Chí Hòa Prison
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| Location | District 10, Hồ Chí Minh City |
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| Coordinates | 10°46′37″N 106°40′08″E / 10.7769°N 106.669°ECoordinates: 10°46′37″N 106°40′08″E / 10.7769°N 106.669°E |
| Status | Operational |
| Security class | High |
| Opened | 1953 |
Chí Hòa Prison (Vietnamese: Khám Chí Hòa or Nhà Tù Chí Hòa) is a functioning Vietnamese prison located in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The prison is an octagonal building on a 7-hectare site consisting of detention rooms, jail cells, prison walls, watchtowers, facilities and prisoner's farmlands. The prison is one of 12 national prisons in Vietnam. Originally built by the French Indochina colonial government in 1943 (or 1939) to replace the Saigon Grand Prison, the prison was extensively used by all succeeding governments of Vietnam. Due to its complex and effective architecture, the prison is considered one of the highest security prisons in Vietnam as there were only two successful prison breaks in its history.
In 1930s, the 1890 French-built Saigon Grand Prison (Maison Centrale de Saigon) became overcrowded because of the increasing number of prisoners at that time. This situation prompted the French Indochina government to build a new and larger prison to replace the Saigon Grand Prison. In 1939 (or 1943, depending on various sources), the government began the construction of Chi Hoa prison by hiring French contractors and using the design of local Vietnamese architects. In 1945, the construction was interrupted by the Empire of Japan overthrowing of the French. After the return of the French in 1950, the construction was resumed and the building process was completely finished in 1953.
After the completion of Chí Hòa prison, Emperor Bảo Đại decided to permanently shut down the Saigon Grand Prison and transferred all prisoners to the new prison. From this point on, the government of the State of Vietnam (later Republic of Vietnam) used the prison extensively.
After the fall of Saigon in 1975, the new government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam has continued to use this prison until the present day. In 2010, the Ho Chi Minh city government announced a plan to demolish the prison and build a new corporative housing over the prison's land.
The prison's main structure is a three-floor octagonal building, heavily influenced by the I Ching's eight trigrams theory. The whole building is actually formed by seven tile-roofed building lines and one flat-roofed north-facing building line which are named in turn following these names of I Ching's eight trigrams. The exterior side and the interior side were built differently. The exterior side is closed by air-holed brick walls and the interior side is opened by a roofless green space which the prisoners was separated from by iron pales. Later, eight building lines are divided as areas which named alphabetically as A area, B area, C area, D area, E area, F area, G area, and H area. These areas are combined into 6 zones which are named as AB zone, BC zone, ED zone, FG zone, AH zone, and ID zone. The zones contain 238 cells:
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