Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Norfolk, or MCI-Norfolk, is a medium security prison in Norfolk, Massachusetts with an average daily population of 1500 inmates. Though it is rated medium security, it also houses up to 98 maximum security inmates. Opened in the early 1930s, MCI-Norfolk is the largest state prison in Massachusetts.
One of the notable inmates of MCI-Norfolk was Malcolm X, who was also a member of the Norfolk Debating Society while incarcerated.
MCI-Norfolk is under the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts Department of Correction.
History
Web Extra: Suffolk County House of Corrections Inmates - WBZ-TV's Anaridis Rodriguez speaks with two female inmates at the Bradston Street Complex in Boston.
MCI-Norfolk was founded in 1927 as the Norfolk Prison Colony, a "model prison community" conceived by sociologist and penologist Howard Belding Gill (Harvard 1913, M.B.A. 1914), who was appointed its first superintendent in 1931.
Gill was dismissed in 1934 after an escape by four inmates, and replaced by his deputy Maurice N. Winslow, who served as superintendent from 1934 to 1950. The name of the prison was changed to the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Norfolk in the mid-1950s.
Famous civil rights activist Malcolm X was incarcerated at Norfolk, and he attended the prison school, where he furthered his education far beyond the eighth grade. The prison school and library are where he picked up his love of reading and where he learned how to articulate and debate his points in an argument, as he was part of the Norfolk Debating Society. He has even stated that he began his education here by copying down an entire dictionary word for word, learning the words and refining his handwriting the whole time.
During the 1950s, the Norfolk Debating Society, a team consisting of prison inmates, beat a number of university teams including the Oxford Union at Oxford University.
Officer Deaths at Norfolk
On July 31, 1972, Corrections Officers Alfred Baranowski and James Souza were shot and killed by an inmate using a smuggled firearm during an escape attempt. In the officers' memory, the Department of Corrections named their new supermax prison the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center.
Prison Address
MCI-Norfolk
2 Clark Street
PO Box 43
Norfolk, MA 02056
Notes
References
- Commonwealth of Massachusetts (2012). "MCI-Norfolk". Mass.gov. Retrieved 2012-12-29.
- Diiulio, John J., Governing Prisons: A Comparative Study of Correctional Management, Simon and Schuster, 1990. ISBNÂ 0-02-907883-0
- Serrill, M. S., "Norfolk - A Retrospective - New Debate Over a Famous Prison Experiment," Corrections Magazine, Volume 8, Issue 4 (August 1982), pp. 25â€"32.
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