“This unprecedented reform initiative, which takes effect on January 1, 2017, includes an amendment to Article I, paragraph 11 of the New Jersey Constitution that was approved overwhelmingly by voters. For the first time in the State’s history, courts will be authorized to order the preventive detention of dangerous defendants charged with non-capital crimes.”
This comes as no surprise since voters are almost always in favor of harsher punishments for suspected criminals, including the pre-trial detention of those that are presumed to be innocent of the allegations against them. The problem is that people too often do not consider the costs of housing defendants in the county jail, especially those charged with victimless and non-violent offenses drug offenses, or status offenses like undocumented immigrants who possess false identification documents. Criminal justice reform is supposed to address these costs by providing alternatives to incarceration like electronic monitoring for non-violent offenders. This should work in theory, but this writer’s experience with the past electronic monitoring program that the Ocean County jail did away with counsels otherwise since the program was done away with due to the excessive costs associated with its implementation.”