Credit: (NJ Spotlight News)

Six months after Gov. Phil Murphy called for closing New Jersey’s troubled women’s prison, the state Department of Corrections has hired a consultant to help make that happen.

DOC Acting Commissioner Victoria Kuhn announced Tuesday that the department has retained Steve Carter of CGL Services, a correctional planning and design consultant, to determine where to relocate the inmates now at Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women. Murphy called last June for closing the prison, currently housing about 410 inmates located in a 108-year-old complex in Hunterdon County, as he released a damning report on the alleged January assaults by corrections officers that seriously injured several prisoners. It has also been the site of numerous sexual assaults for decades.

Since Murphy’s announcement, though, there had been no word about what would happen to Mahan until the department announced its contract with Carter, who began work on Nov. 30.

There’s been some pushback against a potential closure, with some current inmates saying they are accustomed to Mahan and did not want to go someplace new. Former inmates and advocates said that replacing staff and changing the culture in the facility are more important than replacing the buildings.

Still others said the women’s prison should be replaced not with another large facility but with smaller locations, some potentially community-based, in different parts of the state so the inmates could be closer to their families and services.

In a news release about the next steps for Mahan, the DOC stated that the process for choosing a new location would entail internal discussions with an eye toward industry best practices, environmental and programming needs and a central location for family visitation.

Existing prison facilities and other vacant state properties will be reviewed to see if any would be suitable for retrofitting. In addition, input will be gathered from lawmakers, advocacy groups, current and formerly incarcerated people and impacted communities.

Alternative locations

Carter, in a statement, stressed the possibility of moving the women to another prison facility. Several facilities either have closed or have empty units as the state has reduced its prison population by half over the last decade and closed the Albert C. Wagner Youth Correctional Facility in Burlington County.

“Our evaluation of existing correctional facilities will initially examine the ability to adapt, and potentially expand, selected prisons to accommodate these needs with an eye towards an ultimate purpose-built women’s correctional center,” he said.

Kuhn said Carter has “a wealth of experience creating thoughtful infrastructure designs for justice-involved women” and expressed confidence that he would help the state provide a better place for women sentenced to prison.

“His work speaks for itself, taking into account programmatic needs including social service support and proximity to family while engendering a safety-centric environment for both the women and greater community,” Kuhn said. “This process represents a significant transformative step forward with a clean slate that allows us to take into account the evolving needs of this generation of incarcerated women.”

Liz Velez, a corrections spokeswoman, said Carter already has been visiting existing facilities as part of his work but there is no timetable for replacing Mahan.

“The current estimate for the initial facility review is about 10 weeks,” she said. “I don’t have a timeline for total project completion. We want to get this right and are excited to leverage Mr. Carter’s expertise in this space.”

Carter is receiving $312,752 as a subcontractor to The Moss Group, which has been working with the state for the last year as part of its answer to the U.S. Department of Justice’s complaint about the history of sexual abuse and sexual assault in the prison. Moss is working on planning, policy development, sexual-assault investigations, staffing and training at the women’s prison.

New cameras, other reforms

Mahan is currently the subject of a consent decree following an investigation that began in April 2018 and resulted in a scathing report alleging constitutional-rights violations issued two years later by the DOJ. The settlement requires federal monitoring of the facility, as well as increased staff training and oversight, inmate education on sexual assault and harassment, and increased reporting of sexual assaults that allows for anonymity.

The corrections department has installed new cameras and required corrections officers to wear body cameras, among other reforms, but reports of sexual assaults persist, with a corrections officer charged in October for the alleged rape of a female inmate a month earlier.

The reports of physical assaults on inmates last January thrust the prison into the spotlight, with legislative committee hearings and the entire Senate calling for the resignation or removal of then-Corrections Commissioner Marcus Hicks. Hicks resigned the day after the release of a report, completed at Murphy’s request, that portrayed him as unaware that there was no acting administrator at Mahan for 11 weeks up to and including the day of the assaults.

Kuhn has been at the helm of the department since Hicks resigned. Murphy said on June 9 that the state would undertake a “nationwide search to get the very best person possible” to lead the department, which has a $1 billion budget and 8,000 employees overseeing a prison system with 13,000 inmates.

New Jersey has been without a corrections ombudsman for even longer. Former ombudsman Dan DiBenedetti resigned in April following a legislative hearing during which he said he had personally not visited Mahan for more than a year despite the DOJ report about sexual assaults and the January physical assaults. His position remains unfilled.

During a COVID-19 briefing last week, the governor did not provide any guidance about when he would fill both open positions in response to a question from NJ Spotlight News.

“Ombudsman, listen, that’s something that we take very seriously,” Murphy said. “We happen to have an outstanding acting commissioner, Victoria Kuhn, at the Department of Corrections, and she’s doing an outstanding job in very difficult circumstances, and obviously, these are positions that we want to fill, and we will fill.”