The Justice Department and New Jersey reached agreement Tuesday on a proposed court settlement requiring new safeguards and greater supervision at a state prison that federal investigators say failed to protect women inmates from repeated acts of sexual assault committed by staff members.

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       Under the federal consent decree, the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility in Hunterdon County would be compelled to develop new procedures for prisoners to report attacks and guidelines to protect them from retaliation. A federal monitor would be appointed to oversee compliance.

       The settlement, which must be approved by a federal judge, comes 16 months after a Justice Department investigation found that New Jersey’s only prison for women was the site of a series of rapes and attacks from staffers and that the facility had failed to protect inmates from the abuse.

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       Gov. Phil Murphy (D) has announced plans to close the prison, but Justice officials said the consent order would apply to any facility women inmates from New Jersey are sent to or any new prison built to replace Edna Mahan.

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       “These violations were not an aberration but rather a pattern or practice of abuse,” Rachael A. Honig, the acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey, said on a conference call for reporters. “The goal of this agreement is to ensure this horrific conduct never happens again.”

       Justice officials said the consent decree contains more than 100 provisions. The Justice Department and New Jersey authorities have jointly proposed that Jane Parnell, a former prison superintendent in Washington state, serve as the federal oversight monitor.

       Officials said the New Jersey Department of Corrections failed to pursue broad reforms even after the results of the federal investigation were announced last year. In January, male corrections officers at the Edna Mahan facility extracted women prisoners from their cells and severely beat them, according to a report in June from the state comptroller and an outside law firm.

       “Few violations are more egregious and result in more harm than sexual abuse, especially when that abuse is committed by the very people charged with ensuring the safety of those individuals under their supervision,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, who oversees the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “All prisoners, whether they are male or female, deserve to be safe.”