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The Oklahoma State Penitentiary (OSP) is a prison of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections located in McAlester, Oklahoma, on . Opened in 1908 with 50 inmates in makeshift facilities, today the prison holds more than 900 male offenders, the vast majority of which are maximum-security inmates. OSP is also the site of Oklahoma's death row for men and execution chamber. ==Construction and early years== Before Oklahoma became a state in 1907, felons convicted in Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory were sent to the Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing, Kansas. At statehood, Kate Barnard became Oklahoma Commissioner of Charities and Corrections. During the summer of 1908, Barnard arrived unannounced at the Kansas prison to investigate widespread complaints she had received about mistreatment of Oklahoma inmates. She took a regular tour with other visitors first, then identified herself to prison officials and asked that she be allowed to conduct an inspection of the facility. Barnard discovered systematic, widespread torture of inmates. Upon her return to Oklahoma, Barnard recommended that all Oklahoma inmates be removed from the Lansing facility and returned to the state. Governor of Oklahoma Charles N. Haskell supported Barnard's proposal, and within two months of Barnard's visit to Kansas, on October 14, 1908, two groups of 50 offenders each were sent by train to McAlester.〔 The inmates were temporarily housed in the former federal jail in the town. Under direction from Warden Robert W. Dick, they built a stockade to house themselves on a plot northwest of McAlester, which was donated to the state by a group of McAlester citizens.〔 The remaining Oklahoma inmates in Lansing were moved to the United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth until the state could build adequate facilities to house them all. The next spring, in 1909, the Oklahoma Legislature appropriated $850,000 to build the permanent facility. Construction began in May 1909 on a prison designed after the Leavenworth facility. The state purchased about surrounding the original plot of land. Using prison labor, the West Cellhouse and Administration Building were completed first; the Rotunda and East Cellhouse came later. The steep hills and grades required more than of concrete and more than of rocks and soil were moved for the prison's walls alone. The F Cellhouse was added in 1935, and later the New Cellhouse was constructed. A shoe manufacturing plant and a tailor shop were part of the prison's inmate industry program, designed to provide work for offenders; at Lansing, prisoners were forced to work in the local mines, a practice Barnard banned. The Warden's House, across the street form the prison, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Female prisoners were sent to Kansas in territorial days also. The first females brought back from Kansas stayed in a ward near the East Gate built in 1911. housed on the fourth floor of the West Cellhouse. The female population had grown to 26 by the time a separate building about west of the main institution was completed in 1926. The first prison escape (from behind the walls) occurred on January 19, 1914. Three inmates stole a gun in the escape attempt, killed three prison employees and a federal judge. The convicts were later killed behind a rock ledge located on a ridge overlooking a wagon road. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Oklahoma State Penitentiary」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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