N.J. Corrections Commissioner refuses to resign after attack at women’s prison. Why he believes he’s doing a – NJ.com

Marcus Hicks made this vow to lawmakers last year: As head of New Jersey’s prison system, his “number one priority” was fixing the severe problems at the Edna Mahan Correction Facility, the state’s only women’s prison plagued with allegations of horrific sexual abuse and violent beatings.

Just 14 months later, Hicks is fighting for his job in the aftermath of a January attack at the very prison he pledged to save, one that left women with broken bones and fractures and outraged advocates wondering how it could happen again. Eight officers have been criminally charged, including four announced by the state attorney general’s office on Thursday. State prosecutors are calling it a “coverup” after finding officers lied on reports.

Now the same lawmakers who approved Hicks’ nomination as corrections commissioner are demanding his immediate resignation. Some are even talking impeachment — a move not seriously considered against a top New Jersey official in two decades.

It’s a dramatic turn of events for a public official described by colleagues as calm and cool-headed — and someone who was never in the public spotlight before ascending to a job he now tries to salvage.

Through it all, Hicks has refused to resign, and his boss, Gov. Phil Murphy, continues to stick by him while awaiting an independent review he commissioned from a special investigator. The heat will turn up in a few weeks, when the commissioner will face lawmakers demanding answers in Assembly hearings.

In an interview with NJ Advance Media — his first since the attack at Edna Mahan — Hicks defended himself, touting his experience and the “holistic approach” he’s taken to implementing change at the corrections department for both inmates and corrections officers.

“You’ve got the department moving one way and individuals who are not complying with the rules moving another way, and we have to take action,” Hicks, 42, said. “These are the ways you change a culture, and that doesn’t happen overnight. It’s possible. It can be done.”

Hicks, who placed 32 officers on leave after the attack, would not comment on the pending investigations during the 35-minute interview with NJ Advance Media, which was conducted before Thursday’s announcement that four more officers were charged.

But he emphasized hurdles in reforming the culture of the prison system and its corrections officers, and said he believes he’s moving it in the right direction.

“Things shift. You have to be willing to address these challenges head on. You have to be willing to have tough discussions, explaining why you’re doing things, then on the back end, holding people accountable,” he said.

Hicks has worked at the Department of Corrections for nearly 15 years, and has the backing of the largest corrections officers union leader, who stresses there were no officer suicides last year for the first time in decades.

To some, Hicks’ institutional knowledge of the department is the reason he’s the perfect man for the job. Others believe that’s the exact problem.

WORKING HIS WAY UP

Hicks, a Richmond, Virginia native, said he’s always had a love of public service, but didn’t envision himself overseeing 18,000 inmates incarcerated in 12 facilities and community halfway houses, a budget of nearly $1 billion, and 8,000 employees.

“I never came to the DOC thinking I would ever be the commissioner. That was not on my mind. What was on my mind was finding different ways to serve this department and the citizens of New Jersey,” Hicks said.

His journey in the Garden State began at Seton Hall, where he pursued law after graduating from The College of William and Mary, where he was elected the student body’s first Black president in 1999.

After graduating from Seton Hall in 2003 and completing a judicial clerkship in Essex County, he worked as a consumer bankruptcy lawyer in Robbinsville, where he currently lives in Robbinsville with his wife and son.(In 2017, he made a run for the Robbinsville town council. He lost, but served as an alternate on the zoning board of the town.)

He landed in then-Gov. Richard Codey’s office as a policy adviser at 25 years old. There, he worked on projects including drafting executive ethical standards and preventing steroid use among high schoolers.

Paula Franzese, Seton Hall Law professor and former Special Ethics Counsel to Codey, said Hicks “demonstrated a tireless work ethic and a generous, humble spirit” as a law student.

“He showed integrity and diligence throughout. I have always known Marcus Hicks to be a person of integrity with an abiding commitment to public service and the public good,” she said in a statement.

Hicks joined the Department of Corrections in 2007, and took on roles including assistant division director of the Office of Transitional Services, which provides reentry services to inmates, and director of Programs and Community Services, working to contract reentry services for 2,800 inmates across 18 community release programs.

“This is all a long way of saying I’ve always had a calling for public service and my professional journey has followed that, all the way to now, working with the DOC and other statewide issues,” Hicks noted while recalling his climb to the top of the department.

