison inmates is announcing today that it has bought a similar Massachusetts company, creating one of the largest correctional services companies in the country. The two companies — Community Education Centers of Roseland, N.J., and CiviGenics of Marlborough, Mass. — are trying to capitalize on the growing number of inmates and tight financing for new prisons that have led federal, state and local governments to contract out more of their operations to private businesses. States have also addressed the shortage of prison space by trying to reduce recidivism with more training and treatment programs for inmates. About 70 percent of those released from prison return within three years, according to some studies. “There’s a tremendous focus on the re-entry of inmates,” said John J. Clancy, chief executive of Community Education Centers. “If people are going to continue to get out of prison, the question is how they get out.” The two privately held companies, which together are expected to employ about 3,500 people in 22 states and have close to $240 million in revenue next year, did not disclose the financial terms of the agreement. However, people with knowledge of the transaction said Community Education Centers paid more than $100 million for CiviGenics.

Elizabeth Detention Center
Elizabeth, New Jersey
CCA (formerly run by Correctional Services Corporation, bought by GEO Group)
June 22, 2008 The Record
Immigration advocates on Thursday denounced the immigrant detention system as inhumane and expressed support for a proposed bill that aims to improve medical care for detainees. Standing across the street from the Elizabeth Detention Center, a converted warehouse in Elizabeth that holds some 300 non-criminal detainees, the advocates cited recent published reports that said more than 60 people have died in recent years while in the custody of immigration officials. "The lack of federal immigration reform has contributed to the death of these detainees," said Shai Goldstein, executive director of the New Jersey Immigration Policy Network. "That is unacceptable and un-American." The group of a couple dozen advocates, about half of whom were clergy, said they wanted to draw attention to legislation introduced by Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., that establishes procedures for medical services to immigrant detainees. Describing the medical care at immigrant detention centers as a haphazard one that has denied detainees adequate — and even lifesaving — medication, Menendez says the Detainee Basic Medical Care Act would ensure that detention would "never amount to a death sentence." Officials of the Newark office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which oversees the center, declined comment on the accusations about medical care, citing pending litigation. But, ICE spokesman Harold Ort said: "ICE meets the highest standards of law enforcement." At one point during the press conference, two employees of Corrections Corporation of America, the private contractor that operates the center, walked toward the group and asked questions of some people, including reporters, including their names and the advocates' purpose. One of the employees, a man whose name tag said "Dickerson," jotted down notes while looking at the group. CCA later confirmed that T. Dickerson is the center's assistant warden. "Is that Jim McGreevey?" asked the other employee, a woman. Dickerson looked at McGreevey, then scribbled in his notebook. James McGreevey, the former governor and current student at an Episcopal seminary in New York, said only that he was there as a parishioner of All Saints Episcopal Parish in Hoboken, with All Saints' pastor, Jeff Curtis. Later, the advocates assailed the CCA employees, saying their presence was meant to intimidate.Several advocates said they visit the detainees in the center and have heard and seen some troubling things firsthand. The conference was part of a national event, "A Night of One Thousand Conversations," meant to spotlight concerns about immigrant detention and enforcement actions by immigration agents.

