Good morning! Let’s get right to the newsletter. As always, thank you for reading! — Amy
Hudson County jail back in the news
In a press release from the Office of the State Comptroller on 3/21:
The Office of the State Comptroller (OSC) today directed Hudson County not to proceed with an award of a $13.5 million contract to a prison healthcare management company because the County used an improper process without free and open competition. As part of OSC’s statutorily established oversight, OSC has repeatedly advised the County how to properly procure the services, but the County has failed to comply and has refused to follow OSC’s directive that the County report how it will comply with New Jersey’s procurement laws.
In the March 21 letter addressed to County Counsel, OSC said that the County circumvented transparency and public bidding requirements when it didn’t advertise the opportunity to bid, invited a few hand-picked firms to apply, and improperly entered into private negotiations with the preferred vendor. Since December 2023, Hudson County has repeatedly disregarded OSC’s directive to submit a corrective action plan to procure the services using a competitive, publicly advertised process, as the law requires. OSC's letter directed the County to submit this plan within five days. Acting State Comptroller Kevin Walsh today also sent a letter to Governor Murphy, Senate President Scutari, and Assembly Speaker Coughlin, notifying them of Hudson County’s ongoing violations and failure to cooperate with OSC.
and also:
OSC found that Hudson County disregarded OSC’s statutorily established oversight and submitted the procurement in November 2023, two months after proposals had already come in, and the lowest bid exceeded $12.5 million. By law, if a contract is valued at $12.5 million or more, the local government is required to submit it to OSC for review and approval at least 30 days before beginning the procurement process.
OSC’s review also found that Hudson County had used an improper procurement process in 2018 when it procured services from the prison healthcare management company named Wellpath. The County renewed Wellpath’s contract year after year, without advertising, resulting in an expenditure of over $39.5 million over five years.
One of the things I try to do with this newsletter is shine some light on stories that aren’t getting a lot of play elsewhere or stories that sort of disappear into a memory hole. This struck me as one of them.
Prisons, by design, exist on the edges. They occupy a huge presence in literature and the movies, but most of us have never been in one. Many of us — and I plead guilty of this as well from time to time — choose not to really know what goes on there. Prison is where the bad people go, and if they get a little rough treatment, well, maybe they shouldn’t have been so bad is the logic.
The irony here is if you think about it, the safest place on the planet to be should be a prison. You’re provided shelter and three meals a day by the state, where you’re monitored by security guards and surrounded by surveillance cameras 24/7. Your every move is tracked by a system. Yes, you’re in an enclosed space with a bunch of other people who may be prone to violence, but you’re also constantly watched and the spaces are staffed by fully armed guards. On the outside, residents clamor for more surveillance cameras and police to keep them safe; in prison, there’s no shortage of either of these, and yet things seem to constantly go wrong. Prison rape and “jailhouse justice” are normalized in jokes and punchlines.
I’m bringing this all up because I’m betting that the majority of new residents to Jersey City — the ones that moved here in the last five years or so — probably don’t even realize that Hudson County has a prison or how close it is to Jersey City. For most people, why would you? But we do, and I can walk to it from my house (ok it would be a long walk, but it would take me about 40 minutes to get there), just over the border and into Kearny. I forget it’s there too, until something comes up to remind me or I happen to drive by it on my way to Newark. But because it’s hard for some of us to remember it even exists, it’s probably harder to understand even the very recent history of this same prison.
Back in 2017-2018, the Hudson County Correctional Center was plagued with a rash of inmate deaths, one of which were especially gruesome, and all of which involved extreme health emergencies or lack of care. I’m not talking about people who died of a sudden heart attack or something like that. The issues that plagued the jail at that time were characterized by extreme neglect. Here’s one person’s story:
Detainee Rolando Meza Espinoza, 43, died in June after collapsing at the Hudson jail. His attorney says Espinoza, a Salvadoran national, had informed ICE agents and jail officials that he suffered from anemia, cirrhosis, and diabetes, but that medical staff only treated his diabetes. He died June 10 at Jersey City Medical Center, where he was taken after he collapsed.
And here is a story that has haunted me from the time I first read it in 2018, about a 48 year old woman serving a six month DUI sentence (and, I don’t usually do this, but trigger warning — if you’re just looking for some light reading this Sunday morning, you might want to stop here and come back another time):
The death of a 48-year-old woman at the medical ward inside Hudson County jail has been ruled a suicide after an "abundant amount of foreign material" was found inside her stomach, her autopsy report revealed. […]
[Jennifer] Towle's body was brought for an autopsy, where medical examiners found more than three liters of inedible material and a "minimal" amount of food in her stomach, the reports indicate. The average capacity of a human stomach is about one liter.
Items found inside her stomach included a nail clipper, an examination glove, Styrofoam, plastic, condiment packages, milk cartons, drink cartons, paper, a band-aid, a plastic bag and a cookie wrapper, the reports say. Doctors also found a non-food item stuck inside her esophagus.
The initial report, dated Sept. 19, did not determine a cause or manner of death, but later that day an amended report was filed ruling Towle's death a suicide. The cause was related to a perforated ulcer in her stomach from ingesting non-food items, the report states.
