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The Alton Military Prison was a prison located in Alton, Illinois, built in 1833 as the first state penitentiary in Illinois and closed in 1857. During the American Civil War, the prison was reopened in 1862 to accommodate the growing population of Confederate prisoners of war and ceased to be prison at the end of the war in 1865.
The prison was built with convict labor leased by the state to contractor Lorenzo P. Sanger and warden Samuel K. Casey. The limestone used to build the prison was quarried on the site. [2] The first 33 inmates arrived from Alton in May 1858 to begin construction; the last prisoners were transferred in July 1860.
Alton was developed as a river town in January 1818 by Rufus Easton, who named it after his son. Easton ran a passenger ferry service across the Mississippi River to the Missouri shore. Alton is located amid the confluence of three navigable rivers: the Illinois, the Mississippi, and the Missouri. Alton grew into a river trading town with an ...
Remains of the old Illinois State Prison, the first state penitentiary in Illinois. Alton Military Prison: open 1833 through 1857, replaced by Joliet; operated as a military prison during the Civil War; Decatur Adult Transition Center; closed 2012; Dwight Correctional Center: closed in 2013; maximum security
In a news release announcing the groundbreaking for the prisons, Slattery called the new facilities “the future of American corrections.” Among the new Correctional Services Corp. prisons was the Pahokee Youth Development Center, which sat in the middle of sugarcane fields in a rural, swampy part of the state northwest of Miami.
Menard Correctional Center opened in March 1878; it is the second oldest operating prison in Illinois, and, by a large margin, the state's largest prison. Menard once housed death row; however, on January 10, 2003, the Condemned Unit closed when then Governor George Ryan granted clemency to all Illinois death row inmates. [ 2 ]
Youth Services International confronted a potentially expensive situation. It was early 2004, only three months into the private prison company’s $9.5 million contract to run Thompson Academy, a juvenile prison in Florida, and already the facility had become a scene of documented violence and neglect.
Development in the district began in the 1830s; in addition to residential development, the Illinois State Prison was constructed in the neighborhood in 1833. While Alton's economy declined during the Panic of 1837 , development in the district continued through the early 20th century, and Christian Hill became a desirable neighborhood for ...