New $1.2 billion state prison seeks to address recidivism

The $1.2 billion maximum security prison under construction in Westville is ahead of schedule and well within budget, officials say, and will offer new opportunities for inmates to develop skills and education for reentry into society.

Sitting at about 60% complete, the Northwest Indiana Correctional Facility will be a merger of the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City and the Westville Correctional Facility, a decision approved by the state legislature in 2023 to address concerns regarding rising maintenance costs, overcrowding and recidivism.

The new facility will provide more programming opportunities for the 4,200 inmates it can house, offering educational, vocational and life skills training. It will also manage Indiana’s death row, which has been located at the state prison in Michigan City since 1897. The new prison is set to open in 2027.

With over 30 years of experience in corrections, Kevin Orme, executive director of the Indiana Department of Correction’s Construction Services, sees the new facility as an investment for other states to follow.

“$1.2 billion is a capital investment that not all states and jurisdictions would be willing to look at,” Orme told The Indiana Lawyer in an interview. “This facility will set the tone, pace and standard for the rest of the country, not just the rest of Indiana.”

The state legislature provided the funds for the facility in cash, not bonds, Orme made clear, an offering that he said other state officials couldn’t believe when they heard about it.

“I’ve managed a lot of projects for a lot of agencies in my career; they trusted what I was telling them,” Orme said about the legislature. “They trusted what the agency was telling them, and they funded the project.”

The Northwest facility has mainly been promoted to target recidivism rates in the state through a posture of rehabilitation over punishment—a change, Orme said, from how the state had approached incarceration in the past.

“It was just never thought of back in the day; it was just not what we thought of doing,” Orme said. “This is just a new take on it, and we just wrapped that all in, comprehensively, into the new facility itself.”

A need for something new

In 1860, a second state prison was opened in Michigan City following overcrowding at the first state prison located in southern Indiana and has operated continuously since then.

By 1912, the Michigan City facility also came to house the Indiana Hospital for Insane Criminals, which incarcerated the criminally insane from across the entire state. Over 40 years later, the hospital’s inmates were transferred to the Maximum Security Division of the Dr. Norman M. Beatty Memorial Hospital, which was then converted to Westville Correctional Center in 1979.

In 2007, a recently hired Orme was given a manila folder that launched him into designing a brand new prison that could address several issues at the current sites.

“I went out, surveyed all of the facilities in depth over the next few years, saw what was working, what wasn’t working,” Orme said. “It didn’t take long to realize that the Westville Correctional Facility, as it existed then and exists today, was not what we needed as an agency.”

Among those concerns was statewide overcrowding. The Indiana Department of Correction reports that a majority of maximum security facilities have been more than 90% full since at least 2019. Specifically, in 2024, 95% of male maximum-security facilities in Indiana operated just below full capacity.

And along with the security risks, Orme said, the current facilities did not supply the needed educational or medical treatment space for the incarcerated population.

“It just didn’t provide the right space for us to do our job,” he said.

Over the next decade, it was Orme’s goal to create more space—about 1.4 million square feet, according to him.

“We never designed a facility with enough space in them that we weren’t on top of each other trying to accomplish all this,” Orme said. “So, something had to give.”

What was generally sacrificed first in those cases, he said, was the number of programs offered for inmates.

The new prison will provide the room necessary to offer them, he said.

Located about 60 miles southwest of Chicago, the facility has potential for even more opportunities for programming.

“Its proximity to Chicago allows for some different skills and mental health practitioners,” Orme said. “There was just a lot of opportunity. It was just the right place. It’s what made sense.”

Orme emphasized a need to go beyond just providing the physical space for these programs. He also wants to create the right environment.

“Providing a safe, secure environment for not only the staff, but for the offender population,” Orme said, “everything from giving them access to natural light to giving them recreation opportunities where they’re not just locked into a closet all day, they can actually go out and participate in programs.”

Helping to create that ideal environment involves implementing in-unit programming opportunities within the incarcerated community’s housing units.

“That was something that we discovered during COVID-19 that was going to be especially necessary,” said Annie Goeller, chief communications officer for the DOC. “It’s also extremely helpful in a maximum security prison, where movement is certainly not as free as what you would see in a lower level security prison.”

An emphasis on rehabilitation

According to a recent annual report conducted by the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute and the Justice Reinvestment Advisory Council, the status of Indiana’s criminal justice system “reflects both ongoing challenges and notable progress” following reform efforts by the Legislature.

Although the evaluation noted significant improvements in the state’s mental health and substance use response and treatment infrastructure, it highlighted several challenges that persist, including chronic program staffing shortages, limited program capacities, a lack of follow-up resources after program completion and the dearth of local providers in rural counties and jails.

“It is necessary to continue efforts to enhance the accessibility of community-based mental health and substance use treatment programs that support the full range of needs for the criminal justice population, including recovery residences, medication-assisted treatment, and psychiatric services,” the report stated. “It is recommended that these services be offered during and after incarceration, as both impact recidivism.”

The report also concluded that reentry and community supervision services continue to be areas in need of improvement in the state.

“Additional and/or improved reentry programs and community supervision programs are needed in areas such as employment, housing, transportation, life skills training after incarceration and improving staffing issues and participant capacity limitations for existing programs,” the report stated.

But Indiana is not alone in struggling with recidivism.

The U.S. has some of the highest recidivism rates in the world, and it has the highest prison population of any country, accounting for a quarter of the world’s prisoners, according to the World Population Review.

In Indiana, of those offenders released in 2021, over one-third were recommitted to an Indiana correctional facility within three years of their release date for either a new conviction or a violation of post-release supervision, according to the DOC. That represents a 22% increase from the 2022 findings and a 5% increase from the 2023 findings.

To combat this, officials say the Northwest facility will be home to several programs, including GED and vocational classes, mental health support and parenting training. What those specific programs will look like is still not clear.

“We will be able to provide more tailored programming, such as for mental health and addiction recovery needs, due to the new and redesigned spaces in the new facility, and we anticipate adding new programming due to the added space,” Goeller said. “But those details are being worked out.”

One way the DOC is bringing these programs into the facility is through joint venture partnerships with private sector businesses.

“We’re able to partner with companies to be able to provide jobs for incarcerated individuals while they’re in the facility, translating to real, actual skills, and being able to connect those skills with an actual job upon their release,” Goeller said.•