May 5, 2008 New York Times
Word spread quickly inside the windowless walls of the Elizabeth Detention Center, an immigration jail in New Jersey: A detainee had fallen, injured his head and become incoherent. Guards had put him in solitary confinement, and late that night, an ambulance had taken him away more dead than alive. But outside, for five days, no official notified the family of the detainee, Boubacar Bah, a 52-year-old tailor from Guinea who had overstayed a tourist visa. When frantic relatives located him at University Hospital in Newark on Feb. 5, 2007, he was in a coma after emergency surgery for a skull fracture and multiple brain hemorrhages. He died there four months later without ever waking up, leaving family members on two continents trying to find out why. Mr. Bah’s name is one of 66 on a government list of deaths that occurred in immigration custody from January 2004 to November 2007, when nearly a million people passed through. The list, compiled by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after Congress demanded the information, and obtained by The New York Times under the Freedom of Information Act, is the fullest accounting to date of deaths in immigration detention, a patchwork of federal centers, county jails and privately run prisons that has become the nation’s fastest-growing form of incarceration. The list has few details, and they are often unreliable, but it serves as a rough road map to previously unreported cases like Mr. Bah’s. And it reflects a reality that haunts grieving families like his: the difficulty of getting information about the fate of people taken into immigration custody, even when they die. Mr. Bah’s relatives never saw the internal records labeled “proprietary information — not for distribution” by the Corrections Corporation of America, which runs the New Jersey detention center for the federal government. The documents detail how he was treated by guards and government employees: shackled and pinned to the floor of the medical unit as he moaned and vomited, then left in a disciplinary cell for more than 13 hours, despite repeated notations that he was unresponsive and intermittently foaming at the mouth. Mr. Bah had lived in New York for a decade, surrounded by a large circle of friends and relatives. The extravagant gowns he sewed to support his wife and children in West Africa were on display in a Manhattan boutique. But he died in a sequestered system where questions about what had happened to him, or even his whereabouts, were met with silence. As the country debates stricter enforcement of immigration laws, thousands of people who are not American citizens are being locked up for days, months or years while the government decides whether to deport them. Some have no valid visa; some are legal residents, but have past criminal convictions; others are seeking asylum from persecution. Death is a reality in any jail, and the medical neglect of inmates is a perennial issue. But far more than in the criminal justice system, immigration detainees and their families lack basic ways to get answers when things go wrong. No government body is required to keep track of deaths and publicly report them. No independent inquiry is mandated. And often relatives who try to investigate the treatment of those who died say they are stymied by fear of immigration authorities, lack of access to lawyers, or sheer distance. Federal officials say deaths are reviewed internally by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which reports them to its inspector general and decides which ones warrant investigation. Officials say they notify the detainee’s next of kin or consulate, and report the deaths to local medical authorities, who may conduct autopsies. In Mr. Bah’s case, a review before his death found no evidence of foul play, an immigration spokesman said, though after later inquiries from The Times, he said a full review of the death was under way. But critics, including many in Congress, say this piecemeal process leaves too much to the agency’s discretion, allowing some deaths to be swept under the rug while potential witnesses are transferred or deported. They say it also obscures underlying complaints about medical care, abusive conditions or inadequate suicide prevention. In January, the House passed a bill that would require states that receive certain federal money to report deaths in custody to their attorneys general. But the bill is stalled in the Senate, and it does not cover federal facilities. The only tangible result of Congressional concern has been the list of 66 deaths, which names Mr. Bah and many other detainees for the first time, but raises as many questions as it answers. For Mr. Bah’s survivors, the mystery of his death is hard to bear. In Guinea, his first wife, Dalanda, wept as she spoke about the contradictory accounts that had reached her and her two teenage sons through other detainees, including some who speculated that Mr. Bah had been beaten. In New York, a cousin who is an American citizen, Khadidiatou Bah, 38, said she was unable to bring a lawsuit, in part because other relatives were afraid of antagonizing the authorities. “They don’t want to push the case, or maybe they will be sent home,” she said. “This guy was killed, and we don’t know what happened.” Lingering Questions -- The list of deaths where Mr. Bah’s name surfaced is often cryptic. Along with 13 deaths cited as suicides and 14 as the result of cardiac ailments, it offers such causes as “undetermined” and “unwitnessed arrest, epilepsy.” No one’s nationality is given, some places of detention are omitted, and some names and birth dates seem garbled. As a result, many families could not be tracked down for this article. But when they could be, they posed more disturbing questions. In California, relatives of Walter Rodriguez-Castro, 28, said they were rebuffed when they tried to find out why his calls had stopped coming from the Kern County Jail in Bakersfield in April 2006. Then in June, his wife went to his scheduled hearing in San Francisco’s immigration court and learned that he had been dead for many weeks, his body unclaimed in the county morgue. The coroner found that Mr. Rodriguez-Castro, a mover from El Salvador in the country illegally, had died of undiagnosed meningitis and H.I.V., after days complaining of fever, stiff neck and vomiting. The cause of death on the government’s list: “unresponsive.” Immigration authorities said on Friday that the case was now under review, but would not answer questions about it or other deaths on the list. Sgt. Ed Komin, a spokesman for the jail, said the death had been promptly reported to immigration officials, who were responsible for notifying families. Four sons in another family, in Sacramento, described trying for days to get medical care for their father, Maya Nand, a 56-year-old legal immigrant from Fiji, at a detention center run by the Corrections Corporation in Eloy, Ariz. Mr. Nand, an architectural draftsman, had been ailing when he was taken into custody on Jan. 13, 2005, apparently because his application for citizenship had been rejected, based on an earlier conviction for misdemeanor domestic violence. In collect calls, the sons said, he told them that despite his chest pains and breathing problems, doctors at the detention center did not take his condition seriously. The Corrections Corporation said he had been seen and treated “multiple times.” But a letter to the family from an immigration official said his treatment was for a respiratory infection. The letter said that Mr. Nand was taken to an emergency room on Jan. 25, where congestive heart failure was diagnosed, and that he “suffered an apparent heart attack while at the hospital.” He died on Feb. 2, 2005, shackled to a hospital bed in Tucson. Boubacar Bah had more going for him than many detainees. He had a lawyer and many friends and relatives in the United States, and his detention center in New Jersey was one of the few frequented by immigrant advocates. But three days after he suffered a head injury in detention last year, no one in his New York circle knew that he was lying comatose in a Newark hospital, where he had already been identified as a possible organ donor. “Thank you for the referral,” an organ-sharing network wrote on Feb. 3, 2007, according to hospital records. “This patient is a potential candidate for organ donation once brain death criteria is met.” Four days after the fall, tipped off by a detainee who called Mr. Bah’s roommate in Brooklyn, relatives rushed to the detention center to ask Corrections Corporation employees where he was. “They wouldn’t give us any information,” said Lamine Dieng, an American citizen who teaches physics at Bronx Community College and is married to Mr. Bah’s cousin Khadidiatou. On the fifth day, they said, a detention official called them with the name of the hospital. There they found Mr. Bah on life support, still in custody, with a detention guard around the clock. “There was one guard who knew Boubacar,” Ms. Bah said. “He told me on the down-low: ‘This guy, you have to fight for him. This guy was neglected.’ ” Within the week, word of the case reached a reporter at The Times, through an immigration lawyer who had received separate calls from two detainees; they were upset about a badly injured man — named “something like Aboubakar” — left in an isolation cell and later found near death. But advocacy groups said they were unaware of the case. And Michael Gilhooly, the spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said that without the man’s full name and eight-digit alien registration number, he could not check the information. For those who knew Mr. Bah, it was hard to understand how such a man could lie dying without explanations. “Everybody liked Boubacar,” said Sadio Diallo, 48, who has a tailor shop in Flatbush, Brooklyn, where he and Mr. Bah had shared an apartment with fellow immigrants since arriving in 1998. “He’s a very, very, very good man.” For six years, Mr. Bah had worked for L’Impasse, a clothing store in the West Village, sewing dresses that sold for up to $2,000 with what a former manager, Abdul Sall, called his “magic hands.” Mr. Bah often spent Sundays at the Bronx townhouse his cousins had inherited from the family’s first American citizen, a seaman who arrived in 1943. In Africa, Mr. Bah’s earnings not only supported his first wife, sons and ailing mother, but in Guinean tradition, allowed him to wed a second wife, long distance. It was his longing to see them all again after eight years that landed him in detention. When he returned from a three-month visit to Guinea in May 2006, immigration authorities at Kennedy Airport told him that his green card application had been denied while he was away, automatically revoking his permission to re-enter the United States. An immigration lawyer hired by his friends was unable to reopen the application while Mr. Bah waited for nine months in detention, records showed. Mr. Bah died on May 30, 2007, after four months in a coma. His lawyer, Theodore Vialet, requested detention reports and hospital records under the Freedom of Information Act. But by the time the records arrived last autumn, the idea of a lawsuit had been dropped. So Mr. Vialet just filed the records away — until a reporter’s call about a name on the list of dead detainees prompted him to dig them out. After the Fall -- There are 57 pages of documents, some neatly typed by medics, some scrawled by guards. Some quote detainees who said Mr. Bah was ailing for two days before his fall on Feb. 1, and asked in vain to see a doctor. The records leave unclear exactly when or how Mr. Bah was injured in detention. But they leave no doubt that guards, supervisors, government medical employees and federal immigration officers played a role in leaving him untreated, hour after hour, as he lapsed into a stupor. It began about 8 a.m., according to the earliest report. Guards called a medical emergency after a detainee saw Mr. Bah collapse near a toilet, hitting the back of his head on the floor. When he regained consciousness, Mr. Bah was taken to the medical unit, which is run by the federal Public Health Service. He became incoherent and agitated, reports said, pulling away from the doctor and grabbing at the unit staff. Physicians consulted later by The Times called this a textbook symptom of intracranial bleeding, but apparently no one recognized that at the time. He was handcuffed and placed in leg restraints on the floor with medical approval, “to prevent injury,” a guard reported. “While on the floor the detainee began to yell in a foreign language and turn from side to side,” the guard wrote, and the medical staff deemed that “the screaming and resisting is behavior problems.” Mr. Bah was ordered to calm down. Instead, he kept crying out, then “began to regurgitate on the floor of medical,” the report said. So Mr. Bah was written up for disobeying orders. And with the approval of a physician assistant, Michael Chuley, who wrote that Mr. Bah’s fall was unwitnessed and “questionable,” the tailor was taken in shackles to a solitary confinement cell with instructions that he be monitored. Under detention protocols, an officer videotaped Mr. Bah as he lay vomiting in the medical unit, but the camera’s battery failed, guards wrote, when they tried to tape his trip to cell No. 7. Inside the cell, a supervisor removed Mr. Bah’s restraints. He was unresponsive to questions asked by the Public Health Service officer on duty, a report said, adding: “The detainee set up in his bed and moan and he fell to his left side and hit his head on the bed rail.” About 9 a.m., with the approval of the health officer and a federal immigration agent, the cell was locked. The watching began. As guards checked hourly, Mr. Bah appeared to be asleep on the concrete floor, snoring. But he could not be roused to eat lunch or dinner, and at 7:10 p.m., “he began to breathe heavily and started foaming slightly at the mouth,” a guard wrote. “I notified medical at this time.” However, the nurse on duty rejected the guard’s request to come check, according to reports. And at 8 p.m., when the warden went to the medical unit to describe Mr. Bah’s condition, the nurse, Raymund Dela Pena, was not alarmed. “Detainee is likely exhibiting the same behavior as earlier in the day,” he wrote, adding that Mr. Bah would get a mental health exam in the morning. About 10:30 p.m., more than 14 hours after Mr. Bah’s fall, the same nurse, on rounds, recognized the gravity of his condition: “unresponsive on the floor incontinent with foamy brown vomitus noted around mouth.” Smelling salts were tried. Mr. Bah was carried back to the medical unit on a stretcher. Just before 11, someone at the jail called 911. When an ambulance left Mr. Bah at the hospital, brain scans showed he had a fractured skull and hemorrhages at all sides of his swelling brain. He was rushed to surgery, and the detention center was informed of the findings. But in a report to their supervisors the next day, immigration officials at the center described Mr. Bah’s ailment as “brain aneurysms” — a diagnosis they corrected a week later to “hemorrhages,” without mentioning the skull fracture. After Mr. Bah’s death, they wrote that his hospitalization was “subsequent to a fall in the shower.” The nurse, Mr. Dela Pena, and the physician assistant, Mr. Chuley, said that only their superiors could discuss the case. The Public Health Service did not respond to questions, and the Corrections Corporation said medical decisions were the responsibility of the Public Health Service. Mr. Bah’s cousins demanded an autopsy, but the Union County medical examiner’s confidential report was not completed until Dec. 6. It was sent to the county prosecutor’s office only as a matter of routine, because the matter had been classified as an “unattended accident resulting in death.” Prosecutors said they did not investigate. “According to the report, Bah suffered a fall in the shower,” Eileen Walsh, a spokeswoman for the prosecutors, said in an e-mail message. “We are not privy to any other bits of information.” In the home movies Mr. Bah made of his last journey home, he is only a fleeting presence: a slim man with a shy smile. But without his support, relatives in Africa say they have little money for food and none for his sons’ schooling. His body went back to Guinea in a sealed coffin. “I stayed here seven years, waiting for him,” his second wife, Mariama, said in French, recalling their long separation and the brief reunion that led to the birth of their son, now a toddler, while Mr. Bah was in detention. “I wanted them to open the casket,” she added, “to know if it was him inside. Until today, I cry for him.”

November 13, 2007 India Post
An Immigration Detention Center in Elizabeth, New Jersey reversed a ban against turbans. Three detained Sikh men were barred from wearing turbans for months. The facility changed its policy three weeks after the Sikh Coalition intervened. Three Sikhs have been currently detained for immigration violations at the Elizabeth Detention Center (EDC) by Immigrations Customs Enforcement (ICE) of the Department of Homeland Security. EDC is run by a private government contractor, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). The men were put in detention at various times within the past 15 months. CCA disallowed them from wearing their turbans during this time. On October 7, a family friend of one of the Sikh detainees contacted the Sikh Coalition requesting assistance. The Coalition then contacted the family of the detained man, and subsequently was able to communicate with all three Sikh detainees. All three asked the Coalition for help to persuade the detention centre to allow them to wear their turbans.The Sikh Coalition spoke to the Chief of Security at EDC on October 12. The Coalition explained that their refusal to allow Sikh detainees to wear turbans violated: firstly, ICE's Detention Standards regarding Religious Practices, and secondly the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. The Coalition also raised the issue in a memorandum to ICE officials on October 17 in preparation for an interagency meeting in Washington, DC hosted by the Department of Justice. The next day, the Legal Aid Society of New York and the Coalition also sent a joint letter to the detention center's Warden, explaining that CCA was violating the law. On October 22 the Warden contacted the Legal Aid Society and indicated that the center would allow the men to wear their religious headwear subject to safety and security considerations.

