White House officials praised Camden’s jail. Women incarcerated there tell a different story

For two days, Morgan Neilio, incarcerated at the Camden County Correctional Facility, did not have toilet paper.

Neilio said she had to find other items to use in replacement, like pads or ripped-up shirts.

Jail policy says officials should have responded to her official complaint about the lack of toilet paper within 10 days — by Feb. 28, 2022. Instead, it took them five months. 

“It was extremely upsetting and degrading,” she said.

As recently as January 2024, White House officials praised the jail and its then-warden, Karen Taylor, for the facility’s medication-assisted treatment program to help incarcerated people conquer opioid addiction. 

But people imprisoned in Camden’s county lockup say conditions there are downright inhumane. They say there are often no recreational opportunities, they have limited access to social workers, meals are inadequate and unhealthy, and there is no access to alcohol and drug addiction recovery services — even as the majority of those incarcerated at Camden struggle with addiction.

Neilio and several other women incarcerated filed a lawsuit in federal court last year alleging that the jail, its warden, law librarian, and others have committed a “failed duty of care” that violates their constitutional rights.

“We all know that jails and prisons are not intended to be a trip to Disneyland,” said Racquel Romans-Henry, policy director for the racial justice group Salvation and Social Justice New Jersey. “But what we’re seeing at these facilities are a real dereliction of duty around the agencies who have been charged with custody, security, and wellness of the human beings.”

Camden County spokesman Dan Keashen said state inspection reports show Camden’s jail “is in compliance with all of the standards governing correctional facilities throughout the state.”

Keashen said jail logs show Neilio had toilet paper and supplies delivered to her within one day of her 2022 grievance, which he called “ficticious.”

Waiting long before trial

Neilio has been behind bars in Camden’s jail for almost four years awaiting her trial.

Seventy percent of people being held there have yet to have a trial, according to the most recent state inspection report — people the law considers innocent because a judge or jury hasn’t yet weighed their case.

Chanel Adams, a mother of seven, has been detained since July 2022, also in advance of her trial. 

“No one should have to be caged for 527 days. Like a f—king cow!” she said in a phone interview last year.

In 2017, then-Gov. Chris Christie signed a law intended to reduce pretrial detention, especially for people charged with minor, nonviolent offenses. Now, suspects must be deemed “a risk to community safety” by judges if prosecutors want to detain them before their trial. 

For Leslie McNair-Jackson, who heads the Camden County Office of the Public Defender, the new process makes it “a bit more difficult” for some people to be released before their trial.

McNair-Jackson said sometimes circumstances in a person’s case may change after they’ve been ordered detained before their trial, but judges are not always willing to reconsider their initial order of detainment. If a person isn’t released at their first court appearance, or their initial detention hearing isn’t successful, then they’re likely to remain behind bars until their trial, she said.

She said the criminal justice system across the country is “woefully underprepared” to deliver on the right to a speedy trial. Pretrial detention — especially when it drags on for months or years — can drive people to plead guilty just to get out of jail, she added.

Officials in the criminal justice system, she said, “expect that all the cases that are pending trial, some of those cases are actually going to plead.”

Inside the jail, Adams expressed a similar sentiment.

“They make you sit here long enough until you break, take a deal,” she said.

Audibly crying, Adams described the pain of missing each of her children’s birthdays since the beginning of her incarceration. 

“I don’t know who you’re supposed to ask for help in here,” she said.

Keashan said jail officials have no control over the length of time an individual is detained, adding that anyone being held for an extended period of time in the facility would be there because of a violent offense.

“That said, the criminal justice system, which includes the inmate, judge, prosecutor, defense attorney, own the responsibility for the length of stay at the CCCF,” he said.

Few resources behind bars

Those detained at Camden’s jail say resources behind bars are scarce.

Several incarcerated people told the New Jersey Monitor they were denied access to Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous. About a third of the charges brought against people in Camden County are related to drugs and drug paraphernalia, and jail officials say 67% of people who come through the jail struggle with addiction.

