Colorado State Penitentiary is a Level V maximum security prison in the U.S. state of Colorado. The facility stands in the state's East Cañon Complex with six other state correctional facilities of various security levels.
Description
CSP is located in Fremont County, just east of Cañon City, Colorado. It is one of 25 prisons in the Colorado Department of Corrections system, and one of seven in and around Cañon City. The oldest of the seven, originally built in 1871 and predating Colorado's statehood, was the original State Penitentiary, the home of Colorado's death row, and the site of the 1929 riot. After the 1993 construction of the current facility, that prison was re-dedicated as the medium-security Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility. It stands within the Cañon City city limits. Other prisons in the East Cañon Complex include the Arrowhead Correctional Center, the Centennial Correctional Facility, Four Mile Correctional Center, the Fremont Correctional Facility, and Skyline Correctional Center, all nearby in unincorporated Fremont County. The Colorado Women's Correctional Facility near Cañon City in unincorporated Fremont County was decommissioned on June 4, 2009. Today CSP houses some of Colorado's most dangerous, most violent and most disruptive prisoners. It also houses Colorado's lethal injection chamber for death row convicts, although the prisoners who were sentenced to death are currently housed at Sterling Correctional Facility. All inmates at Colorado State Penitentiary are under solitary confinement, officially termed Administrative Segregation. AdSeg inmates are all held in solitary cells on 23-hour lock down for their entire sentence. Solitary confinement is no longer constitutionally legal. CSP allows offenders out of their cells and they actually get yard time as well. As of 2011 the prison has 984 prisoners.
Death row
When the Colorado State Penitentiary opened, death row moved there from the Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility. Currently the state of Colorado has no physical death row since 2011 when the State of Colorado moved its death row prisoners to the Sterling Correctional Facility in order to settle a federal lawsuit filed by Nathan Dunlap, a death row prisoner who had successfully complained about the state's lack of outdoor exercise facilities at Colorado State Penitentiary. By state statute death-row inmates are executed at the Colorado State Penitentiary where they spend the week before their scheduled execution in a separate holding cell situated in the execution suite. All prisoners with death sentences are given classifications of "securest custody level, administrative segregation".
Publicly known inmates
Charles 'Chucky' Limbrick Jr. - Youngest person in Colorado State history to be tried as an adult. Convicted of 1st Degree murder in 1988, when he was 15 years old, for the death of his mother in Colorado Springs and sentenced to 40 years to life. Released from prison on parole in 2011 on orders from then Colorado State's Governor Bill Ritter.
Nathan Dunlap - in 1996, sentenced to death in Arapahoe County for killing four people during a revenge killing and robbery at an AuroraChuck-E-Cheese restaurant in 1993. Dunlap's execution is set out since he has been granted temporary reprieve by Colorado State's governor John Hickenlooper in 2013. Dunlap's sentence has now been commuted to life without parole.
Sir Mario Owens - in 2008, sentenced to death in Arapahoe County for the murder of witnesses of a previous murder that he was also convicted of. sentenced commuted to life without parole on March 23, 2020.
Robert Ray - in 2010, sentenced to death in Arapahoe County. He is the co-defendant in the same case as Sir Mario Owens. sentence commuted to life without parole on March 23, 2020.
CSP was the focus on the documentary seriesNational Geographic Explorer episode "Solitary Confinement". The episode was first broadcast April 11, 2010. The original penitentiary was the subject of the 1948 semi-documentary Canon City, chronicling the December 30, 1947, prison break of 12 inmates. Principal filming was conducted in the prison and environs of Cañon City six months after the actual event. Maximum Insecurity, an Amazon bestseller, gives an inside look at the medical system at the Colorado State Penitentiary. In Tallgrass, a novel by Sandra Dallas, Bobby Archuleta, a beet farmer who confesses to raping and killing his sister-in-law, a teenage girl with polio, is sent to the Colorado State Penitentiary after confessing.
