Located at Neola, Greenbrier County, the Anthony Correctional Center is a minimum-security facility for young adults, primarily ages 18 to 24. The center’s goal is to rehabilitate its inmates through vocational training, academic classes, individual and group counseling, a work program, and job placement services. Young adults are sent to Anthony instead of serving a prison sentence, often as the result of a plea bargain.
All inmates receive an individual program plan, which must be completed before they can leave the center. Most inmates complete the program in six months, but others take longer. An inmate who repeatedly breaks the center’s rules may have to appear before a judge, who may impose the original sentence. From July 1998 to June 1999, 86 percent of the inmates successfully completed the center’s programs and were not imprisoned again.
The facility, completed in 1966, was originally used by the federal government as a Job Corps Center. In 1970, the West Virginia Department of Public Institutions (now Division of Corrections) leased the facility for use as a correctional center for juvenile males. The center began accepting adult males in 1980 and females in 1985. The state bought the property in 1995.
Anthony Correctional Center can house 220 offenders. In 2001, the center began housing adult male prisoners in its diagnostic unit due to overcrowding in the regional and county jails. It was closed in 2018 due to issues with black mold, and some 200 prisoners were transferred elsewhere. Plans to renovate and reopen the correctional center have been underway since that time.
Last Revised on December 22, 2022
Cite This Article
e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia "Anthony Correctional Center." e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. 22 December 2022. Web. 10 June 2023.
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