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| Report: Jail needs to reduce crowding |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 10/01/2004 |
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The Camden, N.J., county jail should change the way officers are trained and supervised and the way they keep records, said a panel convened after an inmate was beaten and stomped to death in the overcrowded facility last year. The study group report also recommended that staffing levels be increased and that some low-level offenders be released on electronic monitoring instead of incarcerated. County officials ordered the review after the beating death last year of Joel Seidel, a former Cherry Hill stockbroker who was locked up for violating a restraining order against his estranged wife. Seidel, 65, was placed in a cell in the mental health ward with two other inmates. One, Marvin Lister, 35, has a long history of violence against other inmates and staff members and jails and mental hospitals where he has spent much of his adult life. Authorities said he beat Seidel as officers left them unsupervised for too long. Lister is charged with murder. The study group report, written by former state Human Services Commissioner William Waldman, focused largely on how to deal with mentally ill patients. The panel also suggested that municipal judges stop issuing bench warrants sending low-level offenders, especially traffic violators, to jail. Instead, judges should simply suspend the allege offenders' driver's licenses or release them on their own recognizance, the report recommends. The study released Wednesday was the second of three ordered after the Seidel slaying. The U.S. Justice Department has also looked at jail operations. Another study, expected to be released later this year, examines how courts can help reduce jail crowding. |
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