The New York Times published an article reporting on a 10-month investigation into New Jersey’s system of halfway houses. The article claims there are widespread problems, including drugs, gang activities, sexual assaults, escapes and violence. The article mentions Community Education Centers, which has strong ties to Gov. Chris Christie and politicians from both parties. Community Education Centers Senior Vice President of Business Development Bill Palatucci told NJ Today Senior Correspondent Desiree Taylor that The New York Times printed incorrect information to further an agenda of hurting New Jersey and the governor.
Palatucci denied the article’s accusations. “The New York Times got their story wrong,” he said. “They’re just sensationalizing a field that they don’t agree with and they don’t like. And they frankly ran their editorial on the front page of their paper without calling it an editorial.”
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One of the areas Palatucci said was misleading related to escapees. He said the article cited 5,100 escapees, but explained most of those individuals were people on parole who violated the terms and not individuals breaking out of a prison environment.
Palatucci called allegations of sexual assaults and gang activity “not true.” He said there have been rare instances of such activities but it’s not the norm in New Jersey. “If you look at the national statistics and talk to experts around the country, New Jersey has one of the best community corrections systems in the country,” he said.
The Garden State began using community corrections in the late 1990s when there was a prison crisis, Palatucci explained. He said every governor has supported the program, including an expansion that took place in 1999 and 2000. “The Times, in trying to attack the governor that they don’t like — a conservative Republican that they don’t like — give this portrayal as something that happened secretively over the last couple of years,” he said.
Christie issued a statement in response to the article where he said he wants greater oversight and more inspections of halfway houses in the state. Palatucci said he welcomes more involvement in the system.
Palatucci said he doesn’t like the term halfway house because he believes it implies a lack of oversight. “They really are work release centers where individuals there are living in groups of 10 to 12 men or women per room,” he said. “There’s plenty of supervision.” He said there is a 30-day blackout period where residents must earn their way out of the living environment.
“There’s an immense amount of accountability and supervision put in place, linking a person with a job, making sure that they’ve gotten to that job, checking up to see if that person has gotten to that job, random drug tests, surprise inspections with canine dogs from the department of corrections and parole to make sure there’s no drugs or contraband in there,” Palatucci explained. “There are thousands of individuals across New Jersey who are in these centers. If there were the types of problems that The Times was talking about, I would think New Jersey reporters would have uncovered it.”
The article implied that residents of the facilities did not receive the treatment they need, but Palatucci denied that claim. “I’m sorry but The New York Times got it wrong,” he said. “They do have an agenda. Their agenda is to hurt New Jersey and to hurt this governor.”
Palatucci said halfway house facilities are necessary. “It costs $49,000 to $50,000 a year to incarcerate someone in a prison in New Jersey. That’s like an ivy league education,” he said. “A drug treatment program is about half that cost.”
He said the prison population in the state has decreased 24 percent since 1999. “The only state that comes close to that is New York and so The Times just doesn’t like this focus on community corrections with big facilities,” Palatucci said.