By RICK HEPP, STAR-LEDGER STAFF
The Star-Ledger
NEWARK, N.J. — The Department of Corrections has moved 34 female inmates who filed a lawsuit in December saying they were subjected to “lock-down conditions” at the state’s only maximum-security facility back to the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in Clinton, a spokeswoman said yesterday.
The female inmates were sent in March 2007 to New Jersey State Prison in Trenton to alleviate overcrowding at Edna Mahan. The overcrowding has since subsided, prompting Corrections Commissioner George Hayman to order the 34 inmates returned to the state’s only all-female prison Wednesday evening, said spokeswoman Deirdre Fedkenheurer.
“There are nearly 200 beds available at Clinton,” Fedkenheurer said. “The fiscally prudent course is to use the beds in Clinton, hence the women were moved back. Better to use that space in Trenton for the male inmates.”
Fedkenheurer said the move had nothing to do with a lawsuit filed in December by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the female inmates.
In the lawsuit, the women complained about being kept in their cells for up to 22 hours a day to make sure they are separated from the facility’s 1,800 male inmates. They also complained about being prohibited from visiting the prison’s law library and school, forced to get medical attention in an open area of their unit as prison guards watched and barred from the men’s prison yard, the lawsuit said.
Ed Barocas, legal director for the ACLU in New Jersey, said the women plan to keep pressing their claims in court.
“This is a victory for those women who suffered grossly unfair treatment and who wished to return to the women’s prison,” Barocas said. “But this fight is not over. Indeed, a number of women have raised concerns about returning to Edna Mahan, which is often far from their families and has problematic conditions of its own.”
State attorneys for the department have denied the allegations and said the women get the same treatment as male inmates.
In a July order denying the state’s request to throw out the lawsuit, Superior Court Judge Maria Sypek said the allegations, if true, “constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.”
Copyright 2008 Newark Morning Ledger Co.