Acting Warden Rebecca Franceschini said in an email that upon intake, individuals are screened for substance use disorder. The jail has contracted with the Consortium, a local medical group, to provide care, she added.  

But Franceschini also confirmed the lack of Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous programs, saying those programs should start in mid-April. In an earlier email, she blamed the delays on the “logistics” for bringing in volunteers to run the program. 

Franceschini took over the jail after Taylor stepped down in January. 

Jail officials told the New Jersey Monitor that the lockup offers a high school equivalency degree program, art therapy, and occasionally, a book club. Before the pandemic led to limits on who could enter the jail, Camden had other programs, including tutoring, but Franceschini confirmed that tutoring remained suspended as of early April because the jail is “working through the financial logistics.”

“The CCCF provides some of the most comprehensive substance use/addiction services in the nation which includes these services during reentry and transitional housing when an inmate leaves the jail,” Keashen said. “As far as AA is concerned, it starts up again this week and was not available for a period of time based the COVID pandemic and a dearth of volunteers for this service.

Incarcerated people say they also don’t get the daily recreation time the state recommends.

Neilio filed two grievances about this issue, in July 2020 and July 2022. The first time, a corrections official replied that “time out of your cell is recreation time,” and noted that “we do make every effort to get you to inside or outside rec.” In the second grievance, she said residents of her floor hadn’t been outside in a month and went outside just five times total in the prior five months.

“They never take us,” Adams said. “They always tell you they don’t have the staff.”

Keashen said recreational and leisure opportunities are available to people incarcerated at the jail and consist of access to televisions, phone use, games, tablet use, and yoga outside of the living quarters.

“As the seasons change and the weather gets colder, inmates will refuse outdoor recreational opportunities during the winter months. Based on weather in general- specifically snow and rain outdoor recreation can only be provided indoors on certain days,” Keashen said.

County jail conditions — ‘hazardous even to a dog’ — spur calls for independent oversight

Staffing

The pandemic exacerbated staffing issues at many prisons across the country, and Camden was no exception. 

State Department of Corrections records show that correctional staff in Camden fell during the pandemic, and has recently bounced back. The total number of corrections officers at Camden decreased from 300 total officers in 2018 to 246 in 2020, state inspection reports show, then rose to 286 in 2022. Inspections also show that in 2021, the jail had just one social worker and one psychologist, but in 2022, that changed to two social workers and three psychologists.

Camden’s staffing issues are not unique. The Marshall Project said in a January report that prisons in almost every state are struggling to add staff. Franceschini didn’t respond to a question about how staffing changes have impacted jail operations.

“It’s a challenge at Camden County. They just don’t have the manpower. That’s what I’ll say,” said Chris Parry, co-director for compassionate outreach at St. Andrew the Apostle in Camden. Her group used to run Bible studies in the jail.

In March 2020, Parry said, she and other volunteers were told they couldn’t enter the jail because of COVID-19 restrictions. Between August and December 2021, women from the church ran virtual Bible studies over Zoom. Then the visits stopped.

“They said, we just don’t have the manpower here. We should be back after the New Year,” Parry recalled. But the virtual visits never resumed. 

Jail officials pointed to recent recruitment efforts on social media and at job fairs to fill correctional vacancies. 

“Not everyone wants to be a law enforcement officer these days,” Taylor said in an interview conducted before her retirement. “We have to be in the community — let people know what we have to offer, what we’re doing, how we help the community, the different programs.”

Taylor denied that staff shortages significantly impacted day-to-day jail operations.

“We make sure that we have the staff as necessary to operate the facility. At times, we have vacancies, but we minimize the impact by reallocating people to different positions,” she said. 

For Adams, who has been jailed for nearly two years before her trial, the women incarcerated at Camden’s jail “really just need someone to listen.” Neilio, in the lawsuit she filed against jail officials, quoted a 1975 decision from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals that found in favor of incarcerated people who sued over crowded conditions at two New York City jails.

“Correctional institutions must be more than mere depositories for human baggage and any deprivation or restriction of the detainees’ rights beyond those which are necessary for confinement alone must be justified by compelling necessity,” the ruling says.