November 13, 2007 AP
A federal jury on Tuesday awarded a political asylum $100,001 after finding that her rights were violated while in custody at a detention center operated for U.S. immigration authorities by a private contractor, the immigrant's lawyer said. The jury said the operator, then known as Esmor Corp., and some former executives, should pay $100,000 to Somali immigrant Hawa Jama for negligent hiring and training, and $1 for violating the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. "Clearly, she would have been happier if she got more money, but she feels vindicated," said the lawyer, Penny M. Venetis. The jury found no violation of international human rights standards. The verdict came on the second day of deliberations, but a decade after Jama and eight other immigrants sued the company that ran the detention center in Elizabeth and what was then known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Venetis said the eight others had already settled for undisclosed sums, and the only remaining defendants were the corporate successor to Esmor and former Esmor employees. Esmor is now part of the Geo Group Inc. Messages seeking comment from its lawyer and a company spokesman were not immediately returned. At trial, Jama testified that she endured beatings, insults, rotting food and unsanitary conditions during her 11-month detention at the privately run jail in Elizabeth in 1994-95. The INS closed the center following a riot in June 1995, when about 100 immigrants broke windows, destroyed furniture and overpowered guards, claiming they were being held under inhumane conditions. The INS fired Esmor, then of Melville, N.Y., after finding that poorly trained guards abused the detainees physically and mentally, gave them spoiled food and deprived them of sleep. The detention center reopened in January 1997 after renovations were completed by its new operator, Corrections Corp. of America, of Nashville, Tenn. Jama, now in her late 30s, got married several years ago and now lives with her husband and three children in Columbus, Ohio, Venetis said. Jama had fled tribal warfare in Somalia that claimed her father and brother, and became a U.S. citizen last year, said Venetis, a law professor at Rutgers School of Law-Newark and co-director of its constitutional litigation clinic. "She really is still very haunted by what happened at Esmor," Venetis said. "She has flashbacks." Venetis claimed "corporate greed" created miserable conditions at the Esmor detention center. Guards routinely beat and cursed detainees, with Jama being called "an African monkey," Venetis said. "She was denied sanitary napkins, so she just bled all over herself once a month," Venetis said. Charges were dismissed three years ago against the INS and its officials, with U.S. District Judge Dickinson R. Debevoise saying the government cannot be sued. He also dismissed some charges against the company's guards, finding that individual actions did not rise to the level of international human rights abuses. But he refused to dismiss all charges against Esmor and its officials. Some 1,600 former Esmor detainees got a $2.5 million settlement from Esmor in 2005, with most getting less than $1,000 each after legal fees. That group did not include Jama and the other eight who sued. Geo, a publicly traded company based in Boca Raton, Fla., reported 2006 profit of $30 million, or $1.68 per share, compared with $7 million, or 47 cents per share a year earlier. It had revenue of $860.9 million in 2006, compared with $612.9 million in 2005.

March 4, 2007 Courier News
The way Living Waters Lutheran Church describes it, Elizabeth Detention Facility is a living hell. The church says illegal immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers are locked in a warehouse without sunlight. Detainees are denied personal possessions, deprived of privacy and forced into a dormitory-style room 22 hours a day. Outdoor recreation, the church says, is a room with only a panel in the ceiling open to the sky. Reports of such alleged conditions and legal mismanagement have spurred the Hunterdon County congregation to plan a March 18 prayer vigil outside the center in Elizabeth, Union County. Short of closing such facilities for good, the church says it hopes prayer will signal awareness and comfort to those trapped in a "cruel maze of injustice." "We're interested because, as people of faith, we have to be," said the Rev. Matthew Cimorelli, the church's pastor. "There is an overarching message in the Scriptures throughout the Old Testament and also in the New Testament that says things like care for the widow and the orphan and the stranger and the alien in your midst. ... We care about the detainees in the Elizabeth Detention Center because it's a mandate from God to do so. They're the least. They're the alien. They're the stranger in our midst." And Living Waters isn't alone. The Rev. Bruce H. Davidson, director of the New Jersey Synod's Lutheran Office of Governmental Ministry, said Living Waters is one of many congregations heeding the synod's call to learn what goes on inside the facility and to take turns gathering there. Davidson estimates the synod -- which encompasses 192 congregations throughout the state -- has attempted to draw attention to the center for the past 10 years. For the past two, Davidson said, the synod has adopted official resolutions calling for better treatment of detainees. "We're not questioning that there needs to be controls in place," Davidson said. "We feel the controls in place, if they are followed, will not only provide protection of our borders but would also make sure people who find themselves in this situation are not abused." Civil rights groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey also have decried the treatment of detainees. In an article last year, the ACLU estimated that roughly 1,100 immigrants were being held in a half-dozen county jails throughout the state as well as the Elizabeth Detention Facility. "Who are these individuals? Mostly, they are people who have overstayed their visas or are otherwise not in legal status," the ACLU wrote of New Jersey's detainees. "But many are asylum seekers fleeing persecution in their native countries, only to find themselves arrested at U.S. airports. Most have families, jobs and community ties in New Jersey. They are your neighbors, friends, colleagues or even family members." Assistant Warden Charlotte Collins, who said "we welcome all peaceful vigils," declined to comment on the treatment of Elizabeth's detainees and the conditions inside the facility. The center is operated under the federal Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Corrections Corporation of America. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Web site describes the facility as "a temporary detention center for individuals who are waiting for their immigration status to be determined or who are awaiting repatriation." But some churches and immigrant rights organizations counter that the Department of Homeland Security, the agency ultimately responsible for detention standards, regularly violates its own rules. In January, 84 immigration detainees, the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild and six other immigrant rights organizations announced a joint petition to the Department of Homeland Security asking the agency to adopt universal, binding regulations for detainees. "The need for enforceable, uniform standards that establish clear lines of accountability is especially critical in light of the patchwork system of detention currently employed to house detainees," including local jails, the groups wrote. For Davidson, an immediate hope is that detainees have their cases decided quickly and in accordance with international law while detention centers preserve detainees' safety and human dignity. Although Davidson acknowledged the synod's efforts have yet to prompt legislative response, he said past vigils -- especially those attended by young people -- have successfully raised awareness. "I think it changed people's minds about immigration and also about the way we sometimes treat people," Davidson said. "So, I think just the experience of bringing people to this place and letting them know what happens, that is powerful enough to get people to change their mind about this issue and to become active and make things different." Said Cimorelli, Living Water's pastor: "We can't just sit in our churches and sing songs and say that's serving God. You serve God by loving your neighbor. And God is pretty clear about who the neighbor is."

September 7, 2005 AP
Immigrants who claimed they were abused at a detention center won a $2.5 million settlement from a private company that operated the center for the federal government. After legal fees, some 1,600 detainees will divide about $1.5 million based on how long they were held and what they said was done to them, the New Jersey Law Journal reported this week. U.S. District Judge Dickinson R. Debevoise, in Newark, approved the settlement Aug. 10. The detainees were being held at the Elizabeth center between August 1994 and June 1995 for what was then called the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Many have since been deported. The center was operated by Esmor Correctional Services, then based in Melville, N.Y., until shortly after a June 1995 riot, when about 100 immigrants broke windows, destroyed furniture and overpowered guards, claiming they had suffered physical abuse and other inhumane conditions. The INS closed the center and fired Esmor after its investigation found that poorly trained guards abused the detainees physically and mentally, gave them spoiled food and deprived them of sleep. The detention center reopened in January 1997 after renovations were completed by its new operator, Corrections Corp. of America, of Nashville, Tenn. Still pending is a related lawsuit against Esmor, now known as Correctional Services Corp., of Sarasota, Fla., by nine detainees who claim that political asylum seekers were abused and harassed at the center.

November 17, 2004 AP
Evidence shows political asylum seekers were abused and harassed while detained at a privately operated facility that lacked clean food, clothes and bedding, a federal judge found as he refused to dismiss a lawsuit by nine immigrants. "You don't need to beat someone to a pulp until they're ready to die to violate human rights law," said the lawyer, Penny M. Venetis, associate director of the Constitutional Law Clinic at Rutgers School of Law-Newark. The ruling, filed Nov. 10 by U.S. District Judge Dickinson R. Debevoise in Newark, is the latest milestone in a lawsuit filed in 1997 against what was then called the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the company that ran its detention center in Elizabeth. The judge dismissed charges against the INS and its officials, saying the government cannot be sued. He also dismissed some charges against the company's guards, finding that individual actions did not rise to the level of international human rights abuses, Venetis said. But he refused to dismiss all charges against Correctional Services Corp. and its officials. The Sarasota, Fla.-based company was known as Esmor Corp. when it operated the INS detention center. The judge said the evidence showed that detention center administrator Willard Stovall was "fully aware" of abuses, and listed 21 examples, including the beatings of detainees and the sexual assault of one female detainee. Other examples cited by the judge were sexual harassment that included guards watching women detainees take showers, broken toilets, defective heating, and lack of access to supplies such as toothbrushes and toothpaste. In addition, guards interfered with detainees' efforts to practice their religions, whether they were Christian, Hindu or Muslim, the judge said. The Elizabeth center was operated by Esmor, then based in Melville, N.Y., until shortly after a June 1995 riot, when about 100 immigrants broke windows, destroyed furniture and overpowered guards, claiming they suffered physical abuse and other inhumane conditions. The INS closed the center and fired Esmor after its investigation found that poorly trained guards abused the detainees physically and mentally, gave them spoiled food and deprived them of sleep. The detention center reopened in January 1997 after renovations were completed by its new operator, Corrections Corp. of America, of Nashville, Tenn.

