Now that a top oversight official for New Jersey’s prisons has announced his resignation – a day after a hearing where legislators were clearly unhappy with his work – inmates could see their conditions improve, lawmakers said.
Ombudsman Dan DiBenedetti plans to resign this summer from the position he has held since 2009. He would leave office a year after getting greater power to serve as a prison watchdog but, critics have said, not using that power.
New Jersey’s prisons have come under increased scrutiny, including its only prison for women where federal authorities have detailed assaults and sexual abuse. A violent assault on female inmates earlier this year is now the subject of criminal investigations.
by Todd DeFeo, The Center Square contributor | April 12, 2021 02:00 PM Print this article
Some New Jersey lawmakers want more information on roughly $21 million in settlements the state reached with current and former inmates at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women.
The lawmakers, in part, want to know whether the settlements involving 20 lawsuits include nondisclosure agreements barring the women from speaking about their time at Edna Mahan.
The taxpayer-funded settlement comes as a bipartisan group wants the removal of New Jersey Department of Corrections Commissioner Marcus Hicks over allegations of abuse and mistreatment of inmates at the Union Township facility.
“The Administration’s need to pay $21 million to settle civil lawsuits stemming from sexual assaults, beatings, brutality and misconduct by corrections officers at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women from 2014 to the present is just further evidence of a
TRENTON – The state has reached an agreement on a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice that is likely to result in federal monitors overseeing changes at the long-troubled Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women.
Corrections Commissioner Marcus Hicks, whose resignation or impeachment has been demanded by lawmakers in the wake of the beatings of prisoners at Edna Mahan in mid-January, revealed the pending settlement in testimony Thursday before a joint session of two Assembly committees.
“That agreement is awaiting final approval from DOJ headquarters, which we expect to receive in the coming weeks,” Hicks said.
The consent decree follows a Justice Department report from a year ago that found numerous civil-rights violations at the women’s prison. The state this week announced it had agreed to pay nearly $21 million to settle civil lawsuits filed in connection with sexual assaults at the prison dating to 2014.
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The New Jersey Department of Corrections has reached a tentative agreement with federal authorities over how to address allegations of rampant physical and sexual abuse at the state’s only prison for women.
The U.S. Department of Justice is finalizing a consent decree it developed following an investigation that began in 2018 at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women, New Jersey Corrections Commissioner Marcus Hicks said Thursday.
Hicks had been called to testify before a joint committee of the New Jersey Assembly several months after a series of brutal attacks by corrections officers inside the facility left prisoners with scratches, concussions, and an orbital fracture.