There were also a rash of suicides, including at least one by an inmate on suicide watch, during which inmates are subjected to an extreme form of surveillance meant to prevent such exactly such an act from taking place. All of these happened in a cluster, separated by a few months. All together, there were six inmate deaths, four of which were suicides.
So the prison has this recent history of healthcare neglect (at the very least) at the prison during that time. And I’m bringing this all up because in the wake of these deaths, hearings were held and changes were made, and it seemed like things were going better. We can’t really know, since none of us are there, but it certainly seemed like things had turned a corner and were improving.
But now, we have this — a contract that involves inmate healthcare that the Comptroller is asserting was quietly signed without an open process, and which the Comptroller is sufficiently concerned about to publish a press release. This would be a serious accusation if it involved prisoner uniforms or food contracts, but given that it involves healthcare — the exact thing that troubled the prison just a few years ago — well, that’s especially concerning.
It’s absolutely possible this is all an administrative mistake and that there’s nothing to truly be concerned about, and that the Comptroller is being a bit too aggressive with this press release. But when it involves a population and a place that can be an information black hole, I think it’s extra important to pay attention to what’s going on there. None of my friends or family members are in jail, so I only hear about conditions there when they get really bad and make the papers; even when that happens, it has to be something truly horrific like Jennifer Towles’ death to really make me pay attention.
The Comptroller’s report is more about government spending than anything else — nothing is being alleged about the treatment of the prisoners in that statement. The process they’re saying Hudson County skipped over is all about insuring that taxpayers get competitive bids on things their tax dollars are paying for — that’s it; it’s not necessarily about getting the best care for inmates, it’s about providing adequate care. But given that we’ve seen what a slip in medical services in the prison can result it, I think we need to be extra careful about handling that process correctly and with an eye to doing everything by the letter. If we were to talk about the cases I mentioned above purely from a financial basis, all three of them have resulted in lawsuits for the county. I prefer to look at this from the moral perspective (“the county has an obligation to provide for those in its care”), but even looking at it in just plain dollars and cents, it makes the most sense if inmates get the proper medical care they need to avoid costly lawsuits down the road.
At a time when all of us have so many things vying for our attention, it can be really hard to hold space for something that isn’t right there in front of us. The inmates of the Hudson County jail are human beings and they deserve care that is humane and rehabilitative, and their family members deserve to know that they are being kept safe. I really hope we’re not inching back to where we were in 2017-8, and that this controversy can be quickly and fully resolved.
ICYMI
JCBOE update: guys, it’s going great. This week, the trustees who were so upset about the dysfunction of the former president and vice-president that they had to overthrow them a few weeks ago turned around and voted unanimously for the $1 billion budget that was presumably overseen by that same president and vice-president, and that several trustees at the meeting complained they hadn’t had time to review. So, the board is dysfunctional enough that a coup is justified, but not dysfunctional enough to call into question the work done by the previous office holders; also, we haven’t had time to really look at it but we’re gonna vote yes anyway. This can’t be how we move forward. More details in this story.
There was a rally for pedestrian safety on Wednesday, right before the city council meeting. Participants in that then went inside and gave public testimony to the council, during which time Council President Joyce Watterman mentioned in a statement that (presumably years ago?) she lost her three year old son via a traffic accident. This is an incredibly sad story that I don’t think has been shared publicly before, and it’s a real testament to the importance of this issue. If you want to watch the testimony given by the public (statements by the council members directly follows) go to this video and advance it to 36:31.
“Hoboken Honey”
Ok well — this week’s newsletter was a bit depressing so I wanted to end on a lighter note. I was recently shopping for some yarn for a weaving I’m working on and came across this:
I present to you “Hoboken Honey,” one of Lion Brand’s Hometown series. Lion Brand is a decent, mass produced yarn brand available at Michael’s and Joann’s and all major crafting stores. Their “Hometown USA” series is a salute to different parts of the country, described as “bright, primary colors, versatile multi-colors, and textural tweeds” on their website. I think they may have added the word “tweed” right before rolling out Hoboken Honey — their initial run of Hometown USA’s yarns were more sports team oriented, and had bright, knockout colors. Hoboken Honey, meanwhile, is a somewhat drab but polite neutral beige, perfect for knitting up something tasteful but boring. If I were a Hobokenite I’d probably be annoyed, but I leave that to the people of that city to decide.
Anyway, Hoboken has a population of under 70k whereas Jersey City is more like 290k, so where the hell is our yarn, Lion Brand? But as I ruminated on this, I came to the inevitable question: what color would it be?
I’d like to suggest a variation on this yarn, which already exists but not in the thickness of the Hometown USA series so I think there’s still a point for Lion Brand to make it. If you don’t feel like clicking: it is the color of chromium — silvery, metallic blue — which for decades plagued this city, and the remediation of which signified a new day for us. Yes, it’s a bit bleak to represent a city with the color of the toxic waste that sickened its residents for years, but it’s also part of our history and shows how we’ve overcome great obstacles to become the community we are today.
So get with it, Lion Brand. Somebody start a petition or something. I don’t know. But I want my shiny blue yarn already!
Thank you for writing about the Hudson County Jail. These stories are so often hidden (as you said) and I appreciate you using your platform to bring it to light