On December 11, 2017 , attorneys from Williams Cedar and Mark B. Frost & Associates filed a class action asserting claims on behalf of women incarcerated at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women, a state prison in Clinton, New Jersey. The complaint describes a years-long pattern of sexual harassment and abuse perpetrated by corrections officers at the facility. The plaintiffs assert that supervisory personnel at the facility and the New Jersey Department of Corrections tolerated a “persistent culture of abuse” and retaliation against women who complained about it. The conditions at EMCF have been the topic of recent news stories. The class action, Nobles, et al v. State of New Jersey Department of Corrections, et al, is filed in Mercer County, and includes actions under New Jersey’s Civil Rights Act and the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination. It seeks monetary damages and a court order requiring the Department to “implement policies and procedures sufficient to protect the rights of persons incarcerated at EMCF to be free of sexual abuse and harassment.”

As current events have borne witness, sexual harassment of women remains a serious problem in society at large. In jails and prisons, where women live under the power of frequently poorly supervised and seldom disciplined correction officers, harassment is common. The Nobles case, like other civil rights litigation, represents an attempt to provide some measure of justice to a population whose needs—and rights—are often ignored or treated with contempt.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys are Gerald J. Williams and Shauna Friedman of Williams Cedar, LLC and Mark B. Frost and Ryan Lockman of Frost & Associates. For more information, call a member of our civil rights legal team at 215-557-0099 or 856-470-9777 or contact us online.