Penitentiary opened to great fanfare
By Zach Taylor
Tribune-Star
When the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute opened in 1940, officials promised it would house only small-time crooks and "no desperate criminals or hardened offenders."
Sixty years later, it is home to the federal government's death row and the country's most infamous killer, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, who will be executed there May 16.
While the prison has been a part of Terre Haute's landscape for decades, it is getting more attention now than any time since it opened. And despite some of the negative publicity surrounding the execution, the prison has been a boon to the local economy, city leaders said.
It employs some 500 people who earn a combined payroll of $20 million a year, and the Bureau of Prisons is expected to expand its operations in Terre Haute, adding several hundred more jobs.
"Our community leaders back then probably didn't realize what the federal prison would mean to Terre Haute today," said Rod Henry, president of the Greater Terre Haute Chamber of Commerce.
"It provides not only economic power, but it provides a lot of people that can be involved in helping this community grow," he said.
Construction of the prison was authorized in June 1938 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The $3 million prison was financed by a grant from the United States Public Works Administration to provide jobs during the depression era.
At the time, Terre Haute's Chamber of Commerce actively promoted the area as a potential prison site and raised $50,000 to pay for the prison property.
Thanks in part to the Chamber's work, Terre Haute was selected, and two years later the prison was complete.
As many as 90,000 people flocked to town for an open house to see the state of the art facility. The Chamber of Commerce passed out about 3,000 free tickets for each of the 30 hours the prison was open to the public, according to newspaper accounts.
The reasons for the public support were obvious: More jobs, new families coming to town in need of goods and services and an institution that planned to buy supplies from local merchants.
Plus the criminals coming in were relatively safe.
"No desperate criminals or hardened offenders will be committed to Terre Haute," a fact booklet by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons said. "It is to be used to house only those adult offenders who are not criminal on a habitual level and who have not committed serious crimes of violence."
That meant area citizens were gaining all the benefits of the prison and only had to endure, for the most part, first-time offenders.
At the prison's dedication, then-director of the Bureau of Prisons, James V. Bennett, called the prison "one of the symbols of the American way of life."
"It is built around the idea that each human life is sacred and that even those who have sinned against the social order are entitled to a fair trial, fair treatment and fair attention to their problems and troubles," he said. "Men are sent to prison as punishment and not for punishment."
Bennett was explaining a novel concept at the time. The Terre Haute was one of the first to provide psychological and psychiatric treatment. It initiated use of the word "inmate" rather than "convict" or "criminal."
Prisoners were identified by names and not numbers, custodial officers supplanted guards, cells became known as quarters and imposed silence at meals gave way to conversation, newspaper accounts said.
Further, inmates could improve themselves through education while in prison. The Terre Haute prison was one of the first to help inmates learn reading, writing, math and other skills, including trades such as auto mechanics, welding and plumbing.
A newspaper article at the time said the prison was "a hospital to cure men of tendencies which make them socially undesirable."
The prison's layout also gave inmates more sense of freedom.
The prison was the first to be constructed without a wall to keep
inmates in. Instead, razor wire fencing is used to prevent escapes.
Other factors made the prison unique as well.
"There are, for instance, no massive interior steel cell blocks of the type which has characterized practically all American prisons since the old cell block ... was first developed a little over a hundred years ago," E.B. Swope, the prison's first warden, said at the time.
Over the years, the prison's mission expanded. In 1995, construction of the lethal injection death chamber was finished. And on July 13, 1999, 20 men condemned to death by the federal government arrived in Terre Haute to await their executions. Among them was McVeigh, whose May 16 execution will mark the first federal execution since 1963.
Terre Haute's geographically central location in the United States contributed to its selection for the death row.
Despite the recent onslaught of media and protesters for the execution, local officials are so happy with the prison and its place in the community that they're actively seeking a second, and possibly a third, facility on the penitentiary grounds, said Rod Henry, president of the Greater Terre Haute Chamber of Commerce.
"Industries like this don't pack up their bags and move across the state line. And they do spend a lot of dollars," Henry said.
Henry said a second prison would mean about 300 permanent jobs at the new facility, more than 400 construction jobs and about $72 million in local sales from the construction.
Barring any unforeseen opposition, Bureau of Prisons officials have said they expect to give the go-ahead this month to start construction.
The new penitentiary, costing approximately $80 million, would take about 30 months to build. It would be a high-security facility that would house 1,000 inmates in general population and up to 120 inmates in a new Special Confinement Unit.
The current penitentiary has "made a very big impact economically. We very much supported the new prison expansion that we hope will soon be under way and the several hundred jobs that that it will create," said Steve Witt, executive director of the Terre Haute and Vigo County Department of Redevelopment. "Federal prisons pay a good wage, have very good benefits and help our local suppliers - folks that do business with the prison."
Terre Haute Mayor Judy Anderson agreed. "We like having the penitentiary here," she said. "They're a good partner in the community."
Back to Archived Stories Index