 | |
| Location | Wethersfield, Connecticut |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 41°43′12″N72°39′31″W / 41.72000°N 72.65861°W |
| Status | Closed |
| Capacity | 788 |
| Opened | 21 October 1827 |
| Closed | November, 1963 |
| Managed by | Connecticut State Prison |
| Director | Wardens [1]
|
Wethersfield State Prison was the second state prison in the state of Connecticut. Used between 1827 and 1963, it was later demolished and the site turned into a park on the banks of the Connecticut River.
Connecticut opened the Wethersfield State Prison in September 1827 as a replacement for the decrepit Old Newgate Prison, which had begun as a copper mine. Although the prisoners had no longer been housed in the former mine galleries by that point, the above-ground facilities were inadequate for the state's need. 127 inmates were shackled together and marched the 20 miles from East Granby to Wethersfield. [2] The new prison was intended to be state of the art and was modeled after the Auburn State Prison in New York. [3] Wethersfield State Prison not only followed the physical model of Auburn, but it also followed the harsh Auburn System of prisoner control until 1900. [4] Prisoners were required to march in lockstep, forbidden from all talking, and expected to work to support the prison.
Until 1880, the cost of running the facility was met exclusively through prison labor. [5] Both male and female inmates worked: men as blacksmiths, carpenters, coopers, and tailors and women as domestic workers and cigar-makers.
The prison was built on 44 acres at the edge of Wethersfield Cove and the grounds included the 1774 Solomon Welles House, used as the Warden's residence. [2] Beginning as a single building, over the course of its 136-year history many more buildings and workshops were constructed until it became a "hodgepodge" of ill-matched structures within the surrounding walls. [4]
All executions carried out by the state of Connecticut between 1893 and 1960 took place at this prison. [2] A separate "execution house" was the site of 55 judicial hangings and 18 executions by electric chair. [6] Warden Jabez L. Woodbridge was granted U.S. patent 541,409 for the automatic gallows used in the prison, also known as the upright jerker. The upright jerker was never very efficient at breaking the condemned's neck and was withdrawn from use by the 1930s.
In 1960, nearly 400 prisoners staged a riot that required the assistance of 100 State Police troopers and a company of National Guard riflemen to quell. [7] Tear gas and fire hoses from local fire departments were used against the prisoners, who were complaining of harsh conditions.
In November 1963 the new State Prison in Somers was opened as a replacement for Wethersfield State Prison. [8] All prisoners from Wethersfield were transferred to Somers and two years later the old prison was demolished. [3] The majority of the prison property was sold to the town of Wethersfield for $1.00 and is currently the site of Cove Park, while the remainder is the site of the headquarters of the Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles. [6] The only visible remnant of the prison is a small marker for the former prison cemetery. [5]
Surviving records from the Wethersfield State Prison are maintained by the Connecticut State Library. [3] The Wethersfield prison was never a part of the Connecticut Department of Correction. Demolition of Wethersfield was completed by 1966, a year before the State Prison in Somers was transferred to the new Department of Correction. [1]
Wethersfield is a town located in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States. It is located immediately south of Hartford along the Connecticut River. The town is part of the Capitol Planning Region. The population was 27,298 at the time of the 2020 census.
Sing Sing Correctional Facility, formerly Ossining Correctional Facility, is a maximum-security prison operated by the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision in the village of Ossining, New York, United States. It is about 30 miles (48 km) north of Midtown Manhattan on the east bank of the Hudson River. It holds about 1,700 inmates and housed the execution chamber for the State of New York until the abolition of capital punishment in New York in 2007.
Old Sparky is the nickname of the electric chairs in Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. Old Smokey was the nickname of the electric chairs used in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. "Old Sparky" is sometimes used to refer to electric chairs in general, and not one of a specific state.
The Federal Correctional Institution, Leavenworth is a medium-security federal prison for male inmates in northeast Kansas. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice. It also includes a satellite federal prison camp (FPC) for minimum-security male offenders.
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Northern Correctional Institution (NCI) was a high-security state prison in Somers, in the northern part of the U.S. state of Connecticut. Until its closure, the prison housed the state's male convicts serving long sentences for violent crimes; previously, it had also housed the death row for inmates before the abolition of the death penalty in Connecticut.
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Michael P. Lawlor is an American politician, criminal justice professor, and lawyer from Connecticut. A Democrat, he served as a member of the Connecticut House of Representatives from 1987 to 2011, representing the 99th district in East Haven. Lawlor resigned from the legislature on January 4, 2011 to serve in Dan Malloy's administration as undersecretary for criminal justice policy and planning at the Office of Policy and Management.
Capital punishment in Connecticut formerly existed as an available sanction for a criminal defendant upon conviction for the commission of a capital offense. Since the 1976 United States Supreme Court decision in Gregg v. Georgia until Connecticut repealed capital punishment in 2012, Connecticut had only executed one person, Michael Bruce Ross in 2005. Initially, the 2012 law allowed executions to proceed for those still on death row and convicted under the previous law, but on August 13, 2015, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that applying the death penalty only for past cases was unconstitutional.
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The Connecticut Department of Correction (DOC) is the government agency responsible for corrections in the U.S. state of Connecticut. The agency operates 18 correctional facilities. It has its headquarters in Wethersfield.
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Cheshire Correctional Institution is a Connecticut Department of Correction state prison for men located in Cheshire, New Haven County, Connecticut. The facility was built beginning in 1910, partly by the inmates of the Wethersfield State Prison, and opened in 1913 as the Chester Reformatory for male youths ages 16 to 24. In 1982, the state's Manson Youth Institution opened adjacent to the Cheshire Correctional Institution, which was re-designated as an adult prison.
The Osborn Correctional Institution (OCI), formerly known as the Connecticut Correctional Institution – Somers, is a medium-security state prison that includes a high-security mental health unit for men of the Connecticut Department of Correction located in Somers, Connecticut. It has capacity of 1900 inmates, making it amongst the largest prisons in the state and one of the oldest operational facilities in Connecticut.
Janet S. York Correctional Institution is Connecticut's only state prison for women, located in Niantic. The facility opened in its current form in October, 1994, and houses a maximum of 1500 at a range of security levels from minimum to super maximum.
The Connecticut Juvenile Training School (CJTS) was a juvenile prison in Middletown, Connecticut, that operated under the Connecticut Department of Children and Families from 2001 to 2018. Established in proximity to the Connecticut Valley Hospital (CVH), CJTS held male inmates age 12–17 with capacity for 240 inmates. In 2021, Connecticut governor Ned Lamont announced that he was considering reopening the prison to hold immigrant children.
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| State prisons |
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| Defunct |
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Above currently open facilities are male-only unless noted by ♀(female-only) | |
