History
Opened in March 1977 at a cost of $20 million dollars, this 360 inmate facility was intended to serve as the facility for the "worst of the worst" among inmates in the Virginia Department of Corrections system – a maximum security prison. At the opening ceremony, Governor Mills E. Godwin Jr. stated that the facility served as a "monument to failure", as the inmates to be housed there were viewed as the most incorrigible and likely unable to be returned to free society.
The first warden at Mecklenburg was Gene Johnson. Johnson's assistant warden for operations and security was Fred L. Finkbeiner, who had served as the warden of the well-known Joliet and Pontiac maximum-security prisons in Illinois.
The prison has features, such as numerous electronic cellhouse doors that required the continuous presence of a corrections officer (CO) around the clock. This put fewer than necessary officers on the floor to observe inmates. Additionally, the low pay led to numerous CO positions remaining unfilled and caused some COs to be susceptible to bribes from inmates to bring contraband into the facility. There were a high number of CO-on-inmate as well as inmate-on-CO assaults, leading to numerous lawsuits alleging human rights abuses against the corrections department.
On August 3, 1998, the male death row moved to its current location, the Sussex I State Prison, from the Mecklenburg Correctional Center.
Read more about this topic: Mecklenburg Correctional Center
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