Murphy says troubled women’s prison will close before he leaves office

More than two years after announcing that the troubled Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women will close, Gov. Phil Murphy today said he expects to shut it down before he leaves office in January 2026. 

“By the time we’re out of here, that will be closed,” Murphy said.  “If we can do it sooner, we’ll do it sooner.  That’s going to close and I’ll be damned if it doesn’t close under our watch.”

The prison was rocked by a January 2021 incident in which prisoners were removed from their cells and beaten by correctional officers.  That incident led to the resignation of Corrections Commissioner Marcus Hicks and to Murphy’s promise to close the facility.

In July 2021, Murphy said he would close the prison. 

More than a dozen corrections officers were indicted in a long line of scandals at the 110-year-old prison.

In 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a scathing report citing a history of sexual misconduct by prison guards. 

The facility is named for Edna Mahan, who was superintendent from 1928 to 1968.  But history has not treated her own tenure well. 

In the 1950s, Mahan approved participation in a study to trace the hereditary resistance of the polio virus on infants born to mothers at the prison she ran.  The babies were fed live polio virus in their bottles. Nearly three dozen inmates participated in the study, according to news reports at the time.

After the escape of cop killer Joanne Chesimard brought renewed interest in the Clinton prison Mahan ran, incarcerated Black women complained that they didn’t get the same educational opportunities as white prisoners.   Instead, Mahan left women of color to work at the prison farm.