User:Man17018/State Correctional Institution - Camp Hill

State Correctional Institution - Camp Hill

State Correctional Institution - Camp Hill (SCI-Camp Hill) was built in 1941 as the White Hill State Industrial School (White Hill) on a 519 acre site in Lower Allen Township, Cumberland County. White Hill served as a medium-security detention school for juvenile delinquents through 1974, at which time the facility began to phase in "youthful offenders;" that is, young adults convicted of felonies and sentenced to the state correctional system.

The location serves as headquarters for the PA Department of Corrections. This agency under the Governor's jurisdiction oversees operation of the state prison system as well as the state training academy for corrections personnel and an inspectors office that reviews the independently-operated county jails.

White Hill provided boys and young men with a variety of vocational training and educational opportunities in its various industries and on its large, surrounding farm in Lower Allen Township, Cumberland County. Goods manufactured by state inmates were marketed within the state to other institutions or government entities under the brand "PenCor." White Hill's furniture factory had been a premier wood shop manufacturing office furniture that often competed well against private sector products, and this led to political friction with commercial state vendors. The 380 acre prison farm, with its swine, dairy, poultry operations, and vegetable gardens made White Hill almost entirely self-sustaining. The facility housed a large abbatoir that provided meat for many other prisons and also state hospitals and Pennsylvania's two veterans' children's schools.

During the 1970s transition from juvenile lockup to state correctional institution, there were transition difficulties regarding segregation of children from adults. One incident, where a young man committed suicide, became the subject of a "60 Minutes" segment at that time.

During the Three Mile Island power station incident, SCI-Camp Hill underwent a lockdown while state officials staged buses and arranged for guarding some 1,200 inmates who would have been transferred to other SCIs in the system, should there have been an evacuation order.

In 1989, as mandatory-sentencing laws swelled the ranks of state prisoners, doubling SCI-Camp Hill's population to over 2,600. Following years of overcrowding that first saw double-celling of inmates, then establishment of make-shift dormatories, a prisoners' riot occurred during which most of the obsolete, 1940s structures at the facility were heavily damaged or destroyed. Only the prison chapel, a modern 1960s church building, was spared fire damage.

After the riot was put down, the public nearby demanded an end to the most liberal of inmate management policies such as work programs outside the gate, including the farming operation, and the prison was re-established as a classification and diagnostic center for all incoming state prisoners. Most prisoners entering the SCI system in Pennsylvania would first enter SCI-Camp Hill for evaluation and testing before being assigned to any of the other state prisons overseen by PA Dept. of Corrections. The site does, however, still permanently house some inmates who have social and family ties to the greater Harrisburg area.

Most of SCI-Camp Hill's self-sustaining prison industries are no longer in operation. Other SCIs in the system continue to manufacture goods for the Pennsylvania Correctional Industries label.

The most recent population data available show that SCI-Camp Hill is operating above capacity. It has 3,130 beds available and a population count of 3,556, of which 175 are inmates housed in special modification unit (SMU) for behavioral issues.