A $310 million New Jersey women’s prison is designed as a “more humane” replacement for a battered facility that is closing after 112 years in operation, project officials say.
Set to begin construction in Clinton Township later this year, the Edna Mahan Replacement Correctional Facility for Women is four miles from the existing one, where more than a dozen correctional officers were arrested in 2021 for sexual abuse, corruption and other violations. Former Governor Phil Murphy ordered the shuttering of the outdated and decaying jail.
“The new facility is being developed to present a normative environment for incarcerated women,” says Gary Thomson, program executive at Skanska, the project’s contractor, “with a campus approach that creates neighborhoods and offers program spaces to prepare women for re-entry into society.”
The design follows a trend over the past decade or so to move away from harsh, punishing materials in the design of prisons and jails, with architects encouraged to take a softer approach.
In a Q&A on the website of architect HOK, which has designed many justice architecture projects, Kristine Bishop Johnson, director of its global justice practice and past chair of the American Institute of Architects Academy of Architecture for Justice’s knowledge community, said deploying trauma-informed design in prison projects provides supportive environments “truly focused” on rehabilitating those suffering from addiction, psychological or physical poverty. separated from family and friends while incarcerated.
“Having them sit in a hardened cell to dwell on their problems doesn’t promote the healing they need or give them the tools they need to rejoin society,” he said.
Skanska’s Thomson says the design of the New Jersey project replicates “self-contained communities” with the goal of creating a “non-intuitive environment” that includes elements such as “comfortable and livable indoor and outdoor spaces, promoting the incarcerated person’s sense of identity and dignity, allowing for an expanded level of choice of approved activities and mobility spaces, living areas and outdoor spaces.”
The design of the prison includes self-contained communities with the aim of creating a non-intuitive environment with elements such as comfortable indoor and outdoor spaces.
Rendering courtesy of HOK
Growing pains
While overall incarceration rates in the United States have declined in recent years, those for women have skyrocketed. Since 1980, the number of women in prison has increased sevenfold: from 26,326 in 1980 to 186,244 in 2023.
Jurisdictions are responding to this rising incarceration rate in different ways. While some advocates are calling for alternatives to prisons, saying the US has too many, others are opting to replace outdated facilities with new designs. “Often it is still not enough [women] to fill a new big facility,” said Richard Wener, a psychologist who has studied the environmental psychology of prisons and jails. “Here’s the situation: If they share part of a prison, they’re going to get fewer facilities and their movement is restricted, so they’re not going to interact with men, but they have to have a lot of [women] to justify the construction”.
Thomson notes that the New Jersey project’s campus-style design could accommodate a fluctuating population.
“The design of the campus allows for growth if needed and the flexibility of multiple housing units [and] habitable spaces may have the ability to become restricted if the future brings a less robust population,” he says.
Wener believes communities should consider investing in alternatives to prisons, such as home confinement with electronic monitoring, because incarceration is the most expensive option and the most likely to cause harm to already traumatized incarcerated people, even with “good design and good intentions.”
Incarcerated women should be placed in “the best environments,” she adds, especially since many incarcerated women are mothers and should therefore be placed in “normalized environments” where they can interact with their children. It is also important for women to be able to do things like cook for themselves. “If they’re put in jail, better places with better design helps,” Wener says. “But still, [they] should have as few people incarcerated as possible.”
Bishop Johnson said pretrial and posttrial justice facilities “are not going away anytime soon, so why not work to make them more conducive to the needs of detainees, as well as staff and visitors? Why not use our seat at the table with lawmakers and facility operators to educate them about how spatial and operational impacts can support rehabilitation and reduce recidivism rates?”
He noted that HOK does not design facilities with solitary confinement or capital punishment spaces and does not work for private prison operators or design facilities specifically intended to hold undocumented detainees.
The state Department of Corrections also engaged with experts outside the design community when the construction process began, including “currently incarcerated women, community stakeholders, medical and mental health professionals, along with custodial and civilian staff,” Thomson said. “Our team has also solicited input from important user groups, including staff.”
The choice of materials, finishes and colors will also help to achieve this “non-institutional” atmosphere, as well as “natural lighting and a connectivity between the interior spaces and the landscaped exterior elements”, he added.
early work
The prison is expected to be built on an existing state site set back from a major road, the prison is not expected to impact the surrounding community when it opens in 2027 and will be fully completed in early 2029.
The initial phase work involves upgrading the existing water and wastewater treatment plants that are now operating at the site and will serve the new facility, a Skanska spokesman said.
Thomson added that the team is “closely monitoring the cost and availability of materials and equipment and will decide whether we need to pre-purchase to ensure that [they are] ready when needed in the field according to our master schedule.”
