New Jersey lawmakers quietly moved toward adequately staffing courts, with the Senate approving a bipartisan measure Dec. 19, 2016, to add 20 new judges.
On its official web page, the New Jersey court system notes that in order to achieve justice, our courts must be independent, open and impartial.
To that we would add: adequately staffed.
Amidst the drama playing out this week in the state Legislature, lawmakers quietly moved toward that end, with the Senate approving a bipartisan measure Monday to add 20 new judges to the state's courts.
Crafted by Senate President Steve Sweeney, a Democrat, and Sen. Kip Bateman (R-Somerville), the bill appropriates $93 million from the general fund to raise the number of Superior Court judges from 443 to 463 - a key step toward implementing a set of criminal justice reforms scheduled to go into effect after Jan. 1.
Such reform has been given a lot of lip service in the past few years, both on the state and the federal level.
The United States locks up more people per capita than any other nation, according to the non-profit advocacy organization Prison Policy Initiative.
The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics puts that number at close to 2.3 million adults, many of them behind bars solely because they can't afford to post bail for non-violent offenses.
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Starting next year, New Jersey will move away from a system that depends on monetary bail to one that is tied to the risk a defendant poses.
Approved by voters in a November 2014 ballot initiative, the new laws establish a range of release options for non-violent offenders, while allowing those termed truly dangerous to be detained pending trial.
The laws also provide safeguards guaranteeing a hasty trial for those individuals.
It's a more humane system as well as a fiscally sound one, not only alleviating the burden on the state's prisons, but also allowing individuals to pursue jobs and nurture families instead of sitting in jail because they can't pay their way out.
The changes had backing from such diverse quarters as Gov. Chris Christie, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Drug Policy Alliance, an advocacy group promoting drug policies grounded in science, health and human rights.
At the time the ballot question was up for a vote, the ACLU-NJ estimated that at any given day in the state, more than 10,000 people were in jail, a disproportionate number of them blacks and Hispanics.
With this last piece in place - the addition of more judges to ease the backlog of cases - the Garden State can move forward to creating a more just criminal justice system.
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