North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women
| Location | 1034 Bragg Street Raleigh, North Carolina |
|---|---|
| Status | open |
| Security class | mixed |
| Capacity | 1288 |
| Opened | 1938 |
| Managed by | North Carolina Department of Public Safety |
North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women (NCCIW) is the primary North Carolina Department of Public Safety prison facility housing female inmates on a 30-acre campus in Raleigh, North Carolina, and serves as a support facility for the six other women's prisons throughout the state. The facility's inmate population which is the largest in the state consists of inmates from all custody levels and control statuses including death row, maximum security, close custody, medium security, minimum security, and safekeepers.
The facility which eventually became the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women was originally established as a road camp for male inmates who were assigned to work on highway projects. The North Carolina Department of Public Safety states that women inmates were transferred to the facility’s current site in 1933, during renovation of women's living quarters at Central Prison.
While some women were housed at Central Prison (mainly minority and immigrant women, and women who had committed violent crimes), many women guilty of minor crimes like theft, prostitution, drunkenness, and adultery were sent to the North Carolina Industrial Farm Colony for Women at Kinston, a reformatory institution that opened in 1929. Little information exists on the Farm Colony, but there are biennial reports from the institution dating up to the year 1946. Some sources associate the institution with the forced sterilization of inmates during the Eugenics movement in America.
As an alternative to returning women inmates to Central Prison, the State Highway and Public Works Commission originally proposed the construction of a women's prison on the cottage plan, but the project never got beyond the planning stage.
The women’s prison was operated as a satellite camp of Central Prison until 1938, when the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women was established as an independent facility. Four years later, Mrs. Edna B. Strickland was appointed as Superintendent of the North Carolina Correctional Institution, becoming the first female prison superintendent in North Carolina history in 1942.
The first improvements to the prison infrastructure was a $1 million construction project which expanded NCCIW facilities to include four cottage style dormitories, an auditorium, segregation unit, sewing plant, cannery, laundry, kitchen and dining hall and administration building in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
...
Wikipedia