September 21, 2001
A Nigerian man whose accounts of abuse spawned a staff shake-up and reforms at the Elizabeth Detention Center has been freed after spending nearly four years behind bars.  An immigration judge granted Oluwole Aboyade, 23, relief from deportation under a United Nations convention against torture.   In 1999, Aboyade and Salah Dafali, another detainee, accused guards at the privately run detention center of beating them after they complained about conditions. The center was operated by Corrections Corp. of America of Nashville, Tenn.  A subsequent INS investigation found many of the accusations were credible.  Several guards and supervisors were reassigned, and INS officials demanded that the chief of security be transferred out of the facility. The warden also resigned, citing personal reasons.  (Naples Daily News)

Dozens of detainees have started a hunger strike to protest conditions and what they call an unfair parole process and demanded reinstitution of cancelled English classes and an end to abusive behavior by guards. (New York Times, Oct.15, 2000)

Nearly 100 detainees stage a hunger strike to protest what they considered tough parole criteria. Immigration officials promised to review parole requests and to study ways to increase the quantity of food and lower prices of telephone cards used by detainees. (New York Times, Oct.15, 2000)

A pending lawsuit alleges that "a policy or practice that authorized CCA staff to use abusive practices to control and discipline."

Giants Stadium
New Jersey
Aramark
October 25, 2007 The Record
On a fall Sunday eight years ago, Antonia Verni of Cliffside Park was sent to a harsh prison, probably for the rest of her life. Her incarceration does not include steel bars, stone walls and stern guards, though. Antonia's prison is far more merciless. On that Sunday, a man who later said he was "beyond drunk," drove his pickup truck head-on into the Verni family's Toyota Corolla. Antonia was paralyzed from the neck down. She was only 2 years old and was returning with her mother and father from a trip to pick pumpkins. Antonia now spends her days in a wheelchair, hooked to a breathing machine and monitored by a nurse. Over the course of her life, her parents, who quit their jobs to care for her, may have to come up with as much as $32 million to pay all of Antonia's medical bills. The fiery crash on Terrace Avenue in Hasbrouck Heights, which also left Antonia's mother partially blind, galvanized national attention to the dangers of drunken drivers. But it raised other questions, too: What about those who serve booze to drunks? Are servers guilty? If not, why not? The drunken driver, Daniel Lanzaro, a Cresskill carpenter and father of two young sons, spent that tragic day swilling the equivalent of three six-packs of beer, mostly inside Giants Stadium. When he rammed his truck into the Verni car, his blood alcohol level was more than three times the legal limit. Didn't anyone who sold beer at Giants Stadium or at area bars later visited by Lanzaro notice that he was blind drunk? As you might expect, this tragedy landed in court. Lanzaro pleaded guilty to a criminal charge of vehicular assault and was sentenced to five years in prison. The Verni family filed a lawsuit, and won a historic $135 million judgment, with $105 million of it to come from the stadium beer vendor, Aramark Corp. Aramark appealed – no surprise there. Nor was it surprising that lawyers for Antonia's family and Aramark privately worked out a settlement, approved last week by a Bergen County judge. What's surprising – and sad -- is that the judge sealed the records. This pivotal chapter of Antonia's story needs to be told, not locked in a judicial file drawer. We've heard many times how drunken driving wrecks innocent lives. Indeed, such stories are important. But we also need to explore other, wide-ranging implications of drunken driving, especially for those who sell booze in taverns or at public sporting events. Our government issues liquor licenses to these vendors. Why shouldn't taxpayers know more about them? Sealing records in such an important court case does not add to constructive discourse. It puts a damper on it. In reaching an agreement with Antonia's family, Aramark issued a statement claiming it "settled the litigation without any admission of wrongdoing." It merely paid Antonia's family – as if that means nothing. Antonia's parents seem satisfied that the settlement will cover their daughter's medical bills. That's good news. But why not disclose the amount? Knowing the size of the judgment might be a warning to vendors to be careful. And why allow Aramark to avoid admitting any responsibility? Or was that question dropped from discussions? More important, was Giants Stadium required to take additional steps to make sure tipsy fans are not served at future events? Open those records. It's the only way to be sure.

September 7, 2006 Star-Ledger
Lawyers for a Bergen County girl paralyzed in a drunken-driving accident have asked the state Supreme Court to review her case against the beer vendor at Giants Stadium, claiming the issues could affect drunken-driving policies in New Jersey. The attorneys argue that a state appeals court erred in August when it overturned a landmark $135 million jury verdict against the stadium vendor, Aramark Corp., and a fan whose drunken-driving accident left 2-year-old Antonia Verni of Cliffside Park paralyzed. The appeals court ordered a new trial, ruling that testimony about the "culture of intoxication" at the stadium should not have been presented to the jury. Antonia's attorneys disagree. "If this decision is allowed to stand, it will emasculate the ability of victims of drunk driving to go after liquor establishments that serve visibly intoxicated patrons, by eliminating certain evidence that can go before a jury, and that's not what the law ... intended," said Antonia's attorney, David Mazie, who filed a 25-page petition to the state Supreme Court on Tuesday.

August 3, 2006 AP
A New Jersey appeals court on Thursday overturned a landmark $105 million verdict against a Giants Stadium concessionaire that sold beer to a drunken football fan who later caused an auto accident, leaving a girl paralyzed. The three-judge appeals panel ruled that the trial court erred by improperly allowing testimony about the “drinking environment at the stadium” and ordered a new trial should be held. “The admission of this evidence cannot be considered harmless. A central theme of plaintiffs’ case was the culture of intoxication at the stadium,” the court wrote in its 65-page ruling. Last year, a state judge in Hackensack rejected an effort by Philadelphia-based Aramark Corp. to throw out or reduce the verdict. Its vendors sold beer to Daniel Lanzaro, of Cresskill, during a 1999 New York Giants game just hours before he caused a car crash that left then-2-year-old Antonia Verni paralyzed from the neck down. In January 2005, a Bergen County jury said Lanzaro and Aramark should pay a total of $135 million in damages. At the time, legal experts said it was the largest alcohol liability award in the United States in at least the last 25 years. Aramark’s portion of that award included $30 million in compensatory damages and $75 million in punitive damages.

May 31, 2006 NewJersey.com
Lawyers for a food-service giant that was ordered to pay $105 million to the family of a Cliffside Park girl paralyzed in a drunken-driving crash argued Tuesday that the victim's father shares responsibility for her condition. Antonia Verni was 2 years old when a truck driven by a drunken Cresskill man slammed head-on into her family's sedan on Terrace Avenue in Hasbrouck Heights on Oct. 29, 1999. A Bergen County jury in January 2005 ruled that employees of Aramark Corp. irresponsibly sold beer to the drunken driver, Daniel Lanzaro, contributing to the crash. The jurors awarded more than $135 million in compensatory and punitive damages – an amount many lawyers believe is the largest ever in such a lawsuit. Aramark is liable for $105 million and Lanzaro the rest. Arguing before a state appellate panel in Trenton on Tuesday, Aramark attorneys lambasted Superior Court Judge Richard Donohue for dismissing evidence that they said should have been admitted during the civil case in Hackensack. For one thing, they contended, Ronald Verni had strapped Antonia in an adult seat belt instead of a child restraint. The impact jolted her head forward, breaking her neck and causing the paralysis, they said. Antonia's mother, Fazila Baksh Verni, was the only other person seriously injured in the crash. The woman, who the lawyers said wasn't wearing a seat belt, was hospitalized for two months and left partially blinded. "Everyone walked away from the accident, except Antonia and her mother," said Aramark lawyer Michael Rodburg. However, he said, the jurors in Hackensack were never allowed to review that evidence during the trial. "This was a smear case against Aramark," he said. "And the judge allowed it."

January 26, 2006 Star-Ledger
A lawyer for an 8-year-old paralyzed car crash victim has filed a motion to expedite the appeal of a $135 million jury verdict, most of it against the beer service company at Giants Stadium. Attorney David Mazie of Roseland said the state appellate court should speed up the case because his client, Antonia Verni, is ventilator-dependent and has been unable to get the 24-hour nursing care that experts on both sides of the case recommend. Neither Antonia nor her mother, Fazila, has been able to collect the money while the case is pending, Mazie said. "It's very unusual to file an appeal to expedite," Mazie said. "It's only done in the gravest of cases. We think her situation is one such case. This is to prevent something catastrophic from happening." Last January, Antonia and her mother were awarded $135 million in compensatory and punitive damages, most of it against Aramark Corp., the concessionaire at Giants Stadium. A jury determined there was a "culture of intoxication" at the stadium and found Aramark guilty of serving a visibly drunk fan who later caused the car crash that left the Cliffside Park girl injured. Aramark appealed, but a state appellate court could take until September to hear arguments. Antonia's court-appointed legal guardian for the case, Albert Burstein, said the second-grader can't wait that long to collect her award. He said the family only has limited access to about $500,000 collected in settlements from third parties. "There's not enough money to match the daily costs of taking care of Antonia," Burstein said. "If we were to do the job we would like to do on her behalf, which means round-the-clock care by professionals, it adds up very rapidly." Antonia has a nurse during school hours, paid for by the school district. Her mother, who has no formal medical training, cares for Antonia at home.

