The Kentucky State Penitentiary, also known as the "Castle on the Cumberland," is a prison of the Kentucky Department of Corrections located in Eddyville, Kentucky

Eddyville, Kentucky

Eddyville is a city in Lyon County, Kentucky, United States. The population was 2,350 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Lyon County . The Kentucky State Penitentiary is located in Eddyville.-History:...

. The state's only maximum security male facility, the prison is located on Lake Barkley

Lake Barkley

Lake Barkley, a reservoir in Livingston, Lyon, and Trigg counties in Kentucky and extending into Stewart and Houston counties in Tennessee, was impounded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1966 upon the completion of Barkley Dam. Both the lake and the dam are named for Vice President Alben...

 on the Cumberland River, about 3 miles (4.8 km) from downtown Eddyville. Completed in 1886, it is Kentucky's oldest prison facility. The prison houses Kentucky's male death row

Death row

Death row signifies the place, often a section of a prison, that houses individuals awaiting execution. The term is also used figuratively to describe the state of awaiting execution , even in places where no special facility or separate unit for condemned inmates exists.After individuals are found...

 inmates as well as the state's execution

Capital punishment

Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for an offence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from the Latin capitalis, literally...

 facility. The prison has a capacity of 856 prisoners. As of 2008, it has approximately 350 staff members and an annual operating budget of 16 million dollars.http://www.corrections.ky.gov/ksp/about/

History

Former Confederate States brigadier general and Eddyville native Hylan Benton Lyon was the moving force behind the Kentucky State Branch Penitentiary being located in what is now Old Eddyville. A hill overlooking the Cumberland River was chosen as the site for the new prison. Construction of the Kentucky State Branch Penitentiary began in 1884, using massive granite blocks quarried from a site down the Cumberland. Italian stonemasons were recruited to erect the original buildings, which resemble medieval castles. The prison officially opened in 1889. It was the second prison built in the state, the first being the Kentucky State Prison in Frankfort, which was opened in 1798. When the Kentucky State Penitentiary was built, the Kentucky State Prison was renamed the Kentucky State Reformatory. Kentucky State Penitentiary - Kentucky Department of Corrections

Founding Information

Before the penitentiary was built, prison life in Kentucky was horrific. An 1875 study showed that 20 percent of the inmates in the Kentucky State Prison had pneumonia and seventy-five percent had scurvy. The prison was a place of “slime covered walls, open sewage, and graveyard coughs [4].” Approximately seventy of the one-thousand prisoners had died in 1875. Prison life was something that Kentucky Officials had really never focused on until Governor Luke P. Blackburn

Luke P. Blackburn

Luke Pryor Blackburn was a physician, philanthropist, and politician from the US state of Kentucky. He was elected the 28th governor of Kentucky, serving from 1879 to 1883. Until the election of Ernie Fletcher in 2003, Blackburn was the only physician to serve as governor of Kentucky...

. He was elected governor in 1879 and immediately got the legislature to approve of a new prison.

The early years

By 1889, the penitentiary was overcrowded. The General Assembly allowed some inmates to work outside of prison walls, sometimes even unsupervised. In the first few years, around half of the fifty inmates working outside of the prison managed to escape. Abuse rates by the guards and over-seers against the prisoners were at their highest ever, mainly because no one was supervising the handling of the prisoners. Finally, in the early 1890’s, this law was abolished and all inmates were forced to stay in the penitentiary. It was almost full immediately.

The Middle Years

In 1909, a law was created so that the inmates were no longer required to wear stripes. Inmates would wear baggy denim pants and jackets, cloth hats, and cotton shirts. They also would have numbers stenciled on their backs. Although this was passed, the ball and chain would still be used as punishment for prison offenders until 1940. In the 1940’s, the prison began to get rid of all of the convicts under age eighteen. Most of them were sent to the reformatory.
The main issue with the Kentucky State Penitentiary during the modern years was the correctional officer force. The officer force was always low in numbers and received very low wages.

Modern Times

On June 17, 1988, eight convicts, three being murderers on death row, escaped from the Kentucky State Penitentiary. This occurred at about 2 a.m. sneaking around the fires set by other inmates. The inmates sawed through cell bars, walked through the cell-house doors, and climbed approximately thirty feet to a window using an electrical extension cord.
On July 1, 1997, Kentucky executed its first inmate in thirty five years. Harold McQueen

Harold McQueen, Jr.

Harold McQueen, Jr. was the first criminal executed by the State of Kentucky after the reinstatement of capital punishment in the United States in 1976...

, 44 years old, was convicted in 1981 of murdering Rebecca O’ Hearn, a convenience store clerk, during a robbery that netted him 1,500 dollars. Harold McQueen was electrocuted at 12:07 a.m. Over one hundred death penalty opponents and twenty five supporters of capital punishment protested outside of the penitentiary.

On November 21, 2008 death row inmate Marco Allen Chapman, convicted of murdering two northern Kentucky children in 2002, was executed by lethal injection, the most recent at Kentucky State Penitentiary

Kentucky State Penitentiary

The Kentucky State Penitentiary, also known as the "Castle on the Cumberland," is a prison of the Kentucky Department of Corrections located in Eddyville, Kentucky. The state's only maximum security male facility, the prison is located on Lake Barkley on the Cumberland River, about from downtown...

.

Distinctions

Five distinct custody levels make up the population at Eddyville. The general population wears khaki while protective custody inmates wear kelly green. The segregated inmates wear canary yellow while the death row inmates wear bright scarlet red. There is also a small group of minimum security inmates who wear dark green. These inmates are allowed to live outside the walls of the institution and have work assignments on the grounds. In addition, these inmates are given additional privileges, including fishing in Lake Barkley in their spare time.

External links

• Kentucky State Penitentiary. Kentucky Department of Corrections
• KentuckyLake.com: The Kentucky State Penitentiary