CO-CHAIR
The Honorable John Gibbons is a Director of Gibbons, Del Deo, Dolan, Griffinger & Vecchione, P.C., a member of the firm's Litigation Department, head of its Alternative Dispute Resolution Group, and founder of the Gibbons Fellowship in Public Interest and Constitutional Law. For his successful challenge before the U.S. Supreme Court of the American government's indefinite detention of foreign nationals at Guantanamo Bay, the New Jersey Law Journal named him 2004 Lawyer of the Year.
John Gibbons was formerly Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals, Third Circuit, and a member of that Court for 20 years (1970-1990). While serving on the Court of Appeals, Judge Gibbons authored approximately 800 published opinions. He was also formerly a professor of Constitutional Law and other subjects at Seton Hall University Law School, where he held the Richard J. Hughes Chair in Constitutional Law until June of 1997.
He is a Past President of the New Jersey State Bar Association, a Life Member of the American Law Institute and a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation. He is a former member of the House of Delegates of the American Bar Association and a former Chair of its Committee on Fair Trial and Free Press, and also a former Director of the American Arbitration Association. Judge Gibbons is also a Trustee Emeritus of the Practicing Law Institute, a Trustee Emeritus of Holy Cross College, and a Trustee of The Fund for New Jersey.
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OPENING STATEMENT
In his opening remarks yesterday, my co-chair Nick Katzenbach explained that the focus of this two-day hearing is on the institutional causes of violence and abuse: In other words, widespread, intractable problems that are bigger than any individual. Yet real people—those who are incarcerated and those who work in prisons and jails—confront these mammoth problems and suffer from them everyday. Yesterday we heard testimony about two such problems: overcrowding and the misuse of isolation.
Today, we'll explore the state of medical and mental health care in correctional facilities—the heart-rending failures as well as the programs and people who are beating the odds. There could not be a more appropriate time for this inquiry.
As you heard yesterday, our prisons are increasingly filled with people who are seriously mentally ill—partly the result of fewer psychiatric hospitals and other community-based services.
And two weeks ago in California, a federal judge placed the state's prison medical care into receivership after experts documented 64 preventable deaths and many more serious injuries due to medical malpractice or malfeasance over the course of the last year. The enormity of the crisis and response is unprecedented. Today's witnesses—including Dr. Joe Goldenson, an expert in the California case—will help put California's problems in context.
In just a few minutes, you'll hear Sister Antonia Maguire recount from her own experience case after case of medical failures and neglect, often with dire consequences for the women incarcerated in the New York State prison where she works. Her testimony forces us to confront the fact that the nature of medical care for some people in some facilities is nothing less than abusive and inhumane.
But you'll also hear from Arthur Wallenstein, a 30-year corrections veteran who ran one of the first facilities to be accredited by the American Medical association and who currently oversees corrections in Montgomery County, Maryland. He'll testify that the quality of correctional health care overall has improved dramatically over the course of his career, and let me quote him here: "It is not singularly a story of abuse but rather a much broader story of change, constitutional growth, and development."
Just a state away, in Pennsylvania, Jeffrey Beard is evidence of the evolution Arthur Wallenstein refers to. Jeffrey Beard oversees a system of state prisons that has one of best protocols nationally for dealing with infectious disease—an aggressive policy and practice that protects inmates, officers, and the public health. He will tell us that decent, effective health care in prisons is both the right thing to do and the smart choice. As he says, "If we don't pay today, we will really pay tomorrow."
The witnesses who will testify about mental health care in prisons are just as diverse in terms of their experience and perspectives. You'll hear Dr. Gerald Groves describe battling officers, administrators, and an underlying culture of disrespect in the New Jersey facilties where he worked just to provide basic mental health care. And you'll hear Dr. David Kountz describe a fruitful partnership treatment between the Somerset, New Jersey, County Jail where he works and the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Same state. Different experiences.
The challenge before all of us is to resist the temptation to choose among these accounts, as if the failures negated the victories or vice versa, and instead to accept this patchwork reality and learn from it. I very much look forward to what we're about to hear today.
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