New Jersey prisons are supposed to address all grievances, complaints and reports of abuse they receive from inmates. But according to Kory McClary, the system is broken. And that means, there’s no oversight at all. 

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According to the New Jersey State Prison (NJSP)  inmate handbook, the remedy system provides a mechanism for inmates to address complaints, concerns, questions, problems, and grievances to correctional facility staff through the use of either the Jpay remedy system or the inmate paper system. But the NJSP remedy system is broken. The system is slow, ineffective, and outright neglectful. These deliberate actions on the part of NJSP undermines trust and denies incarcerated individuals the chance to have their concerns addressed.

NJSP uses the JPay electronic remedy system. For guys who choose not to use JPay, they can submit their remedy on a paper form. The electronic process is supposed to be transparent and allow incarcerated men the ability to track the status of their remedy. The electronic system is set up to show how long an incarcerated person has been waiting on a response to their remedy, with 30 days for officials to respond to grievances and 15 days to respond to inquiries. Once the time limit runs out, the status changes to overdue, highlighted in red. The process is supposed to be transparent, quick, and accurate. However, the mechanism is flawed.

I became aware of the flaws in the NJSP remedy system in October 2023. I wrote the business office concerning $130.90 missing from my inmate trust account. I waited for a response. When the allotted 30 days to respond was overdue, I was confused and didn’t know what to do to further my complaint. The inmate handbook doesn’t explain how to address overdue grievances.

I waited on a response until it slipped my mind. Prison is filled with obstacles, and you have to choose your battles wisely, because you can be overwhelmed fighting from many different fronts. I didn’t want to forget about my money, but prison consumed me. Then one day, I checked and my grievance was no longer highlighted red overdue. Instead it read closed. In May 2024, seven months after I submitted my grievance, someone responded, “We just received this grievance. If you still have an issue, please open a new grievance/inquiry.”

Why not just answer my original grievance? Why did it take so long for an answer? If I opened a new grievance, his long would it take for me to receive a response? Seven months? Was $130.90 worth the emotional and psychological torment I would go through fighting these people? No. It was a dead issue.

Perhaps me giving up the fight for my money is exactly what NJSP wanted.

With a 130-year sentence, I have a legal battle on my hands that can be very strenuous and cumbersome. At times, I have to enlist the help of my family. So when my dad sent me some legal documents via the U.S. Postal Service and I hadn’t received them two weeks later, I wrote a grievance to the mailroom. “My dad sent mail postmarked August 27, 2024. The tracking number said that it arrived August 29, 2024, and I still haven’t received the mail. It is now December 18, 2024, and my grievance is still highlighted red overdue.”

Am I not worthy of a response? Is NJSP beyond reproach and too big to respond? Then why create the remedy system? If this inmate remedy system is to address complaints, circumstances, or actions thought to be unjust, then what do you do when your complaint falls on deaf ears?

When aggrieved by the prison or its staff, many guys in NJSP decline to write grievances, because they know that their concerns won’t be heard. Through my 11 years in NJSP, I often hear guys say that they’re not writing a wrong up because “they’re not going to do nothing about it.” And I have been a proponent of the statement.

I began asking people throughout the prison if they’re having problems with their grievances/inquiries being answered. In all, I spoke with 19 guys, and 17 of them said they had overdue grievances on the kiosk. The other two said that they had grievances, but they didn’t write it up, because they believe the grievance system doesn’t work. It’s frustrating, because we’re aggrieved, and it feels like the very system designed for us to fight wrongs perpetuates injustices.

Jaime Centeno showed me an overdue grievance that he submitted to the medical department in 2020. But this wasn’t his only overdue grievance highlighted red. He had several. The most noticeable was a grievance that he submitted to central office, also highlighted red. It is indicative of a larger problem beyond NJSP. Jaime said that his unheard grievances are frustrating, because he has real medical problems that need to be checked. “It’s like the State doesn’t want to answer my grievances, because they’re afraid that I might sue because of their deliberate neglect of my health care.”

To file suit against the New Jersey Department of Corrections (NJDOC), an incarcerated person has to follow a chain of command. First, he has to file an initial grievance. Once the grievance is responded to, an incarcerated person has 10 days to appeal to the administration. Then the administration has 10 days to answer the appeal. Then an incarcerated person can appeal to central office. Once all of the above remedies are exhausted, an incarcerated person can file suit. If the department in which the incarcerated person files his initial complaint fails to respond, there’s no further litigation that an incarcerated person can take —further compounding the injustice.

The NJSP lacks accountability. They are essentially breaking their own rules, signaling a weak oversight mechanism and neglect of human rights. The overdue responses suggest a disregard for the rights and dignity of incarcerated human beings. The pattern of overdue grievances shows institutional inertia and deliberate stalling to avoid accountability and a systemic flaw.

*Note: The Five Percent Nation, also known as the Nation of Gods and Earths, is an Afro-American nationalist movement founded in 1964 in Harlem, influenced by the Nation of Islam, that teaches a unique understanding of self and the world, with the belief that only 5% of the population are enlightened.