Multiple colleagues of his, former and current, declined to comment for this report. Those who know him said he’s a composed, even-tempered guy who’s focused on his work.

Just before he was nominated to lead the corrections department, HIcks served as chief of staff to Gary Lanigan, the commissioner appointed by Gov. Chris Christie in 2010 and retained by Murphy.

Lanigan took an early retirement in 2018 in the midst of multiple investigations into sexual abuse at Edna Mahan Correctional Facility following an NJ Advance Media report. A 2020 federal Department of Justice report concluded that officers coerce inmates into sexual acts, grope them during strip searches, violating the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Once the commissioner’s job became available, Hicks decided to step up.

“I felt this was a chance for me, hearing (Murphy’s) plans and his vision, helping offenders reintegrate back in the community, I just believe I had a background to be an asset to the administration,” he said.

After naming Hicks acting commissioner in May 2018, Murphy, whose office declined to comment for this report, called him a “talented individual whose experience in government and knowledge of reentry services will be a real asset to our team.”

A year and a half later, Hicks was confirmed by the Senate after vowing to do things a different way.

“The fact of the matter is, we walked in knowing we had to change a culture, and we believe we’re taking steps to do that,” Hicks said during his hour-long Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing, where he proposed more female staff and new training initiatives.

Rick Robinson, chairman of the New Jersey NAACP, met with Hicks as he officially settled into the new position, just months before the coronavirus pandemic would upend the world and present Hicks with a new set of challenges.

“I asked him, does he play golf, and he didn’t really say he’s a golfer. I told him, ‘You need an outlet because of all the pressure. You have a great administration but you have a hard job ahead of yourself.’ He said, ‘I’m up for the job,’” Robinson recalled.

CHANGE IN LEADERSHIP, BUT NOT IN CULTURE

Robinson has been hearing reports of abuse, rape and violence at Edna Mahan for decades, calling the prison “a sore you can’t get rid of for over 50 years.” It needs time to heal, he stressed.

Unions and inmate advocates alike say Hicks was welcomed as someone with an open line of communication, after previous commissioners clashed with them.

“You have to be a leader and be brave to take on that change, and only a leader would take on this institution that requires so much change,” Robinson said. “It’s just not a quick fix.”

William Sullivan, president of PBA Local 105, the state’s largest corrections union, said it was an about-face from Lanigan, the former commissioner, who he said didn’t collaborate with the unions and micromanaged staff.

“Hicks was very open to talking to us, working with us, and it was the first time we felt we had someone on our side helping out with stuff,” he said. “People feel like this is a guy who cares about the officers.”

He credits having no officer suicides in 2020, a milestone that hasn’t been seen in decades, to Hicks’ creation of new wellness programs and a mental health hotline, underlining his commitment to officers.

And Hicks said he’s worked to distinguish himself from previous administrations, taking a “more holistic approach to rehabilitation” of inmates, particularly by addressing the opioid epidemic within the prison walls and equipping officers with Narcan, a medication that reverses overdose effects.

“The thought of having medications or drugs in the facility even for a rehabilitative purpose, that idea was looked at as not being feasible. At corrections, we spend a lot of resources keeping drugs out of the facility … we had to start at the top and let them know this is something we’re going to change,” he said.

“This administration is turning the tide. We’re changing course because we know the way things used to be done doesn’t work,” he added.

But to Bonnie Kerness, the program director for nonprofit American Friends Service Committee’s prison program, Hicks is the same as all the men who have come before him, continuously perpetuating the culture that exists across law enforcement.

“He meshes in with the rest of the former commissioners. Some are nicer than others, but not a thing changes. There have been other terrible, abusive incidents going back many years — people are still hearing about it now,” she said. “How does this happen given the previous sexual assault issues, the DOJ report and recommendations?”

A total of 3,893 grievances were filed by women in Edna Mahan from Oct. 1, 2019 to Sept. 30, 2020, according to state data. That’s an average of more than 7 filings per inmate and the highest rate of any prison in the state. More than 120 grievances hadn’t even been opened during a recent audit.

Across the prison system, the coronavirus outbreak took the lives of 51 prisoners and several staffers. An NJ Advance Media investigation found the state failed to protect inmates and officers at the height of the pandemic, under Hicks’ watch.

“He looms less aware, less involved, less caring, than almost any other commissioner,” Kerness said. “It’s horrifying this continue to go on. It’s as if nobody’s home.”