September 25, 2005 San Francisco Chronicle
Fans who drive after drinking excessively at 49ers or Raiders games, or any other sporting event, would be well advised to consider the plight of an 8-year-old New Jersey girl. And a vendor who sells an intoxicated fan another beer should think not only about the little girl but about the multimillion-dollar judgment a jury ruled she and her family were entitled to receive earlier this year from the New York Giants' concessionaire. "Concessionaires throughout the country are well aware of that case," NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said. In January, a jury awarded $135 million to the family of Antonia Verni, who was paralyzed from the neck down in a car wreck caused by a drunken football fan. The fan is serving a five-year prison sentence, and the concessionaire whose employees sold him beers when he was already clearly intoxicated will pay the family $110 million unless the verdict, currently on appeal, is reduced or reversed. The NFL, the 49ers and the Raiders say the Verni case was a wakeup call for the league and the people who serve fans millions of dollars worth of beer and other alcoholic beverages each season. Like other pro sports leagues, the NFL is heavily intertwined with beer companies. Their signage is as much a part of stadiums as the goalposts, and their commercials form the backbone of the league's TV sponsorship. Attorney David Mazie said from his office in Roseland, N.J., "Quite frankly, I haven't heard anything that demonstrates the NFL and teams have changed their policies on serving alcohol -- other than paying lip service. I haven't seen anything at all." Mazie called the verdict against Aramark "a milestone" in holding a concessionaire accountable. "There may have been settlements before, but I'm not aware of any verdicts. Clearly, it's a landmark, not only because of its size but because of the punitive damages."Lanzaro "was trashed" when the accident occurred, Mazie said. "I'm sure there were 5,000 others in the same condition (driving away from the game)." "As long as you're not falling down, they'll serve you," Mazie said of Aramark employees. "The person who trained them said that. But by the time you're slurring your speech or stumbling, your blood-alcohol is between .10 and .15. Anything above .08 is drunk driving, so what they're saying is they'll still serve people when they're at twice the legal limit." "There are a series of signs -- slurring of speech, talking a lot, not being able to hold themselves up straight," spokesman David Freireich said from the firm's headquarters in Philadelphia. Aramark is a founding member of the Techniques for Effective Alcohol Management (TEAM) Coalition, a nonprofit group that advises pro sports leagues and sponsors designated-driver programs at McAfee Coliseum and other parks, Freireich pointed out.

March 4, 2005 USA Today
A state judge on Friday upheld a $105 million verdict against a Giants Stadium concessionaire for selling beer to a drunken football fan who later caused an auto accident, leaving a girl paralyzed. State Superior Court Judge Richard J. Donohue in Hackensack rejected an effort by Philadelphia-based Aramark Corp. to throw out or reduce the verdict. Its vendors sold beer to Daniel Lanzaro of Cresskill during a 1999 New York Giants game hours before he caused a car crash that left then 2-year-old Antonia Verni paralyzed from the neck down. "It sends a message to Aramark and other beer concessions around the state that they have to change their ways," said David Mazie, a Roseland lawyer representing Verni's family. Aramark's portion of that award included $30 million in compensatory damages and $75 million in punitive damages. Interest accruing daily has brought the company's total to nearly $110 million, according to Mazie. The family claimed Aramark vendors sold beers to Lanzaro at the stadium in East Rutherford even though he was clearly drunk. The company, they said, fostered an atmosphere in which intoxicated patrons were able to buy more.

January 21, 2005 Reuters
The family of a girl paralyzed in a car crash caused by a drunken football fan won $105 million in damages from the concessionaire that sold him beer, and the girl's father said on Thursday the case should have far-reaching effects. The Superior Court jury in Hackensack, New Jersey, assessed punitive damages on Wednesday against Giants Stadium concessionaire Aramark Corp., for its role in the October 1999 accident that left Antonia Verni, then 2 years old, paralyzed from the neck down.

January 18, 2005 AP
A jury awarded $60 million Tuesday to the family of a girl paralyzed in a car wreck caused by a drunken football fan. Ronald and Fazila Verni were headed home from a pumpkin-picking trip in 1999 with their 2-year-old daughter, Antonia, when their car was hit by a truck driven by Daniel Lanzaro, 34. Antonia was paralyzed from the neck down. The family sued Aramark, the Giants Stadium concessionaire, claiming vendors sold beers to Lanzaro even though he was clearly drunk and that Aramark fostered an atmosphere in which intoxicated patrons were served. The stadium also mandates that fans can only buy two beers at a time -- a rule Lanzaro sidestepped by tipping the vendor $10, allowing him to buy six beers.

January 14, 2005 WNBC News
Jury deliberations have begun in a civil lawsuit filed by the family of a 7-year-old girl who was paralyzed when a drunken football fan on his way home from a New York Giants game crashed into the family's car. The family claims Aramark, the Giants Stadium concessionaire that sold beers to the fan, was partly responsible for the crash in Hasbrouck Heights. The family claims Aramark vendors sold beers to Daniel Lanzaro at the stadium even though the Cresskill man was clearly drunk and that Aramark "fostered" an atmosphere where intoxicated patrons were served, which is against the law.

January 12, 2005 NewJersey.com
An admitted alcoholic who slammed his truck into a Cliffside Park family's car, paralyzing their 2-year-old daughter, wasn't visibly drunk when he bought beer at Giants Stadium earlier that day, an alcohol expert told jurors Tuesday. Robert J. Pandina, a psychology professor and director of the Center of Alcohol Studies at Rutgers University, said Daniel Lanzaro of Cresskill couldn't have had more than five or six beers inside the stadium. The parents of the injured girl are suing Aramark, the food-service company that holds the liquor license at the stadium, saying it sold alcohol irresponsibly to Lanzaro. Lanzaro, a 35-year-old carpenter and father of two, left a Giants game on Oct. 24, 1999, and crashed his truck head-on into the car of Ronald and Fazila Baksh Verni in Hasbrouck Heights. The crash seriously injured Baksh Verni and left the Vernis' daughter, Antonia, a paraplegic. The family is suing Aramark under a state law that holds vendors liable for damages caused by patrons who were served alcohol while visibly intoxicated.

December 9, 2004 Star-Ledger
Sitting in her wheelchair with a stuffed doll propping her head, unable to move her arms or legs, 7-year-old Antonia Verni told a jury yesterday what she wants to be when she grows up. "I want to be a singer, a rock star, a kindergarten teacher and a ballerina," Verni said, her melodic voice filling the tiny courtroom. Two jurors cried. Others shifted in their seats. Doctors say the Cliffside Park girl will never be able to walk as a result of a car accident when she was 2 years old, when a drunken football fan rammed his truck into her family's car as they were driving home from pumpkin picking. Verni testified on the second day of a civil trial in Superior Court in Bergen County in a case against Aramark, the Giants Stadium concessionaire that sold beers to the fan who crashed into the Vernis, Daniel Lanzaro.

December 9, 2004 NorthJersey.com
A drunken driver who rammed his truck into a young family's car in Hasbrouck Heights - paralyzing a 2-year-old girl for life and landing himself in prison for five years - openly admits that he was "beyond drunk" in the 1999 accident. But the buck doesn't stop there, lawyers for the Cliffside Park family contend. Aramark's beer servers, who sold more than a dozen beers to the driver at Giants Stadium during a game, are equally responsible, say the lawyers, who have taken the battle to the multinational food-service conglomerate. As a civil trial opened Wednesday in Superior Court in Hackensack, the first witness for the Verni family was Daniel Lanzaro, the drunken driver, who is still in prison. Lanzaro is a defendant, but is penniless and is testifying willingly. He testified that Aramark concession stands - contrary to state law and the company's internal rules - sold alcohol at the stadium to visibly intoxicated patrons. Aramark's lawyer, Brian Harris, told the jury during his opening statement that Lanzaro was a seasoned drinker who didn't display signs of intoxication when he was drunk. Even though Aramark's beer sellers are trained in identifying intoxicated people, Lanzaro fooled them, he said.

Gloucester County Jail
Woodbury, New Jersey
Prison Health Services
August 29, 2006 Gloucester County Times
A former Gloucester County Jail inmate and his significant other are suing the county, alleging that he contracted an often drug-resistant staph infection while locked up and then brought it home. Michael DiFelice of Deptford Township was an inmate at the jail for seven months, starting on April 11, 2005. Not long after his release on Nov. 1, DiFelice's "domestic partner" began exhibiting signs of the same infection, according to the lawsuit filed in Superior Court. DiFelice and Kelly Filipponi have both been diagnosed with the boil-like skin infection, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit alleges that the county failed to properly inform its staff and inmates of other cases of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Also named in the lawsuit were the county department of corrections, the sheriff's department and Prison Health Services Inc. More than a dozen other lawsuits have been filed against the county from both former inmates and corrections officers at the jail.

July 13, 2006 Gloucester County Times
A fifth lawsuit filed against the county claims that a former inmate of the Gloucester County Jail became infected with staph while incarcerated there. Brantley Owens of Glassboro allegedly began "exhibiting signs and symptoms of an infection" caused by staphylococcus aureus bacteria shortly after his incarceration in August 2004, according to the complaint filed in Superior Court. Owens claims that jail officials knew of other cases of the often contagious and drug-resistant skin infection and failed to notify inmates and put policies in place to minimize or prevent exposure, according to the suit. Owens' suit is the fifth lodged against the county concerning staph infection -- one officer and two former inmates previously filed individual suits, and last month five people, corrections officers and their spouses, filed a joint suit. The most recent claim names the county, county freeholders, the county department of corrections, the county Sheriff's Department, Prison Health Services, Inc., former jail warden John Tevoli and former corrections director W. Stanley Nunn. County spokeswoman Debra Sellitto declined comment because the matter is in litigation. Owens' Attorney Scott McKinley, of the firm Hoffman and DiMuzio, has filed three other lawsuits on behalf of two former inmates as well as a corrections officer who claim they contracted staph while at the jail.

