Kentucky State Penitentiary

Kentucky State Penitentiary

Location in Kentucky
Location	Eddyville, Kentucky
Coordinates	37°02′53″N 88°04′35″W / 37.048111°N 88.076387°W / 37.048111; -88.076387
Status	Operational
Security class	Maximum, Supermax, Minimum (outside main facility)
Population	856 (as of 2015)
Opened	1889
Managed by	Kentucky Department of Corrections
Warden	Laura Plappert

The Kentucky State Penitentiary (KSP), also known as the "Castle on the Cumberland," is a maximum security and supermax prison with capacity for 856 prisoners located in Eddyville, Kentucky on Lake Barkley on the Cumberland River, about 4.8 kilometres (3 mi) from downtown Eddyville.^[1] It is managed by the Kentucky Department of Corrections. Completed in 1886, it is Kentucky's oldest prison facility and the only commonwealth-owned facility with supermax units. The penitentiary houses Kentucky's male death row inmates and the commonwealth's execution facility. As of 2015^[update] it had approximately 350 staff members and an annual operating budget of $20 million.^[2] In most cases, inmates are not sent directly to the penitentiary after sentencing, but are sent there because of violent or disruptive behavior committed in other less secure correctional facilities in the commonwealth. This was Kentucky's second penitentiary: the first was made uninhabitable from a flood in 1937.