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About/Additional Info: |
Richmond Correctional Institution houses male offenders in medium and minimum custody.
The prison is located on a 175-acre tract in Hoffman, near Rockingham. Medium custody offenders are housed in Aggrey, Bost, and Johnson dormitories. Minimum custody offenders are housed in Edwards, Jenkins, Auman and Newsome dormitories. The facility also has an administration building, two schools, a gym, two clothes houses and two dining halls, as well as a 20-cell unit for medium custody offenders and a 12-cell unit for minimum custody offenders.
Offenders attend school, with instruction provided by DPS teachers and Richmond Community College instructors. The prison provides vocational classes in brick masonry, electric service, industrial maintenance, upholstery and cooking. Classes for adult education, preparation for high school equivalency tests and college courses are available, as well as life skills and substance abuse.
Richmond Correctional's history began in 1923 when lawmakers authorized the State Training School for Negro Boys at Hoffman. Construction work started in 1924 and the facility opened in 1925 with eight youth. In 1939, the name was changed to Morrison Training School in honor of Governor Cameron Morrison. The name was changed again in 1969 to Cameron Morrison School.
The training school closed and the facility reopened as a prison in 1977. Morrison and Sandhills Youth Center were organized as the Sandhills Youth Complex. In 1978, three of prison's dormitories were converted to house 100 female offenders. The Sandhills Youth Complex was then composed of Sandhills Youth Center, Cameron Morrison Youth Center and Cameron Morrison Youth Center for Females.
In 1983, the Sandhills Youth Complex was dissolved, and the female offenders were moved to Fountain Correctional Center for Women in 1984. Minimum custody males then moved into the Auman and Edwards dorms. Three wings in Newsome dormitory were left vacant because of poor physical conditions (Newsome dorm and an administrative building were renovated in 1989 to house the state's first boot camp program). In October 1988, Cameron Morrison Youth Center's name was changed to Morrison Youth Institution.
Lawmakers provided funding for the building of a 208-bed dormitory and a 20-cell segregation unit as part of the $87.5 million prison construction program authorized in 1993. Ground was broken May 4, 1994 for a chapel funded with money raised by prison volunteers.
From 1988 to 2002, Morrison Youth Institution served as a medium security prison for young male felons ages 18-21. In January 2002, Morrison was converted to a medium security facility for adult males and renamed Morrison Correctional Institution to help meet the state's growing need for adult male prison bed space. The youth offenders transferred to other youth prison facilities. In July 2002, the Impact East boot camp for probationers was closed and was reopened in June 2003 to house minimum security youthful offenders.
On Oct. 4, 2021, the name of the prison was changed to Richmond Correctional Institution. |
