Corrections_Today_Winter_2025-2026_Vol.87_No.4

COMMITTEES

established: institutional parole officer, operations officer, psycholo gist, and chaplain. Crime specific treatment programs and vocational training programs were established. Armed Forces Corrections consolidated In May 1990, The Secretary of Defense approved the consolidation of corrections under DoD. The Secre tary of the Army was designated the Executive Agent (EA) of DoD for the incarceration of all members of the Armed Forces who had sentences to confinement over one year. As the EA for long-term prisoners, the Army op erates, funds and staffs the facilities at no cost to the other Services. The joint corrections staffing at the USDB was extremely reduced from over 150 Marines and Airmen to just 12. The Army consolidated correctional facili ties again, closing the RCFs at Fort Benning and Fort Riley. The Army had just been desig nated as DoD’s EA for long-term

corrections, but the main prisoner housing wings in the USDB Castle were deteriorating and in need of renovation. The Army was study ing options on whether to repair the facility at a scale of $25 million to $195 million or build a new facility. The size and cost of the new facil ity would depend on the capacity requirements of the Army and other service corrections headquarters. In 1994, the decision was to build a new modern state-of-the-art 515 bed facility. The Army RCFs and other DoD Level II facilities would now house prisoners with sentences up to five years. The Army and the BOP signed an agreement to house up to 500 military prisoners from the USDB in exchange for land and buildings at Fort Dix and Fort De vens, Massachusetts. The 1997 Corrections Consolida tion Working Group studied the DoD consolidation of corrections with the intent of establishing a single DoD Corrections Activity and realign and reduce military confinement facilities.

The Army reduced its stateside cor rectional facilities to just four; the USDB and the RCFs at Fort Knox, Fort Lewis, and Fort Sill. The cre ation of a single DoD Corrections Headquarters was tabled. Retaining a correctional capability worldwide The 2000 Report of the Army Corrections Study Panel concluded the Army should accept the exis tence of a corrections mission as a “cost” of military operations and commit to retaining a corrections capability at both the long-term and short-term level. The Army pur sued joint service operations at the USDB with the military branches sharing the cost for Level III correc tions. A recommendation recurring in most of the major studies of the ACS was to reorganize into a single command headquarters. Army Correction’s plan to move into the 21 st Century were like other DOCs, the Y2K dilemma of whether the computer storage systems would malfunction with the four-digit year 2000 and would electronic security system’s malfunction at the stroke of midnight. The down sizing of the prisoner population with the transfers to the BOP and the construction of the new USDB continued. In 2000, all female pris oners were transferred to the Naval Consolidated Brig — Marimar in San Diego. Major policy changes at that time were to the sentence of life without parole, increasing the sentence length for Level II facilities to seven years, and the mandatory supervision upon release for those not granted parole.

Photo courtesy National Archives; NAID: 86697561; Local ID: 111-SC-45682; War Prison Barracks No. 1, Fort McPherson, GA. Portion of the west fence to stockades, with the separate officers’ compound visible to the right.

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