Like the commissioner before him, Hicks came up through the ranks of the department, engraining himself in the culture, Kerness added.

“You’re accultured a certain way, to accept brutality and power as part of the job, and that can go all the way from not bringing a piece of mail in to dragging a person down the stairs and beating them and it’s all off camera,” Kerness added. “How could it happen?”

“Someone who comes up through the system just has too many friends to be a good, outside-the-box leader, and that’s one of the problems,” said state Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg, D-Bergen. “This is an environment that needs constant oversight, constant accountability, to change the culture, and none of it was done prior or under this commissioner.”

Sullivan argued bureaucracy holds Hicks back — and every other commissioner, for that matter — from getting meaningful change done quickly.

“He decided to pilot body cameras (and) it took until a few months ago to get that grant money to purchase. He has stuff he wants to do, but there’s red tape getting there,” Sullivan said. “You can’t just find money for 2,000 cameras and storage systems. You can have ideas, but money seems to be the factor that slows everything down.”

The corrections department coordinates with the governor’s office on everything relating to the budget, “as is practice across all state departments,” said corrections spokeswoman Liz Velez.

Robinson maintains the Department of Corrections has always had problems, which were inevitably exacerbated once Covid-19 hit. He said calls for Hicks’ resignation are premature.

“You need autonomy, he needs partners, he needs to consider hiring civilians to address some of these complaints,” Robinson added. “These things aren’t getting done, I don’t know if it’s him or the governor’s office, but we need to allow this young man to foster this change.”

“HE NEEDS TO GO”

State Sen. Nellie Pou, D-Passaic, listened to a recording of questions she asked Hicks during his confirmation hearing last year, when she put him under a microscope about impending and necessary changes at Edna Mahan.

“I’m deeply troubled by the fact that we’re still talking about this, that we’re still asking these questions and waiting for those answers,” Pou said in a recent phone interview. “These horrific situations that have taken place are still occurring, and it’s sad to say that a year later.”

She’s signed onto a resolution urging Hicks to resign, along with 35 others from the 40-member state Senate. Members of the state Assembly also sponsored a measure for Hicks to “immediately resign or be removed from his position.”

“Corrections has been a problem not just in this administration, but they knew the issues of Edna. It’s no secret, and he didn’t do anything to correct it. They let it get worse,” said state Senate President Steve Sweeney. “For those reasons, he needs to go.”

There’s a lack of urgency from the state to overhaul the system, Weinberg said, noting the federal report outlined specific recommendations. She reached out to Hicks in May following the DOJ report and troubling anecdotes coming out of jails, and Hicks responded with a six-page letter outlining remedial measures the department took, including more cameras and women in staff positions.

“My impression is that Commissioner Hicks — and it’s an impression — he spends more time circling the wagon than answering a question directly and truthfully,” she said.

Weinberg reflected on her commitment to female prisoners after watching a documentary several years ago that opened her eyes to injustices they face, and the impact her vote to confirm Hicks has had.

She thought it would be good to have someone who came up through the system, earnestly and genuinely, and stayed through several administrations, she said.

“You’d think it’s a really good idea, someone who knows the place. Now I’d say it’s not a great appointment, and that there be an outside person come in to really straighten things out there,” she said, adding she “hoped the (Murphy) administration would be more reactive.”

Hicks is expected to appear at Assembly committee hearings on April 8. The joint Assembly Judiciary and Women and Children committees will probe if officers complied with state law, including the Dignity Act, which established more protections for inmates and was passed after previous hearings into Edna Mahan.

The state and the commissioner skipped hearings last summer. Weinberg said she’d like to hear from Hicks on when he knew what was happening, and what his immediate actions were.

Hicks wouldn’t directly comment on the calls to resign, but said he’s uniquely qualified to be commissioner.

“I’m confident of measures we’ve taken in a very short time to implement systemic changes that are going to stay in place once I’m long gone out of this seat,” Hicks said. “I can’t speak for anyone else, but the department, my team, the offender population, they know I’m here and working hard to make the Department the best correctional system it can be.”

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Reporters Joe Atmonavage, Vinessa Erminio, Blake Nelson and Sean Sullivan contributed to this report.

Sophie Nieto-Munoz may be reached at snietomunoz@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her at @snietomunoz.

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