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The McNeil Island Corrections Center (MICC) was a prison in the northwest United States, operated by the Washington State Department of Corrections. It was on McNeil Island in Puget Sound in unincorporated Pierce County,[1] near Steilacoom, Washington.[2]

Opened in 1875, it had previously served as a territorial correctional facility and then a federal penitentiary.[3] Americans sentenced to terms of imprisonment by the United States courts that operated in China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries served their terms at McNeil Island.[4] In the 1910s, inmates included Robert Stroud, the "Birdman of Alcatraz", who fatally stabbed a prison guard in March 1916.

During World War II, eighty-five Japanese Americans who had resisted the draft to protest their wartime confinement, including civil rights activist Gordon Hirabayashi, were sentenced to prison terms at McNeil; all were pardoned by President Harry S. Truman in 1947.[5] Career criminal and novelist James Fogle was sent to McNeil at the age of 17 in the 1950s.[6]

The State of Washington began to lease the facility from the federal government in 1981,[7] and later that year the state department of corrections began moving prisoners into the facility, renamed "McNeil Island Corrections Center." The island was deeded to the state government in 1984.[8]

In November 2010, the department announced its plans to close the penitentiary by 2011, saving $14 million in the process.[9]

Notable inmates

See also

References

  1. ^ "2020 CENSUS - CENSUS BLOCK MAP: Pierce County, WA" (PDF). U.S. Census Bureau. pp. 11, 19 (PDF p. 12, 20/114). Retrieved 2022-08-15. McNeil Island Corrections Ctr
  2. ^ "Mailing Requirements Archived 2011-05-05 at the Wayback Machine". Washington State Department of Corrections. Retrieved on April 1, 2011. "McNeil Island Corrections Center P.O. Box 88100 Steilacoom, WA 98388-0900"
  3. ^ "McNeil Island". Lewiston Morning Tribune. (Idaho). (Los Angeles Times). October 13, 1979. p. 2A.
  4. ^ Peters, E.W. (2011). Shanghai Policeman. Earnshaw Books: Hong Kong. p. 118. ISBN 9789881998385.
  5. ^ "McNeil Island Penitentiary (detention facility)". Densho Encyclopedia. Retrieved August 6, 2014.
  6. ^ Jean, Sara. "'Drugstore Cowboy' sentenced to what may be his last ride". The Seattle Times. Retrieved 2015-10-16.
  7. ^ a b c "McNeil Island". Lewiston Morning Tribune. (Idaho). (Los Angeles Times). October 13, 1979. p. 2A.
  8. ^ "McNeil Island Corrections Center History". Washington State Department of Corrections. Archived from the original on 2010-07-02. Retrieved April 2, 2011.
  9. ^ Sullivan, Jennifer; Clarridge, Christine "McNeil Island prison to close next year". The Seattle Times (November 20, 2010). Retrieved November 20, 2010.
  10. ^ ‘Ex-Sheriff Rainey: He’s Haunted by the Past’; The Boston Globe, September 22, 1974, p. 280
  11. ^ Robinson, Sean (March 28, 2011). "Who's who of McNeil Island prisoners". Bellingham Herald.
  12. ^ Homewood Police Department (2019-01-11). John Norman records from Homewood PD.

Further reading

  • Young, Elliott (March 2021). "Dawn of Immigrant Incarceration: Chinese and Other Aliens at McNeil Island Prison". Forever Prisoners: How the United States Made the World's Largest Immigrant Detention System. doi:10.1093/oso/9780190085957.003.0002.

External links


source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNeil_Island_Corrections_Center