March 23, 2006 The Daily Journal
Gloucester County faces a third lawsuit over an outbreak of drug-resistant staph infections at the county jail in 2003 and 2004. The latest lawsuit -- filed by Jeffrey Maxie of Johnson City, Tenn., and his domestic companion, Marlene Byrnes of Westville -- accuses the county of failing to address the staph outbreak properly. The contagious skin infection can be fatal if untreated. Byrnes contracted staph from close contact with Maxie after he left the jail in April 2004, but before he was aware he had contracted it, said the couple's attorney, Scott C. McKinley. In a lawsuit filed last week in Gloucester County Superior Court, Maxie contends he contracted staph while in the jail on an unspecified charge in April 2004. The county "failed to inform the plaintiffs of the risk of exposure, failed to prevent said exposure, (and) failed to put procedures or policies (in) place to eliminate or minimize the risk of exposure," according to the lawsuit. County Counsel Samuel J. Leone could not be immediately reached for comment. The lawsuit also names as defendants the county freeholder board; the county's Department of Correctional Services; the Sheriff's Department; Prison Health Services Inc., which provides medical care at the jail; former warden John Tevoli; and W. Stanley Nunn, the former corrections director.

November 1, 2005 Courier-Post
A former inmate at Gloucester County Jail alleges in a lawsuit that negligent oversight of the jail caused him to contract a staph infection while he was incarcerated in 2003. The lawsuit, filed by Joseph Favacchia of Swedesboro, is the second to accuse the county of failing to properly address an outbreak of drug-resistant staph infections at the jail in 2003. The contagious skin infection can be fatal if untreated. Favacchia contends he contracted staph while in the jail on a violation of probation charge in November 2003. A year later, Favacchia learned that county officials had been aware of other cases of staph infections at the jail but "withheld and fraudulently concealed" that information, Favacchia contends in his complaint. The county "failed to inform the plaintiff of the risk of exposure, failed to prevent said exposure, (and) failed to put procedures or policies (in) place to eliminate or minimize the risk of exposure," according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit also names as defendants the county freeholder board, the county's Department of Correctional Services, the county Sheriff's Department, Prison Health Services Inc., which provides medical care at the jail, former warden John Tevoli and W. Stanley Nunn, the former corrections director. In September 2004, county freeholders suspended Tevoli for two weeks without pay after determining he misled a Citizens Advisory Board about the extent of the staph outbreak. Tevoli resigned in January after two years as warden.

Morris County Jail
Morris County, New Jersey
Aramark
June 23, 2005
In the usual scenario, people caught using heroin go to jail, but last week authorities discovered the obverse is also true: People who go to jail get caught using heroin.  Two women, Mount Olive Township resident and former state prisoner Karen Ryerson, 42, and Newark resident Leslie Harwell, 36, a worker in the Morris County Jail cafeteria, were charged with heroin distribution.  Harwell is employed by Aramark, a Pennsylvania-based food service company. She was arrested Sunday after allegedly selling drugs inside the jail, according to the Morris County Prosecutor’s Office.  She was charged with possession of heroin and possession with intent to distribute. She is being held in a cell in the jail where she worked on $50,000 bail.  Ryerson was arrested Monday after authorities determined she had been the supplier of the heroin to Harwell. She was charged with possession of heroin and heroin distribution. She is being held in the Morris County jail on $100,000 bail.  According to the Prosecutor’s Office, a corrections internal affairs officer had learned last Thursday that Harwell was allegedly selling the drugs. Harwell was allegedly able to bring in the drugs because employees are not searched upon entry, Rubbinaccio said. Harwell has been employed at the jail since mid-May. Aramark employees prepare food in the jail’s kitchen and help train inmates in food preparation. She has no criminal record, Rubbinaccio said.

New Jersey Department of Corrections
Correctional Medical Services, Life Skills Academy
April 27, 2008 Asbury Park Press
The administration of Gov. Corzine is awarding a no-bid pact to the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey to provide medical care for New Jersey's prison inmates. The move, which the administration views as a money-saver, is being scrutinized by some who fear the shift might actually cost the cash-strapped state, and by extension its taxpayers, more than its deal with a private contractor. These critics worry UMDNJ is ill-equipped to handle the job. Federal investigators found that the state-financed health-care university fumbled away more than $400 million through fraudulent and wasteful spending, though it has recently instituted reforms. Also, UMDNJ has a foggy track record in care-giving to prisoners. UMDNJ in 2005 got the state's OK to provide mental-health care for the inmates, and costs thereafter shot up — 50 percent over what what the private company that was doing the work charged, said John Paul Doyle, a former Democratic assemblyman who now represents the company. State Treasurer David Rousseau, disputing that amount, has said he foresees nothing to indicate costs would now go up. "It is expected the UMDNJ arrangement will reduce the state's overall costs," Rousseau told the Senate Budget Committee." Since the mid-1990s, the physical and dental care for the 27,600 state inmates — plus another 14,000 held in county facilities — has been provided by Correctional Medical Services, of St. Louis, whose latest New Jersey contract is worth $85 million. Last October, the state's inspector general issued a harsh report about CMS, saying it overcharged and had been out of compliance with its New Jersey contract. "It should be competitively bid," said Sen. Leonard Lance, R-Hunterdon, the budget czar of the Republican caucus. "The lowest bidder should be awarded the contract. That could be in the private sector or the public sector."

April 15, 2008 Star-Ledger
Correctional Medical Services is fighting the state's decision to cancel its $85 million annual contract to provide medical, dental and pharmaceutical services to state prisoners. The company filed a protest letter Friday, alleging that the state's decision to replace it with the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey violates state bidding laws and could cost the state $50 million more a year if history is a guide. John Paul Doyle, a former Democratic assemblyman who now represents the company, wrote that the state's cost for providing mental health services for inmates jumped nearly 50 percent in 2005 when it switched from the St. Louis-based company CMS to UMDNJ. "Based on past history and the current budgetary crisis in New Jersey, this unadvertised award, remarkably made in the midst of the existing four-year contract with CMS, makes no sense for the state of New Jersey," Doyle wrote in his letter to the state Treasury Department. He also said the company would forgo a 4.73 percent increase to cover costs associated with caring for the 27,600 inmates in state prisons and an additional 1,400 in mates being held daily in county facilities until a state cell is available. During a Senate Budget Committee hearing yesterday, state Treasurer David Rousseau disputed that it would cost $50 million more to use UMDNJ to provide medical, dental and pharmaceutical services to state prisoners. "We see no basis for this contention," Rousseau said. "In fact, based on the assessment of costs and charges, it is expected the UMDNJ arrangement will reduce the state's overall costs." He said the state hopes to save $3.4 million in built-in profits for CMS and another $5.5 million by enrolling in a pharmaceutical plan --for which CMS cannot qualify -- that caps how much UMDNJ will pay for medication. The treasurer did acknowledge that the state's payroll costs would be greater because it will have to hire more staff, including some of the 800 medical workers who now work for CMS, and pay them fringe benefits. Rousseau also took issue with CMS' numbers on the mental health services contract, saying the state's cost jumped from $33 million to $43.4 million when it switched, not $49 million as the company claimed. He added that the price jumped because the state hired more workers to satisfy a federal settlement that governs how the Department of Corrections cares for mentally ill prisoners. CMS spokesman Ken Fields said the figures came from public budget documents, but "in any event, it's a significant increase over one year compared with CMS."

April 1, 2008 Star-Ledger
The state has canceled its $85 million annual contract with a St. Louis-based company that has provided medical, dental and pharmaceutical services to state prisoners since New Jersey privatized its inmate health care system in 1996, officials said yesterday. The state Treasury Department notified Correctional Medical Services on Friday that it planned to replace it with the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, the state's medical school, according to a copy of a letter obtained by The Star-Ledger. UMDNJ already provides mental health services for state inmates. CMS, whose contract expired last night, had sought a 4.73 percent increase to cover costs associated with caring for the 27,600 inmates in state prisons and an additional 14,000 inmates being held in county facilities until a state cell is available. "The state has decided that it is in its best interest to contract with the University of Medicine and Dentistry to provide all of the inmate health care services," wrote Alice Small, acting director of Treasury's Division of Purchase and Property. The move ends a contentious 11-year relationship with CMS that was launched during then-Gov. Christie Whitman's push to privatize government services. It comes months after the state auditor and the state inspector general issued separate reports critical of the company. It also gives the state-funded university a shot in the arm as it tries to emerge from federal oversight that documented more than $400 million in fraudulent and wasteful spending. The state told CMS it would need to continue staffing inmate health services for 180 days so UMDNJ personnel can get up to speed. Treasury spokesman Tom Vinz said the state believes the new arrangement, which will be enacted through an interagency compact rather than through public bidding, will "improve both the bottom line as well as services." He said officials don't know exactly how much the state would save. "We believe that overall costs will be extremely competitive with the current contract and that the expanded partnership will result in new economies, efficiencies and conveniences that benefit the state," Vinz said. The cancellation came as a shock to CMS, which employs more than 800 health care professionals in New Jersey to handle the state inmate contract, said spokesman Ken Fields. He said the rate increase was pegged to the Consumer Price Index but "was well below the rate of inflation facing all other areas of health care in New Jersey." "The state has been extremely satisfied with our work and has never given us an indication that they would prefer to make a change in contractors," said Fields. "We are disappointed that the state appears to have started a process that would not include getting any competitive bids. It has been our experience that state and local governments feel that a competitive bidding process results in the best value for them." UMDNJ spokeswoman Anna Farneski said the new agreement is "an enormous vote of confidence in UMDNJ's abilities to effectively deliver care to a population in need of comprehensive services." The state paid the medical school $49 million last year to provide mental health services for inmates. Attorney Patricia Perlmutter, who reached a class-action lawsuit in 1999 against the Department of Correction on behalf of mentally ill inmates, said canceling the CMS contract is the end of "a failed experiment." "For years, they delivered very poor service to the prisoners in the state," she said. "There certainly was improvement over time. The number of complaints we would receive did diminish the last year of contract term. But overall they didn't deliver what they promised."

