McNeil Island Corrections Center

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]

McNeil Island Corrections Center (MICC)

McNeil Island in 1937
Location in Washington Show map of Washington (state) Location in the United States Show map of the United States
Location	McNeil Island
Coordinates	47°11′48″N 122°39′28″W
Status	Closed
Security class	Medium
Capacity	853
Opened	1875; 150 years ago (1875)
Closed	2011
Former name	McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary (1904–1981)
Managed by	Federal Bureau of Prisons (1904–1981) Washington State Department of Corrections (1981–2011)
County	Pierce County
State/province	Washington
Postal code	P.O. Box 88900
Country	United States

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

• Alvin Karpis, Depression-era gangster^[7]
• Tomoya Kawakita, war criminal and collaborator with Imperial Japan
• Gordon Hirabayashi, resister against Japanese American internment during World War II
• Mickey Cohen, 1930s Los Angeles gang leader
• Robert Franklin Stroud, "The Birdman of Alcatraz" convicted murderer and cause célèbre^[7]
• Alton Wayne Roberts,^[10] convicted by United States v. Price of the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner
• Vincent Hallinan, 1952 presidential candidate^[11]
• Charles Manson of the Manson Family
• John David Norman, pedophile, sex offender and sex trafficker^[12]
• Anselmo L. Figueroa, Mexican anarchist

See also

• Washington (state) portal
• United States portal
• Politics portal

• List of law enforcement agencies in Washington (state)
• List of United States state correction agencies
• List of U.S. state prisons