Women's Prison Opens Its Doors To Inmates in Concord

CONCORD, NH - After years in limbo, New Hampshire Department of Corrections staff moved all 147 women inmates from the old facility in Goffstown to a new building. According to the Concord Monitor, the new 101,000-square-foot women’s prison on North State Street is triple the size of the old building, and includes a full-service health services unit, a large educational area and a family center.

“It’s a very exciting day for the Department of Corrections and all the women who are in their custody and control,” New Hampshire Legal Aid Paralegal Candace Cappio Gebhart said Tuesday night. “This is a culmination of 25 to 30 years of work by the New Hampshire Department of Corrections and New Hampshire Legal Aid.”

All parties agreed a new facility for women was long overdue, but getting the funding took decades. Female inmates were promised a permanent prison in the late 1980s after a group of them sued the state and won. The lawsuit was filed after concerns arose about inadequate conditions in out-of-state prisons, and about women being so far from their families. Per a federal court order, New Hampshire opened the Goffstown prison, allowing for many women who had been incarcerated outside the state to return.

You can read the full article at the Concord Monitor here.

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