NJ Gov: ‘I’ll Be Damned’ If Women’s Prison Doesn’t Close Before He Leaves Office

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy announced this week that he expects the troubled Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women to close before he leaves office in January 2026, David Wildstein reports for the New Jersey Globe. The correctional facility has faced public scrutiny since a 2021 report that inmates were being dragged from their cells and beaten by correctional officers.

The 110-year-old prison has had over a dozen correctional officers indicted over the years and a ،hing 2020 report revealed a history of ،ual misconduct by guards. The facility also reportedly parti،ted in a study under superintendent Edna Mahan in the 1950s in which infants born at the prison were fed live polio in their bottles. Incarcerated Black women under Mahan’s tenure were also sent to work on the prison farms after complaining they did not have access to the same educational opportunities as white women prisoners.