October 16, 2007 AP
For the second time in two years, an audit has found that the Corrections Department failed to adequately monitor its multimillion dollar contract for inmate dental services. Monday's report by Inspector General Mary Jane Cooper mirrors a 2005 audit by Treasury's contract compliance unit. Both concluded that Corrections could not guarantee that inmates were getting services that were paid for or that the state wasn't overpaying the provider, Correctional Medical Services. The inspector general also found that Corrections did not fine the provider for missing deadlines spelled out in the contract, even though it could have collected $1 million or more for screenings that were not conducted within a specified time of a new inmate's arrival. The quality of medical and dental care was not considered. Both reports blamed Corrections' automated systems for being incapable of collecting and retaining the data necessary to monitor compliance with the contract. Correctional Medical Services was awarded a two-year, $168 million contract in April 2005 to provide health services to about 40,000 inmates a year, including a dental portion worth $7.5 million. The contract was renewed for one year in April, Corrections spokesman Matt Schuman said. The report says the contract dictates that certain services be performed within specific time frames — and gives Corrections the authority to assess damages for missed deadlines — because of concerns over provider performance that developed during a prior health services contract. An initial Treasury audit in 2005 showed that Corrections did not have an automated information system capable of providing data to monitor the contract. When a system was finally put in place, it relied on the vendor to enter data, the inspector general's report shows, and had flaws. Schuman said Monday that Corrections had not yet seen the report and would have no comment. Ken Fields, a spokesman for Correctional Medical Services in St. Louis, Mo., also said he was unfamiliar with the report and could not comment.

February 28, 2007 The Star-Ledger
Criticizing the state for trying to shirk its responsibility to provide inmates adequate health care, the New Jersey Supreme Court today ordered the prison system to develop regulations on how to notify inmates when they have a serious medical condition. In its unanimous ruling the high court also ordered the Department of Corrections to give inmates access to their complete medical records and to correct those records if they are inaccurate, since both are essential to adequate medical care. "This is a major victory for the medical rights of prisoners," said Princeton attorney Bruce Afran, who argued the case on behalf of a New Jersey State Prison inmate. "Every other patient in the state has a right to their own medical records and the state was refusing that right to prisoners. The court has now reversed that." The case stems from "one inmate's odyssey to correct an erroneous entry in his medical records," Justice Virginia Long wrote in the court's opinion. The inmate, identified only as J.D.A. because he fears retribution in prison, suffers from hepatitis C, a potentially fatal liver disease. He tested positive for the disease in 2001, but a prison-contracted doctor misread the test results and noted in his file the virus was "not detected." When he learned of the mistake two years later, J.D.A. filed paperwork to have it changed. Correctional Medical Services, the private company responsible for treating New Jersey's 27,000 state inmates, refused to change his medical chart because it was "a legal document" that cannot be altered, court records show. Corrections, meanwhile, claimed only CMS had the "ability to make changes to an inmate's medical record."

February 5, 2007 The Star Ledger
Walking across the courtroom, Jerald Albrecht fell and hit the floor. It was emblematic, perhaps, of his status among the righteous that no one rose to help him. The convict, a sick man, tripped over his leg shackles. Albrecht, 50, is suing a company paid nearly $100 million a year in public funds to provide health care to 27,000 state prison inmates. He contends Correctional Medical Services Inc. of St. Louis failed to provide timely diagnosis and treatment of an often fatal disease that infects him and a large number of fellow inmates -- hepatitis C. He is not the first inmate to sue -- handling the infection among convicts is a controversy that has raged for five years in New Jersey -- but he is conducting a complex legal trial completely on his own. Albrecht, imprisoned for robbery 22 years ago, has no lawyer, no legal training, not even a bachelor's degree. And he is clearly not well. He is up against (literally) Philadelphia lawyers and a judge who has thrown out much of his case by refusing to allow witnesses on which he relied heavily. Federal District Judge Anne Thompson in Trenton cannot help his case, but some of her rulings seem unduly harsh. For example, she enthusiastically allowed a volunteer attorney -- Bruce Afrin of Princeton -- to help Albrecht conduct a direct examination of himself, but then stopped it, in front of the jury, for no apparent reason. She dismissed Afrin, saying the process wasn't "working," but did not explain why. Albrecht recovered. He elicited dramatic testimony from his own expert witness -- Esteban Mezey, a liver specialist from Johns Hopkins University, who was critical of his treatment. He held up well under cross-examination from the Philadelphia lawyers. And, the other day, the day he fell, Albrecht conducted his own cross-examination of the company's expert witness, a professor named Carroll Leevy, and the contrast with what the legal pros did was remarkable. Thompson harried Albrecht as he tried to ask questions, but let Leevy deliver long, unsolicited lectures as responses. His speeches ate up the inmate's time and often sounded, not like testimony, but arguments for the company paying him $2,500 that day to testify. In the end, however, the performance helped Albrecht. One issue is the amount of medication he received once treatment, delayed for months, finally began. Leevy insisted a lesser amount -- given by the company -- was appropriate, but Albrecht got the doctor to admit that he prescribed more of the drug for his own patients and wrote at least one scholarly article recommending a higher dosage. More important, Leevy, a professor at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, showed little patience and no compassion for the likes of Albrecht, a man who must navigate a courtroom in a beige prison uniform, shackles and a fever. And who falls without help. Leevy said the nearly two-year delay in treating Albrecht "would not make a significant difference," in his condition but, under Albrecht's questioning, Leevy conceded he would never treat his own patients that way. "It's always pleasant to have things done in a timely manner," said Leevy, who then added, in a bizarre moment, that Albrecht may even have benefited from the delay because, while he wasn't being treated, new, more effective medications were developed. Pleasant? Meanwhile, damage to Albrecht's liver worsened. Then, while discussing drugs to be used, Leevy said even his private patients might not have access to the best medications. "Unfortunately not being in prison and not being able to get free drugs," he said, they couldn't afford them. The comment drew gasps from the audience and dark stares from jurors. Who could imagine that, no matter what Albrecht did to deserve time, he was "fortunate" to be in jail, suffering from a fatal disease? After his testimony, he was asked whether the comment was "a little harsh." No, said Leevy, because "that was the reality." The testimony reflected an attitude that Albrecht and other inmates want courts, want everyone, to see: State prisons and their private contractors were in no rush to diagnose and treat thousands of inmates suffering from hepatitis C. Because prisoners are bad guys. Who wants to spend money to help them? Never mind that returning sick prisoners to freedom creates health risks for the general population. And never mind, no matter what he did, Albrecht is a citizen with constitutional rights. As well as a mean guitarist who persuaded a thoroughly nonjudgmental Wynton Marsalis to come to the prison to give a master class to a jazz combo Albrecht started. And, most of all, even in shackles, Jerald Albrecht is a man.

July 25, 2006 The Record
New Jersey prison officials failed to make sure that a contractor who was guaranteed $1.5 million a year actually taught inmates or even checked to see if his "life skills" classes worked, the state auditor has found. Trenton-based Life Skills Academy Inc. was allowed to essentially monitor its own progress and bill the state without any supervision, the audit found. Attendance was not properly tracked and, in at least one case, inmates did not take the required amount of training, according to the report, a copy of which was obtained by The Record. Life Skills Academy appears to be the only contractor whose payment is required in the state budget -- an arrangement so unusual the auditor decided to issue a separate report on the program's deficiencies. Records at one prison showed that inmates attended 60 hours of classes, rather than the required 80 hours. A list of inmates who graduated from the same prison, which was not named, included the name of "facilitators" who had already taken the class, the report found Life Skills Academy is run by Emmanuel ben Avraham, a controversial community activist who worked first in Newark and later in Trenton. The company Web site proudly boasts of its ability to teach troubled inmates the skills to make decisions and "empower them to take control of their lives and actions." It features a slide show of photographs that include inmates as well as celebrities such as Whitney Houston. One video shows Avraham's wife, Elianah Avraham, listed as the company's chief of staff, excoriating inmates in a fiery presentation that sounds more like a sermon or a stump speech than a classroom lecture.

