David Goodell, a halfway house fugitive accused of killing an ex-girlfriend, pleaded guilty on June 20 to murder charges, ending a case that highlighted problems in New Jersey’s troubled halfway house system. Goodell escaped in 2010 from the custody of a Newark halfway house run by Community Education Centers (CEC), the private company that dominates the state’s $100 million halfway house system. The privately run facilities are bigger than many state prisons but have little of the security.
As we wrote last Sept. 24, halfway houses were intended to offer job training programs and counseling services, but they have long been plagued by drugs, violence and escapes, according to a 10-month investigation published in The New York Times. One article was about Delaney Hall in Newark, where one or two low-wage, unarmed workers typically supervise 170 inmates, where robbery, sexual assault and gang activity is so bad that inmates regularly ask to be returned to prison, where they feel safer. Another covered a gruesome murder made possible by unchecked gang activity, inadequately trained staff and a culture of fear and compliance among nongang-affiliated inmates.
