Forty abducted women prisoners haunt New Jersey

In March 2007, forty women were abducted.

The New Jersey Department of Corrections is made up of thirteen centers, facilities and prisons. The Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women, EMCF or EMCFW, is the only women’s prison in the state of New Jersey. The New Jersey State Prison, NJSP, is a men’s maximum-security prison.

These two prisons are night-and-day different. EMCFW has programs for survivors of domestic violence, parenting skills programs, and family unity programs, which include greater opportunity for family visits and contacts. EMCFW offers free phone calls to family members. A phone call from NJSP costs $25. Before March 2007, the difference between the two prisons was clear and stark. And then night and day were one:

“In March 2007, approximately forty women, the majority of whom were classified as medium-security prisoners, had excellent disciplinary records, and/or held paraprofessional job assignments for months or years while at EMCF, were abruptly transferred to a maximum-security housing unit in NJSP. No notices, hearings, or other procedures preceded these transfers. …

“The mass transfers of women occurred on two separate occasions. On each occasion, women held at EMCF were locked in their cells without explanation. A convoy of trucks arrived and guards in full riot gear carrying batons, mace, and other weapons descended on the women’s quarters and took women from their rooms. Each woman was taken to a separate room and stripped naked while guards, including male guards, observed her and filmed her with a video camera. When the strip searches were complete, the women were handcuffed and shackled, then loaded onto a bus and taken to NJSP.

“During these chaotic and terrifying transfers, women panicked in their cells and wept hysterically. Because many of the women held at EMCF have experienced sexual and physical abuse by men prior to and in some cases during their incarceration, they were extremely frightened by the procedures employed during the transfers and the prospect of transfer to a men’s prison. Nursing and psychiatric staff had to be called to attend to the panic-stricken women, and many women were medicated or received increased dosages of medication. NJDOC has informed the women that their placement in NJSP is permanent.”

The conditions in the New Jersey State Prison were bad for men, and worse for women. The women were confined to their housing units and prohibited from moving about the prison. Their cell windows were painted over, leaving them in perpetual semi-darkness.

The women were denied psychiatric counseling and medication in their unit. If they requested psychiatric care, they were threatened with, and sometimes sent to, “Unit 1GG”, a “stabilization unit” famous for its degree of filth, danger and degradation. Women were denied access to adequate medical care. Medical examinations, such as they were, were conducted in the open area of the housing unit, in the presence of guards, including male guards.

Women were denied legal access, especially access to the prison’s library. Women were denied access to educational programs. They couldn’t get decent work, couldn’t exercise, and couldn’t take care of their personal hygiene. And throughout, women were denied any privacy.

The women found themselves in practical lockdown and almost complete isolation.

Why? What had these women done to deserve this? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Forty women were treated, dragged about, as forty sacks of nothing.

Kathleen Jones, Sylvia Flynn, Helen Ewell and Lakesha Jones had been model prisoners. Through the ACLU, these four women sued the State “on behalf of themselves and all individuals similarly situated.” They charged the State with “violations of their due process and equal protection rights, their right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment, and their right to privacy.” They protested the “restrictive, inhumane, and physically and psychologically damaging conditions”. Finally they noted, “The Department’s ill-considered measure is also symptomatic of its general failure to plan for the women in its custody.”

In the first week of September 2008, nine months later, the forty women were returned to the not great conditions of the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women. Then, for another year and a half, the women fought to make the State accountable for its actions. Last week, the women won. It was a victory “for civil rights, justice and common sense.”

What happened in New Jersey? The State now says EMCFW was overcrowded, and so it moved 40 women. What system of reason moves 40 women model prisoners into an all male supermax holding 1800 some prisoners? There were other prisons in the state, and there were other options. Model women prisoners could have been given early release. No one sought an alternative, because women prisoners counted for and as nothing.

There was no mass transfer in March of 2007. There was abduction. In the middle of the night, groups of men, armed to the teeth, faces covered, rounded up forty unarmed women. The women were stripped naked, prodded, shackled, and carted off to parts unknown, where they were then abused. What is that called? Call it terrorism.