After 3 Years, Women Finally Return to Danbury’s Federal Correctional Institution (FCI)

After three years, women who were moved from the FCI in Danbury to prisons all over the country will finally be returning to Danbury.

According to correctionalnews.com, back in 2013, the Federal Bureau of Prisons made the decision to turn Danbury's FCI into an all male facility which meant 1,100 women were transferred out to prisons as far away as Alabama. 100 female inmates spent those three years in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. At one point, a group of women judges visited the Brooklyn inmates and called the conditions, "unconscionable." There were no adequate recreation facilities, substandard medical care, and little to no treatment programs.

Lawmakers jumped into the fray, along with inmates, senators, and prison groups, claiming that Danbury's FCI is the only women's prison in the northeast and the FBP was making a big mistake. In November of 2013, the Federal Bureau of Prisons not only did an about-face, they decided to improve Danbury's FCI to the tune of $25 million, which includes the first-ever integrated treatment facility for female inmates. That facility will include a mental health unit and a women's residential drug abuse program.

Danbury's Federal Correctional Institution will begin to accept female inmates this month. The FCI has been host to Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy, Piper Kerman, whose memoirs became the basis of the Netflix series, "Orange is the New Black," and Martha Stewart. 

Listen to Ethan Carey on the Ethan & Lou Show weekdays from 5:30-10AM on 95.1 FM. You can listen online at i95rock.com/listen-live/ or by downloading the radioPup app for your mobile device.