The Facility

To the left is the NCI Gatehouse.


NCI is located out in the country about 20 minutes from the nearest city. It was built back in the early 90's and has a rather odd layout compared to most modern day facilities. NCI is set up like a college campus. All the building are separate. The entire facility is surrounded by a double fence line with close to 12 sets of razor wire. Once you get into the guard house where you go through security, you are now, Locked Up. Through the gate are several buildings.

There are 4 main Units that hold the inmates. Each one had a specific group of inmates that it holds. Of course there is also the kitchen and medical building as well. One thing that is special about this prison is the enterprise plant. Some inmates are able to get jobs working there if their sentence is long enough. The type of specialized training costs so much, the state wants people who are planning on being there for a very long time so they don't have to keep spending money to retrain people. There are two plants in the facility. There is a print plant and a Optical plant. If you or anyone you know who lives in NC has medicare or medicaid and has glasses, there is a 99% chance the inmates at NCI made the lenses for your glasses. The print plant guys make all of the forms for the entire state of NC. These guys at the plants are the highest paid inmates at the camp. They can make around $1.40 an hour. There are plenty other jobs around the facility also that inmates can do. Most of the rest of the jobs are around $0.70 or $0.40 an hour. I guess it beats nothing at all.

The four Units are very different in what inmates they hold inside. Two of the units mainly hold the workers at the two plants. These guys make the most money and are the most valuable to they keep them away from the other more immature population. Another unit mainly houses the guys who are in school. By in school i mean they take classes every day at the facility in hopes of earning a special certification, GED or even a 2 year degree which they will hopefully be able to use once they get out. The final unit houses all the young guys. The ones who cant keep quiet, start fights and haven't learned how to act yet. This is why they keep them completely separate from all of the older guys.

Each Unit is set up basically the same way. There is a B block and a C block and a central control room. The control room is the most technical job in the Unit. Each of the 9 doors are controlled in this room and can only be opened one at a time. The inmates always seem to be in a hurry to go no where so they get mad if you wait too long to open the door. The control room also has control of where all of the inmates from that Unit go as well as having control of all the cell doors. Right now NCI is over crowded like most facilities in the US. Each block has 60 cells and 60 bunks. That is a lot of bunk beds in the middle of the floor when it was only meant to have 14.

The cells are nothing like you see in the movies. They don't have doors that are covered in bars. They all have a normal door on them that opens out. It doesn't have a door knob, just a handle to pull it open. Each night when lock down is called, the control room takes access off all the doors and when they shut, they can not be opened except by the control room of the key. This is to ensure inmates do not try to sneak in the cells at night to get their groove on or to fight another inmate.