Influential New Jersey Pastor Says He Can't Morally Support the State Budget — Unless It Stops Paying for Youth Prisons

When a group of African-American pastors met in Trenton earlier this month to urge state legislators to support Gov. Phil Murphy’s proposed millionaire’s tax, Rev. Charles Boyer was noticeably absent.

Boyer, who pastors the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Woodbury, is also director of Salvation and Social Justice — a faith-based group that advocates for progressive policies. He stood alongside Murphy in March, for instance, in support of legalizing marijuana to end the racial disparities in marijuana arrests. And Boyer likes Murphy's plan for taxing millionaires extra to raise revenue for public schools, transit and other programs to help lower-income people.

It is "the right thing to do, just from the perspective of fair taxation,” said Boyer.

But he said he cannot morally support the budget because it includes money to pay back bonds designated for building youth prisons. The state Economic Development Authority board approved bonds in December 2017 to build three new juvenile justice facilities, when Republican governor Chris Christie was in office.

Boyer, along with the Newark-based group Institute for Social Justice, is fighting the project because the state already has several juvenile justice facilities with empty beds. They would rather see the state use the space it has, and shift the focus away from incarceration.

He is asking state legislators and Murphy to shift the use of the bonds to develop programs that prioritize treatment-focused rehabilitation programs over new facilities.

Murphy spokeswoman Alexandra Altman did not respond to questions about whether the governor would support using the project money for such programs.

The governor campaigned on a promise to address New Jersey's high incarceration rate for black people compared to whites, as a social justice issue. But Murphy has said little publicly about the opposition to youth prisons. According to the Institute for Social Justice, black youth in New Jersey are incarcerated at 30 times the rate of white youth. Boyer called it a form of slavery.

He is also asking Senate President Stephen Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin not to appropriate money to pay back the EDA bonds if the facilities project moves forward.