🚔 A former Northern State Prison officer was sentenced to three years in state prison.
💵 Prosecutors said Christopher Santana took cash and digital payments from inmates to smuggle contraband.
🚬 Officers found vacuum-sealed tobacco bags and three bottles of unidentified liquid hidden beneath his clothing.
NEWARK — A corrections officer will spend his next three years in state prison on the other side of the bars.
Christopher Santana, 33, of Hackensack was sentenced in Superior Court in Essex County on Monday. Santana was forced to forfeit $4,500 in bribes he received and is barred from public employment, according to the Attorney General’s Office.
In August, Santana pleaded guilty to second-degree conspiracy to commit bribery.
“Taking bribes to help inmates evade the very security measures he was responsible for enforcing is a fundamental betrayal of the badge — and of the public trust that comes with it,” Attorney General Jennifer Davenport said.
Christopher Santana (Essex County Jail)
Officer took payments to smuggle contraband
State prosecutors said Santana’s bribery scheme began in May 2024. At the time, he was a senior correctional police officer at Northern State Prison in Newark. He took cash and digital payments from inmates to smuggle them contraband.
On June 10, 2025, Santana showed up for work at his scheduled time.
However, he never started his shift; other law enforcement officers noticed a “large bulge” under his clothes around his chest area. They searched Santana, and found two vacuum-sealed bags of tobacco and three bottles of an unidentified liquid hidden under his vest and near his upper thigh.
He lost his job a month later.
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