Western Kentucky Correctional Complex (WKCC) is a segregated, dual-sex, medium-security prison in

Lyon County, Kentucky Lyon County is a county located in the U.S. state of Kentucky. As of the 2020 census, the population was 8,680. Its county seat is Eddyville. The county was formed from Caldwell County, Kentucky in 1854 and named for former Congressman Chitten ...

, near the city of Fredonia. , the facility had 693 prisoners (493 men and 200 women).

History

The facility was built in 1968 to support the

Kentucky State Penitentiary The Kentucky State Penitentiary (KSP), also known as the "Castle on the Cumberland," is a maximum security and supermax prison with capacity for 856 prisoners located in Eddyville, Kentucky on Lake Barkley on the Cumberland River, about from ...

(KSP). In 1977, it became its own separate institution, the Western Kentucky Farm Center (WKFC), a minimum-security prison. When WKFC became Western Kentucky Correctional Complex in 1989, medium-security infrastructure was added. The facility was converted from a men's prison to a

women's prison This article discusses the incarceration of women in correctional facilities. As of 2013 across the world, 625,000 women and children were being held in penal institutions, and the female prison population was increasing in all continents.

in 2010. Five years later, it was divided into two separate facilities: the current men's prison (WKCC) and a separate women's prison—the 200-bed Ross-Cash Center—due to fewer female prisoners; this change was projected to save per year and only require 90 days of work to accomplish. Ross-Cash was named for two

Kentucky Department of Corrections The Kentucky Department of Corrections is a state agency of the Kentucky Justice & Public Safety Cabinet that operates state-owned adult correctional facilities and provides oversight for and sets standards for county jails. They also provide trai ...

staff members killed in the 1980s, Patricia Ross (died 1984 at KSP) and Fred Cash (died 1986 at WKFC). WKCC and Ross-Cash reunited under the WKCC name in 2016, and , was the "only state-level co-ed facility in Kentucky." Sixty-four percent of prisoners were white while the other thirty-six percent were black. Annual imprisonment cost per person, while WKCC had an operating budget of .

References

{{women's prisons in the United States prisons in Kentucky