December 21, 2004 The Record
Others spoke about how it was a "day of promise." Bringing in the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey to manage mental health care in the state prison system creates a unique partnership between academia and the judicial system, they said. But as state officials were all smiles during this October announcement, Chris Kosseff, who heads UMDNJ's University Behavioral HealthCare division, painted a darker, more realistic picture of the mental health care crisis in state prisons. Facing a group of health professionals, state officials and reporters at the Department of Corrections' Trenton headquarters, Kosseff read from a study published by the Human Rights Watch that talks about how many prison mental health services are "woefully deficient, crippled by understaffing, insufficient facilities and limited programs. Beginning Jan. 1, UMDNJ will provide behavioral health services to the state's 27,000 prisoners - 13 percent of whom have some form of mental illness. UMDNJ will replace Correctional Medical Services Inc. of St. Louis as the state's prison mental health care provider.

November 18, 2004 Daily Record
Former Chester resident Craig Szemple, who is serving three life terms for murdering three people, will be allowed to continue his lawsuit against a state prison medical group he claims neglected to give him physical therapy he needed immediately after elbow and wrist surgery, a state appeals court has ruled. As a New Jersey State Prison inmate, Szemple underwent two surgeries related to carpal tunnel syndrome on Nov. 7, 1996, on his right wrist and elbow. The surgeon ordered physical therapy to begin "ASAP" but Correctional Medical Services, the conglomerate with the contract to administer health services to some 26,000 state prisoners, did not arrange for Szemple to have a physical therapy evaluation until March 17, 1997. Acting as his own lawyer, Szemple in November 1998 sued Correctional Medical Services and the state Department of Corrections, alleging that he was given substandard care and his wrist and elbow worsened as a result of not receiving immediate physical therapy. The medical group tried unsuccessfully several times to get Szemple's lawsuit dismissed. Its lawyers finally succeeded in 2003, when a judge in Mercer County dismissed the lawsuit, mainly on grounds that a chiropractor whom Szemple wanted to use to prove his case was not qualified to do so. The appeals court, in its opinion released Wednesday, reinstated Correctional Medical Services as a defendant in the lawsuit, saying that the chiropractor is qualified to give his opinion about the treatment Szemple received.

October 30, 2004 Daily Journal
A state Department of Corrections employee has filed a lawsuit alleging sexual harassment by a clinical social worker and five other unnamed defendants, according to court papers filed with Gloucester County Superior Court. The suit, filed Tuesday, claims that licensed social worker Robert Stanley subjected Southwoods State Prison employee Tony Valentine to "a pattern of sexual harassment" and "engaged in a pattern of retaliatory and defamatory activity" designed to embarrass him, according to court documents. Valentine filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Division in Nov. 2003, leading to an investigation. The EED concluded Stanley's actions were inflammatory, and recommended his employer, Correctional Medical Services, take remedial action, which the lawsuit alleges was never taken.

October 7, 2002
New Jersey prisons failed to tell hundreds of inmates that they were infected with the potentially fatal hepatitis C virus, in many cases withholding the information for more than a year  In a mass notification prompted by a Philadelphia Inquirer investigation, New Jersey prison officials told 421 inmates in the last two weeks of July of their infection, a medical audit shows.   Uninformed patients can spread the blood-borne disease through shared drug paraphernalia, sex and possibly even blood droplets on shared toothbrushes.   In fact, 21 prisoners were recently released into the community without being told they were infected, according to the audit.   Art Caplan, a medical ethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, said that failing to tell patients about a potentially life-threatening condition was a fundamental breach of standard medical practice.   "The key moral issue is that every person, including a prisoner, has a right to know his health status," Caplan said.   The prisons' private medical vendor, Correctional Medical Services (CMS), said some of the 421 inmates had been told prior to July but it had not been noted in their electronic files.   CMS spokesman Ken Fields said that because of problems transferring paper records to a computer system, it was impossible to determine how many had prior notification.   When pressed for a number, Fields said that "in some cases," inmates already knew.   The delay in notification raises legal issues as well. The nation's courts have a long tradition of ruling in favor of a patient's right to know. In addition, New Jersey has a "Patient Bill of Rights" that reinforces this right for hospital patients.  How that will happen is not clear.   CMS last summer left hepatitis C out of its bid to renew its medical contract with the state prisons.   CMS, which has held the contract for six years, wanted to increase its fee by 30 percent, or about $30 million a year, not including hepatitis C care. Its bid said it would treat and test for hepatitis C only if the state itself picked up the bill.   Brown said the state rejected the CMS bid because it failed to cover hepatitis C treatment.   With the current CMS contract expiring at the end of this month, and no other bidders, Brown said the state will have to come up with alternatives - such as dividing the state's prisons into different regions to encourage more competitive bidding or putting out another request for bids.  (Bradenton Herald)  

Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Plant
Oyster Creek, New Jersey
Wackenhut
April 17, 2003
Two security guards at the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant were removed from their posts a day after an employee found them sleeping on the job, company officials said.     The guards, who were placed on administrative leave by their private employer, were stationed at a second checkpoint outside the plant at 4:50 a.m. Monday when they were found sleeping by an employee coming to work.  This follows on the heels of two other problems reported recently: A local news station aired footage of someone driving around the plant's parking lot unchallenged by security, and warning sirens were found to be inoperative.  "First it was the van, then it was the sirens, now this. What's next?" Lacey resident Janet Wickham said. "It's like Homer Simpson is running the plant or something."  The guards -- whose names were not made public -- were employees of Wackenhut, a Florida-based security firm. Each had been with the company for about a year: one was a former member of the military, the other a former police officer, said John Jasinski, director of nuclear operations for Wackenhut.  (Asbury Park Press)

Passaic County Jail
Passaic County, New Jersey
Aramark
February 19, 2006 Herald News
Passaic County Jail inmate prayers -- and stomach rumblings -- have been heard. Sheriff Jerry Speziale is firing the jail's meal provider, Aramark, and inmates will take charge of the kitchen come May, Speziale spokesman Bill Maer said Friday. "We can do it as well as them at this point," he said. The company's $1.7 million annual contract is being terminated because of poor "quality, service, attentiveness," said Maer. Jail officials haven't estimated how much they will save by cooking in-house, and the financial aspect is secondary, said Maer. Inmates said the food is cold, measly in portion size, not varied enough and served on dirty trays, forcing some to pay as much as $200 a month on pre-packaged food from the jail's commissary. The Philadelphia-based vendor was the only bidder for the contract and company executives have since 2002 contributed at least $3,700 to Speziale's campaign, according to election reports. Speziale had advised the company twice over the past year to step up food quality and professionalism or lose the contract. Earlier this month, an Aramark employee at the jail was charged with selling marijuana to inmates. The federal government began an audit -- its second within four years -- into possible mistreatment of detainees and substandard jail conditions at Passaic. The audit is due for release by April. Maer said the firing of Aramark is unrelated to the audit. Three jail inmates said Friday they believed Speziale's decision is designed to appease a growing chorus of inmate complaints about unacceptable jail conditions, in his quest to secure more federal and state inmates in 2006. Housing those inmates provided $20.9 million to the department last year.

February 5, 2006 NorthJersey.com
A food service employee at the Passaic County Jail was arrested Saturday and charged with smuggling marijuana to inmates. Three weeks ago, an anonymous source tipped jail investigators that Roody Preval, 18, of Spring Valley, N.Y., could be selling marijuana to jail inmates, according to Bill Maer, a spokesman for the Passaic County Sheriff's Department. Employed by Aramark Food Services, Preval had been working as a warehouse supervisor at the Passaic County Jail on weekends since July 15. Investigators searched Preval when he reported to work at 12:10 p.m. Saturday, and they found three grams of marijuana hidden in a Newport 100 cigarette box. Preval was charged with conspiracy to distribute marijuana, possession of marijuana, possession of marijuana 1,000 feet from a school, and conspiracy to provide an inmate with contraband knowing that the contraband was illegal.

January 20, 2006 Herald News
Under pressure from inmates complaining about the quality of jail cuisine, Passaic County Sheriff Jerry Speziale may terminate a $1.7 million food service contract with facility's current provider, Philadelphia-based Aramark. "The sheriff is holding Aramark's feet to the fire regarding the food quality issue," Bill Maer, spokesman for the Passaic County Sheriff's Department, said Thursday. Speziale's threat this week issued to Aramark is his second - last June he changed the company's contract from annual to month-to-month and told Aramark officials the firm needed to improve food quality and increase the menu variety, Maer said. Speziale's promise to re-evaluate Aramark's competency came after a 2 p.m. meeting on Wednesday with a group of about seven U.S. Marshals Service inmates over grievances, which included the poor quality of the food served at the county, Maer said. Much of the changes demanded from the food service company could be traced to a long-simmering controversy over the poor quality of the meals being served at the county jail. A letter dated Jan. 7 from an anonymous group of U.S. Marshals Service inmates said the meals are cold and too cheap to be nutritious.

April 2, 2005 Herald News
The Passaic County Jail may drop its $1.4 million-a-year contract with the food vendor Aramark. "At this point, the department is considering making alterations or terminating the contract," said Sheriff's Department spokesman Bill Maer. "Although the department feels that the vendor has been deficient in many areas, at this point a final decision has not been made." "Preliminarily, yes, (jail officials) have said that we could do it cheaper and better," said County Administrator Anthony DeNova.