Every Senate Democrat calls on Hicks to resign

All 25 Senate Democrats called for the resignation of embattled Corrections Commissioner Marcus Hicks Thursday over beatings at the state’s only women’s prison.

“We are calling for the immediate resignation of Commissioner Marcus Hicks,” the lawmakers said in a letter to Gov. Phil Murphy. “He has demonstrated time and again that he is not up to the task of running the Department of Corrections, a department that holds the responsibility for the custody and care of approximately 20,000 state-sentenced offenders housed across 12 state correctional facilities, county jails and community halfway houses.”

The move follows an extended outcry from lawmakers over the latest abuses at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility, where 30 officers and supervisors have been placed on administrative leave for severely beating inmates. One woman was beaten so badly she is now confined to a wheelchair.

The governor has, so far, appeared to stick by Hicks, who has now been called on to step down by nearly a third of the state’s legislators, including all Democratic Senators and all Republican Assemblywoman, among others.

Murphy on Wednesday announced an outside investigation by former State Comptroller Matt Boxer into the abuses, and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin (D-Woodbridge) said the chamber’s Judiciary Committee will probe the breaches.

The senators went further Thursday, calling for a federal takeover of the long-troubled facility.

“We are asking that the Federal Government immediately take control of operations at the Edna Mahan facility and supervision over all programs for women inmates,” they said in the letter. “We will not stand idly by while women who are voiceless and defenseless are repeatedly victimized by the very people who are charged with their protection and care. The violations of law and of basic human rights that have been allowed to continue under the leadership of Commissioner Hicks must end now.”

The most recent scandal at Edna Mahan comes just months after state officials reached a tentative settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice over sexual assaults and other civil rights violations at the facility.

The lawmakers also want the prison’s inmates transferred elsewhere.

“Every effort should be made to remove all 395 inmates from the Edna Mahan facility and place them in a safer facility and one more conducive to meeting their rehabilitative needs,” they said.