Black and Latino New Jerseyans make up 38% of the state’s population, but according to state Department of Corrections and census data, up to 80% of inmates are members of these two overlapping groups.
According to a coalition of reform supporters, the 2-1 ratio represents an overrepresentation of Black and Brown individuals incarcerated. They claim that this is due to historical and current injustices rather than innate crime, and they want to address this with a new criminal justice reform platform.
The Latino Action Network Foundation, a statewide advocacy organization, hosted a conference in Newark on June 15th to reveal the platform, which was named Working Summit 2025 Action Agenda: Transforming New Jersey’s Criminal Legal System.
The 84-page action plan, written by Chris Etienne, an Africana Studies scholar at Princeton University, cites data from the Newark-based Institute for Social Justice, which shows that, despite both groups committing crimes at the same rate, Black children are 24 times and Hispanic youth are 5 times more likely to be sentenced to a juvenile correction facility.
According to the paper, this overrepresentation is mostly caused by the increased policing of young people of color in urban communities in recent decades, as well as variations in police tactics when interacting with varied populations. These figures for adult populations are essentially unchanged.
The platform aims to address systemic injustices in New Jersey’s criminal justice system, specifically the disproportionate incarceration of Black and Latino individuals, according to its backers.
In order to reduce violent crime in the state’s largest city, Newark Mayor Ras J. Baraka established street teams to prevent violence. These are just one example of the policies and practices that can be implemented at the municipal level by local police departments or in collaboration with them.
The blocked legislation that would allow cities and towns to establish civilian review boards with subpoena authority is one of the statewide improvements that the platform also calls for.
After being presented to coalition members at a January summit at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, close to LAN’s headquarters in Freehold, the platform was made available online last Thursday.
Salvation & Social Justice, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, the American Friends Service Committee’s Prison Watch program, United Black Agenda, Universalist Unitarian Faith Action, and the Puerto Rican Action Board are among the organizations that are part of the coalition.
The New Jersey State Parole Board, the state attorney general Matthew Platkins’ office, the Office of the Public Defender, the Juvenile Justice Commission, and the New Jersey Department of Corrections were among the state agencies participating in the Juneteenth conference. This gave LAN permission to conduct focus groups with juvenile inmates as well as inmates at East Jersey State Prison and the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women.
Cuqui Rivera, the outreach director for LAN and the planning chair for the reform platform, thanked the corrections department for allowing the focus groups and stated, “Our goal is to unite advocates with state and community leaders, decision-makers, returning citizens, incarcerated voices, and justice-impacted families.” Its goal is to foresee future solutions that are feasible, financially sound, structurally and legally feasible, and realistic.
Among the recommendations are:
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Implementing comprehensive training for credible messengers, or community role models, to de-escalate violence, support and mentor at-risk youth.
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Enhancing and expanding the use of diversionary, or pretrial intervention, programs that take into account an individual s circumstances or condition contributing to their arrest, instead of using traditional prosecution and incarceration.
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Creating an emergency alert system, like storm warnings, that alert police partners to criminal activity, so they can try to de-escalate a mental health, domestic violence or other type of disturbance, that doesn t necessarily only demand first responders with lethal force authority as a resolution.
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Creation of a New Jersey version of Eric s ID Law, which allows people with hidden disabilities to indicate their condition on their driver s license or some other form of ID to inform first responders to whom it may appear they re meeting with resistance or hostility and not a medical issue. Such aprogram exists in Passaic County
, for example, but not statewide. Maryland s existing Eric s Law is named for Eric Carpenter-Grantham, who has autism and sought a system to prevent just such a misinterpretation of his or his friends behavior during a police encounter.
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Increase law enforcement training in cultural competency, or understanding of cultural norms, in de-escalation techniques, and in the use of non-lethal force.
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Require police departments to post civil suits and officers appeals of discipline on agency websites, as well as statistics on stop-and-frisk arrests, traffic stops and other policing data.
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Eliminate the use of unmarked vehicle groups of plainclothes officers, or Jump Out Boys, who by nature may be hard to identify as police and therefore trigger unpredictable responses by the suspects they target or bystanders.
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Expand translation and interpreting services for defendants and prisoners whose first language is not English.
According to Edwin Chino Ortiz, who attended the conference last week and is a co-founder of the non-profit Returning Citizens Support Group for ex-offenders, written and spoken language services are crucial for Spanish speakers in the legal system because a miscommunication can affect a person’s sentence or record.
According to Ortiz, who was incarcerated for 30 years for a crime he committed at the age of 18, there are language difficulties and a lack of information in a language that Latinos can read and comprehend. Particularly for parolees who are unable to articulate themselves.
Plea discussions are frequently impacted by the linguistic barrier, Ortiz continued. A sentence can be altered by a single word.
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