By Thomas Moran
At the January 2026 monthly meeting of the Criminal Justice Reform Task Force (CJR-TF), after a rather bitterly disappointing “lame duck” session of the Legislature, the task force decided to brainstorm around all the objectives we had been holding, and all the strains that called for attention, but never seemed to get enough traction to actually launch a powerful effort. We dedicated our February meeting to developing a strategy that would better focus the task force, develop techniques that would make us more effective, and to do enough in the public sphere to make it more attractive for others to join our task force and help out. Part of having more people help out, we felt, was having a more direct approach to our subject matter and approaching the legislature more directly and from a position of power.
It is interesting and important to note that while the CJR-TF at FaithAction was considering this, one of our most closely aligned groups, NJ Prison Justice Watch, was adopting a similar approach to the coming legislative session.
Our FaithAction CJR-TF, resolved to organize ourselves around a theme that pervaded our individual campaigns and efforts, that being concern for the mental health impacts of our criminal legal system. This impact pervades many of the issues and areas that we have been working on for years. Although we had a moment of triumph in passing the Isolated Confinement Restriction Act (ICRA) in 2019, and having it on the agenda for implementation in 2020 after the first round of COVID-19, the act was never actually implemented in any real way. The situation in the NJ men’s prisons remains the same or worse. Meanwhile, the adverse impact of the conditions in the men’s prisons takes a heavy toll on incarcerated individuals every day; it also makes an impact on the communities these people return to at the end of their prison terms. We find similar mental health aspects in the treatment of young people incarcerated in the Juvenile facilities.
We began working to better understand why things so often go wrong when a mental health crisis in a community leads to the use of force against the individual experiencing that mental health crisis. We have been trying to understand the role of mental health workers in addressing this kind of event through programs like the Attorney General’s office and the Arrive Together program that the AG founded. It is to be noted that there are other programs with goals like Arrive Together, but which work to different models of police/mental health worker responses. We study these as well. We are applying to Rutgers for summer interns to help us analyze the data from both the Arrive Together database and the AG’s Use of Force database. Once, or if, we get the data from these two databases in a form where we can make meaningful assessments of responses to cases, we can build a case for modifications or other strenghtenings of the Arrive Together or successor programs.
In the course of these discussions, the CJR-TF resolved to work with FaithAction’s Executive Director and Board of Trustees to revive the Legal Advocacy Program (LAP). Around the state, non-profit groups of prison-impacted people are forming and making their voices and opinions known. Several of the most active members of the legal reform alliance are formerly incarcerated individuals, now trained paralegals, who can act with a team of attorneys to bring their perspective to pending legislation and regulations. We want to build this into a practice that can draft legislation from the point of view of the prison-impacted individual. As the returning citizens movement grows, as the credible messenger movement grows, we want to be in a position to turn their lived experience in the carceral state into real insight and humane differences in the legislation that gets drafted and sent to the legislative floor.
Our ally, NJ Prison Justice Watch (NJ-PJW), has undergone a similar transformation after lame duck. NJ-PJW resolves to have a more public face, through social media and Substack. NJ-PJW also plans to hold two mass advocacy events per year, located at NJ men’s prisons. The first event planned for the post-Easter holy season will highlight the inhumane conditions individuals face in the New Jersey men’s prisons. This event will be held outside New Jersey State Prison (NJSP) in Trenton, formerly known as Trenton State Prison. This event will take advantage of Trenton State’s proximity to the legislature to make the petition vivid. NJ-PJW is also working to assist municipalities in passing resolutions demanding that the state cease and desist sending returning citizens to the community who have been so fully damaged mentally by the inhumane conditions of the prison system.
The CJR-TF plans similar actions across a range of issues. Our selection of issues focuses on the following:
What is the impact of this defective practice on individuals themselves and the communities they must return to?
What actions can the Department of Corrections take to comply with the law as passed by the legislature and signed by the Governor?
What methods of policing yield the best results for public safety and the humane treatment of people with whom the police interact?