INDIANA WOMEN’S PRISON, first prison in the United States expressly for women, established in 1873. For over a century it was situated near downtown Indianapolis before being moved to the former site of the Indianapolis Juvenile Correctional Facility in 2009. It can accommodate more than seven hundred inmates and houses a high percentage of “special needs” women, including those who are geriatric, mentally ill, and pregnant, as well as juvenile offenders tried as adults. Security levels range from medium to maximum. The prison also has Indiana’s sole death row for women, though it is currently vacant.
Initially proposed by Quaker prison reformers Rhoda Coffin and Sarah J. Smith, the facility was intended to address the fact that female inmates were often subject to abuse in male-dominated prisons. Smith, the first female prison superintendent in the US, emphasized discipline and skill-building among inmates, with tasks ranging from laundry to industrial work, in order to “rehabilitate” “fallen” women. Despite her purported good intentions Smith was later charged with harassing and physically abusing inmates, though she was acquitted. And Dr. Theophilus Parvin, who oversaw inmates’ medical care, was accused of experimenting on his patients. Though Parvin too was acquitted, articles he later published detailed experimental case studies involving anonymous patients that many have concluded were likely from the Indiana Women’s Prison.
The prison’s population swelled from sixteen inmates in its first year to 197 by 1928. It has held a number of high-profile individuals, such as Paula Cooper, whose case sparked international debate owing to her youth at the time of her death sentence; Sarah Jo Pender, who had escaped from another correctional facility; and infamous murderers like Gertrude Baniszewski and Montserrate Shirley.
While researching the prison’s early history, Michelle Jones and Lori Record unearthed evidence contesting the Indiana Women’s Prison’s status as the first separate women’s prison in the United States, writing, “We believe that distinction belongs instead to Catholic institutions commonly referred to as ‘Magdalene Laundries’ that were established throughout the nation beginning in the 1840s and that served as private prisons for women whose sexuality offended mainstream society.”