It is the state's only completely maximum security institution, housing the most difficult and/or dangerous male offenders in the inmate population.

NJSP also housed New Jersey's death row for men and execution chamber until the state abolished capital punishment in 2007.

This crime inspired the passing of Megan's Law, which requires communities to be notified when a convicted sex offender moves into their area.

The only surviving portion of the 1798 Penitentiary House is the original Front House, which functioned originally as the living quarters for the Keeper of the State Prison, the four Assistant Keepers (the first 4 men who served in the capacity of what are known today as State Correction Officers), the Armory, administrative office space on the first floor and a row of cells for the confinement of disruptive prisoners in the basement.

After completion and the relocation of the Penitentiary House inmates to the new John Haviland-designed Fortress Penitentiary compound in 1836, the 1798 facility alternately served as Mercer County's jail facility during construction of their workhouse in Titusville, and then as the state arsenal until 1929, when all National Guard equipment and services that were based there were transferred to the newly completed ANG base at Sea Girt, at which time control of the empty compound was returned to the prison.

This assertion is valid because the two compounds coexisted on the same property and were managed and controlled by the Keeper as a prison complex in which the same inmate population worked and were housed.

As the State Prison is operated as a unified complex composed of separate distinct compounds today, this conclusion is defensible.

In his 1917 master's thesis, published as "History of the Penal, Reformatory and Correctional Institutions of New Jersey" the late Dr. Harry Elmer Barnes, a noted American historian, published a history and analysis of the state prisons, reformatories and penal institutions of New Jersey up to that time.

The 1832 facility was expanded several times throughout the 19th Century with new construction adding wings in the years between 1859 and 1907, and larger Shop Hall buildings as well.

[5] In 1999 death row inmate Robert "Mudman" Simon, who was convicted of killing a police officer, died during a fight.