New Jersey halfway house escapee arrested, questions arise

EXCLUSIVE REPORT: New Jersey's halfway houses are again under scrutiny, following the arrest of a drug dealer convicted in both Bergen and Passaic counties who escaped only months before his parole date.

Dashawn Degroat

(MUGSHOTS courtesy of NJ DOC)

Dashawn Degroat, 26, fled Kintock House North in Newark on Dec. 19, according to state records, and remained free until Passaic County Sheriff's officers picked him up during a routine traffic stop last night.

He's now back in Northern State Prison.

Kintock, the Newark halfway house, is one of 20 privately owned "residential treatment" facilities in New Jersey, which, combined, hold anywhere from 2,200 to 2,500 inmates. The capacity is being increased as part of an initiative by Gov. Christie to move inmates into less restrictive facilities.

It's a cost saver, at least in the short term: Housing and feeding a state prison inmate pushes $50,000 a year. Halfway houses: $30,000.

Yet some wonder: Why not replicate the same programs in maximum security facilities?

Kintock has door alarms but no fence. Inmates aren't locked in their rooms. The staff is made up of counselors and private security -- not trained corrections officers.

David Goodell

The objective is to keep convicts who have committed lesser crimes from reoffending, through therapy, counseling and job training.

But the results have included some horrible tragedies.

David Goodell went to Logan Hall in Newark after spending less than a half-year in Northern State in Newark for assaulting a police officer and threatening to kill a woman he was dating.

Soon after, he suffered a seizure and was admitted to UMDNJ Medical Center. Then he "absconded," Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said.

Hours later, Goodell met up with his ex-girlfriend, 21-year-old Viviana Tulli. They were in her car when he strangled her, and was standing outside the 2007 Nissan Versa when a 911 caller reported seeing him bloodied and disoriented.

When Ridgefield Park Police showed up, Goodell peeled out, before ramming her car head-on into a police cruiser in a Ridgefield cul-de-sac. A grand jury in Hackensack indicted him in November on first-degree murder and other charges.

Then there is the notorious case of Carnell Davis, who bolted a Hoboken halfway house near the end of a ten-year sentence for a 1997 armed robbery in Jersey City. Authorities have put him back behind bars for good -- for killing two men following his escape.

Degroat, of East 22nd Street in Paterson, was originally sent to Northern State Prison in December 2009, records show. A judge sentenced him to from two to five years for a drug dealing conviction out of Bergen County stemming from a February 2008 arrest.

Bailed out a short time later, Degroat was again arrested on drug dealing charges in February 2010. A four-year maximum sentence followed.

Records show that Degroat was due for parole this August and would have been free by next January when he was moved to Kintock.

Statistics from the DOC itself also show that a full 20 percent of those sent to the facilities were convicted of violent crimes, contradicting the stated goal of the approach -- to try and keep lesser criminals from going hardcore.