The John M. Wynne Unit (WY) is a men's prison of the

Texas Department of Criminal Justice The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) is a department of the government of the U.S. state of Texas. The TDCJ is responsible for statewide criminal justice for adult offenders, including managing offenders in state prisons, state jails, ...

,Wynne Unit
."

. Retrieved on September 29, 2011. located in northern

Huntsville, Texas Huntsville is a city in and the county seat of Walker County, Texas. The population was 45,941 as of the 2020 census. It is the center of the Huntsville micropolitan area. Huntsville is in the East Texas Piney Woods on Interstate 45 and home to ...

, at the intersection of Farm to Market Road 2821 West and

Texas State Highway 75 State Highway 75 (SH 75) is a state highway in the U.S. state of Texas. It follows the former routing of U.S. Route 75 (US 75), which was supplanted by Interstate 45 south of Dallas, except in Dallas, where the former ...

North.''Texas Department of Criminal Justice''. Turner Publishing Company, 2004
119
, . The Windham School District has its headquarters in the unit. Wynne, the second oldest prison in Texas, was named after John Magruder Wynne, who served as a prison employee and later as a board member of the prison system from 1878 to 1881. The unit, on a plot of land, is co-located with the

Holliday Unit The Holliday Transfer Facility (TDCJ Identification Code: NF, also referred to as the Holliday Transfer Unit),

History

The State of Texas bought Wynne from the last lessees of the facility (Cunningham and Ellis) in 1883. Wynne initially had about of terrace gardens used to fulfill the gardening needs of the

Huntsville Unit Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville or Huntsville Unit (HV), nicknamed "Walls Unit", is a Texas state prison located in Huntsville, Texas, United States. The approximately facility, near downtown Huntsville, is operated by the Correctional Ins ...

. The current unit was dedicated in 1937 and completed in 1939. In the 1970s, the prison had 17 prison guards in its day shift to oversee 2,600 prisoners. The prison system arranged to have building tenders used to guard the prisoners, making up for the small number of prison guards. On August 8, 2000 an inmate escaped from the prison by driving a tractor trailer cab through the prison wall while avoiding gunshots fired by correctional officers. The prisoner left the truck on the runway of Huntsville Airport and fled into a vehicle; state officials believed that the man's wife drove the vehicle. Police officers with tracking dogs found the man and his wife under a tree less than from the Wynne Unit. The state said that the offender "reportedly" was taken with force, while the wife surrendered peacefully. In 2007 two inmates from Wynne escaped. During the incident the escape vehicle hit 59-year-old correctional officer Susan Canfield, killing her. Both inmates have been found and rearrested. The driver, Jerry Duane Martin (TDCJ#999552), was executed on December 3, 2013. The other inmate, John Ray Falk was sentenced to death in 2017. In 2008 an Offender escaped the Wynne Unit using a child's bicycle. He was taken back into custody less than 24 hours later.

Operations

Wynne has a box factory, a computer recovery factory, and a license plate factory (the only one for the state and works with the 3M company). A mattress factory, which provides all of the beds for the state colleges, is at the Wynne Unit, as well as a mechanic shop with diesel repair, a signs and plastics plant, and a sticker plant. All of the state issued car registration stickers are also made at the Wynne Unit. It has been shown that the Wynne Unit generates around $1 Million a week for the State of Texas. The Windham School District has its headquarters in Building B in the Wynne Unit.

Notable inmates

* David Ruiz (plaintiff of ''

Ruiz v. Estelle ''Ruiz v. Estelle'', 503 F. Supp. 1265 (S.D. Tex. 1980), filed in United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, eventually became the most far-reaching lawsuit on the conditions of prison incarceration in American history. It ...

'')Perkinson, Robert. '' Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire''. First Edition.

Metropolitan Books Henry Holt and Company is an American book-publishing company based in New York City. One of the oldest publishers in the United States, it was founded in 1866 by Henry Holt and Frederick Leypoldt. Currently, the company publishes in the fields ...

, 2010. p
260
. * Fred Cruz (Petitioner Prisoner in '' Cruz v. Beto'') *

David Crosby David Van Cortlandt Crosby (born August 14, 1941) is an American singer, guitarist, and songwriter. In addition to his solo career, he was a founding member of both the Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash. Crosby joined the Byrds in 1964. They got ...

(member of Crosby, Stills, and Nash) was held for 5 months in the Wynne State Farm. "http://www.rockandrollroadmap.com/other-u.s.-area-misc/wynne-unit-david-crosby-imprisoned-here/view-details.html" * Michael Morton - Later exonerated of the crime he was accused of. * Keith Robert Turner - perpetrator of the 2006 Harris County, Texas hate crime assaultTurner, Keith Robert

Archive
.

. Retrieved on December 28, 2015.

References

External links

Wynne Unit
-

List of prisoners in the Wynne Unit
-

The Texas Tribune ''The Texas Tribune'' is a news website headquartered in Austin, Texas. It aims to promote civic engagement through original, explanatory journalism and public events. Its website and content in various delivery platforms serve as an alternativ ...

{{Huntsville, Texas Prisons in Huntsville, Texas 1883 establishments in Texas Buildings and structures in Walker County, Texas