United States Penitentiary, Marion
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| Location |
Southern Precinct, Williamson County, near Marion, Illinois |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 37°39′47″N 88°59′3″W / 37.66306°N 88.98417°W |
| Status | Operational |
| Security class | Medium-security (with minimum-security prison camp) |
| Population | 1,062 (350 in prison camp) |
| Opened | 1963 |
| Managed by | Federal Bureau of Prisons |
| Warden | Maureen Baird |
The United States Penitentiary, Marion (USP Marion) is a medium-security United States federal prison for male inmates in Illinois. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice. The facility also has an adjacent satellite prison camp that houses minimum security female offenders.
USP Marion in Southern Illinois is approximately 9 miles (14 km) south of the city of Marion, Illinois, 300 miles (480 km) south of Chicago, and 120 miles (190 km) southeast of St. Louis, Missouri.
USP Marion was built and opened in 1963 to replace the maximum security federal prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco, which closed the same year. The facility became the nation's first control unit when violence forced a long-term lockdown in 1983.
USP Marion was originally constructed to hold 500 of the most dangerous federal inmates, mostly transfers from Alcatraz. Prison administrators aimed to maintain a safe and orderly environment and rehabilitate the inmates while avoiding the high-profile abuses which occurred at Alcatraz. They implemented a behavior modification program named Control and Rehabilitation Effort (CARE) in 1968. Inmates in the program spent most of their time in solitary confinement or in "group therapy" sessions where they were berated for their deviant behavior and urged to change. In 1973, the first blocks of "control unit" cells were created. Inmates assigned to the control-unit would spend 23 to 24 hours a day in one-man cells which were specifically designed to severely limit or eliminate the inmate's contact with other people inside the prison and the outside world.
The first escape from USP Marion occurred in 1975, when five inmates used a homemade electronic device to open the front gates of the prison. One of them had been an electrician and was assigned to work on the lock mechanisms of all of the doors in the main corridors. He also converted a radio into a remote control, with which he opened all of the doors. The five escapees were all eventually captured and returned to prison.
Two escape attempts occurred in 1978 involving the same inmate, Garrett Brock Trapnell. On May 24, 1978, Trapnell's friend, 43-year-old Barbara Ann Oswald, hijacked a St. Louis based charter helicopter and ordered the pilot, Allen Barklage, to fly to USP Marion. Barklage complied, but he wrestled the gun away from Oswald and shot her while he was landing in the prison yard, thwarting the escape. On December 21, 1978, Trapnell's 17-year-old daughter, Robin Oswald, hijacked TWA Flight 541, which was en route from Louisville International Airport to Kansas City International Airport and threatened to detonate dynamite strapped to her body if the pilot did not fly to Williamson County Regional Airport, located only miles from USP Marion. When the pilot landed at the airport in Marion, hundreds of law enforcement officers had responded. Robin Oswald surrendered to FBI negotiators at the Williamson airport without incident about ten hours later. The dynamite was later found to be fake.
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