Portsmouth Naval Prison - Cold War

Cold War

The brig was used throughout the Korean War and almost to the end of the Vietnam War. During warmer months, it was not uncommon for boats navigating the river to hear shouts and whistles coming from within barred windows of "the Fortress." In 1974 the Department of Defense developed a three-tiered, regional correctional facility plan. Inmates would be placed depending on the service, sentence length, geographical location, and treatment programs. First-tier offenders are those with sentences less than a year, second-tier up to 7 years. Male convicts from all the services sentenced to punitive discharge and incarceration longer than 7 years are confined at the third-tier — the maximum-security U. S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The Portsmouth Naval Prison, built to be a modern correctional facility for a navy which had once disciplined by flogging and capital punishment, was rendered obsolete. After containing about 86,000 military inmates over its 66 year operation, the brig closed in 1974, its maintenance thereafter contributing to shipyard overhead.The Navy briefly used the prison in the early 1980s to train military corrections officers. Volunteer Inmates from the Rockingham County Jail were sometimes used.