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KEANmag
Jersey Road Trip
U.S. Senator Cory Booker’s #JerseyRoadTrip, passing through all of New
Jersey’s 21 counties in August 2016, may sound like the lighthearted title
of a movie, but it was serious business. Booker traveled the state in an
effort to highlight his legislative priorities, and one of them – juvenile
justice reform – brought the rising national star of the Democratic
Party to Kean University’s William Loehning Conference Center, for a
roundtable discussion.
“New Jersey is a leader in juvenile justice reform,” said Booker. “I want to
advance the reform cause in states around the country who are decades
behind. There is a sense of urgency about this issue that drives me every
day in my work in Washington.”
More than a dozen juvenile justice reform activists, child and family
advocates, legislative leaders, public defenders, and formerly
incarcerated youth and their families joined Booker in taking a hard
look at a system which, they say, is rife with injustice; doing more to turn
youth offenders into hardened criminals than to rehabilitate them.
J, a recently incarcerated youth identified only by his first initial,
described a “corrupt and twisted” system that denies an education to
incarcerated young people and relies on inhumane treatment, such
as solitary confinement, to act both as punishment and protection for
physically and emotionally vulnerable youth. Noting the high recidivism
rate for incarcerated juveniles, J said his time in a state facility was like
being in a “gladiator school.”
Stories like J’s are what motivate Booker and the others in attendance
to work for reform. The Sentencing Project reports a 31 percent drop in
the overall New Jersey prison population since 1999, but on any given
day in the state, 300 youth are in detention, said Udi Ofer, the executive
director of the American Civil Liberties Union in New Jersey.
U.S. Senator Cory Booker Hosts
Juvenile Justice Reform Roundtable
at Kean University
KEANews
“When someone goes to jail, more than just an individual is affected.
Prison affects a person’s family and neighborhood as well,” said New
Jersey State Senator Raymond Lesniak, a leading proponent of criminal
justice reform who participated in the roundtable. “Communities are
safer when juvenile offenders are put on a more productive path in life.”
A wide variety of reform measures were discussed at the roundtable,
including; racial inequality in a system where a majority of the
incarcerated are people of color; improvements in education for
incarcerated minors; closing loopholes that allow juvenile offenders
to be tried as adults; additional counseling and other support services
in juvenile detention centers; sentencing, bail, and probation changes;
legislation to require consistent reporting of violent incidents in youth
facilities; and developing community-based facilities focused on
rehabilitation.
Booker acknowledged that pushing for juvenile justice reform is an
uphill battle in the current Washington political climate, but assured all
of those gathered in the Loehning Center, “I am irrationally committed
to talking about this and trying to make changes through the Senate.”
