Lorton Prison 

From its inception in 1910, the Occoquan Workhouse (later known as Lorton Prison) was designed to be a self-sustaining facility.  Inmates cut trees and milled the lumber for the original buildings. Later they built kilns for the production of brick to upgrade the buildings to masonry.  The current Workhouse Arts Center buildings were constructed in the 1920s from bricks made on site.  Dairy cows, hogs, orchards, and agricultural cropland were worked by inmates.  Over the years, other industries were added to the prison as the facility grew to encompass more than 3,000 acres.  Inmates worked and learned job skills in the cannery, foundry, tailor shop, bakery, electrical and culinary arts departments. 

The number of people incarcerated at Lorton Prison changed daily.  Originally built as a men’s facility, the prison expanded to include women’s and youth facilities.  The first prisoners at the Workhouse were found guilty of assault, drunkenness, or vagrancy. Those held at the Reformatory were guilty of more serious crimes such as manslaughter.  By the 1930’s the Penitentiary was added for those found guilty of rape and murder.  While the Workhouse and Reformatory had nearly no locks or bars, the Penitentiary had cells and a 25 foot-tall brick wall.   By the 1970’s the original Penitentiary was replaced with a Maximum Security facility known as “The Wall.”   At the same time, mandatory minimum sentences swelled the prison population.  Overcrowding, gangs and drug use were rampant inside.  The entire facility was showing its age.  

By 1995, Lorton Prison was well over capacity.  There was no funding for new facilities or much needed staff.  Inmates would begin to be transferred to other facilities across the nation, with the last leaving in November of 2001.  Lorton Prison was closed after 91 years.