Gov. Phil Murphy speaks to reporters on Dec. 9, 2024, at the Princeton Public Library. (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)
New Jersey officials would return potentially hundreds fewer parole violators to prison and cap how long they could be held under changes Gov. Phil Murphy will announce in his annual state of the state address Tuesday.
Murphy will urge lawmakers to pass legislation that would reduce how many people get hauled back to prison for technical parole violations, which is when someone violates the conditions of their parole rather than commits a new crime. Between 1,100 and 1,200 parolees are in state custody on any given day for technical parole violations.
“Right now, roughly 10% of our state’s entire prison population consists of people who are being held behind bars for committing a technical parole violation, like missing a scheduled meeting or forgetting to report a move to a new town,” Murphy is expected to say in his speech Tuesday afternoon at the Statehouse in Trenton. “Nobody should lose their freedom because of a technicality.”
The state Parole Board decides who is granted parole, under what conditions, and when, as well as whether to charge someone with a parole violation that will land them back in prison. Murphy included $1 million in the current state budget — which runs through June — for a consultant to examine how those decisions get made, although that work hasn’t yet started.
But state law gives the board little discretion on the duration of reincarceration. That leaves many parole violators in prison for months or even years for technical violations like missing curfew, not checking in with their parole officer, and using or possessing alcohol or drugs — even though research shows such reimprisonment has little public safety benefit.
Criminal justice reformers have long called for changes in this area, saying New Jersey officials could close an entire prison if they quit reincarcerating technical parole violators.
The plan Murphy has in mind is laid out in legislation that Assemblywoman Shanique Speight (D-Essex) plans to introduce in coming weeks.
The bill would set new limits on whether a technical parole violation would result in reincarceration, and for how long. Parolees essentially would get a free pass for their first two technical violations, with escalating penalties starting with their third technical violation — seven days in jail for the third violation, 15 days for the fourth, and 30 days for the fifth and each subsequent technical violation.
Such changes would serve as a deterrent — but by punishing violators with shorter stays in county jails, the reincarceration would be less disruptive than a lengthy state stay to a parole violator’s employment, housing, family, and other rehabilitation efforts, administration officials said.
For people already in prison for violating parole, the bill would lower the threshold for release and tie the parole board’s decision-making to public safety.
Under current law, the board can keep parolees in prison if they find “by a preponderance of the evidence” that the person has “failed to cooperate in his or her own rehabilitation or that there is a reasonable expectation that the inmate will violate the conditions of parole” if released. Speight’s bill instead would require the parole board to find a “substantial likelihood” that the person would commit a new crime, the standard that was state law from 1979 to 1997.
The legislation also would expand “compliance credits,” under which parolees can shorten parole terms through good behavior. This change would reduce both how many people are on parole, as well as how long they’re supervised.
Now, the parole board can take one day off the back end of a person’s supervision term for every six days of compliance. Speight’s bill would increase that compliance credit ratio to 1-for-1. It also would expand eligibility to people serving mandatory terms of parole supervision and those sentenced under the No Early Release Act.
Such changes are intended to incentivize good behavior, reduce parole officers’ caseloads, and reinforce the idea that parole should be reserved for people still at risk for criminal behavior, administration officials said.
The legislation also would increase the standard for parole violators’ pre-hearing detention, a change meant to address the parole board’s months-long delays in its hearing schedule that leave some parolees languishing behind bars long before board members even determine whether they’re guilty of a violation.
And it would create other intermediary sanctions beyond incarceration, establish a mechanism for parole officers to withhold compliance credits as an intermediary sanction in some cases, and define due process rights related to the new violation system.
Murphy’s team didn’t have firm projections on how many people would benefit from the governor’s plan. But it’s likely to be hundreds or more, given that more than 16,000 people now are under parole supervision in New Jersey, and the parole board reincarcerates 80% of parolees who violate parole.
That could save the state a bundle because it costs more than 10 times as much — $74,750 a year, on average — to incarcerate someone than to monitor them as parolees in the community, which costs about $6,351 per parolee a year, state budget documents show. The 1,100 to 1,200 people now behind bars for technical parole violations cost the state $82 million to $90 million a year — or $225,000 to almost $250,000 every day.
Other states — including Republican strongholds like Louisiana and South Carolina — have already embraced such strategies to make parole fairer.
“By enacting these reforms, we can uphold our responsibility to restore trust in our criminal justice system and our system of government, more broadly,” Murphy is expected to say in his speech Tuesday.
The proposed parole changes come as New Jersey lawmakers continue working to reduce the state’s prison population. The number of people New Jersey holds in state prisons, juvenile lockups, and halfway houses has fallen 55% in the past two decades, from almost 29,000 in 2000 to about 13,000 this year, the result of marijuana decriminalization, bail reform, pandemic prison releases, and a shift to community-based restorative justice programs.
They also come just a month after Murphy launched a new clemency initiative, in which he pardoned 33 people and commuted the sentences of three women — the first time he exercised his clemency powers in his seven years in office.
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