El Dorado Correctional Facility

The El Dorado Correctional Facility, or EDCF, is a maximum security prison located in Prospect Township in Butler County, Kansas east of the town of El Dorado.

EDCF is home of the Kansas Department of Corrections Reception and Diagnostic Unit, or RDU, which processes every male inmate when they are received into KDOC custody. RDU helps determine the inmate's custody level, mental health classification, and educational program needs before he is sent to another facility.

The largest long-term segregation unit in the state is also at EDCF, with over 350 beds in three cellhouses. The inmates in these cellhouses are considered to be a threat to the safety or security of EDCF, and are kept in their cells for 23 hours a day. Kansas keeps all of its capital punishment inmates in El Dorado, but executions take place at the Lansing Correctional Facility in Lansing, Kansas.

EDCF has two general population cellhouses, and one medium security dormitory. EDCF is administratively linked to two minimum security units, formerly "honor camps", one in El Dorado and one in Toronto, Kansas. In 2009, the announcement was made that the state would be closing both minimum security units, due to budget constraints. As of 2015, medium and minimum security units in Oswego, Kansas, were administratively part of EDCF.

History

The El Dorado Correctional Facility was established in 1991. It was built in response to a federal mandate to ease over-crowding at the state's other two maximum security prisons. Expansion in 2001 brought two new general population cellhouses. The facility is expected to expand in the future.

The first escape in facility history occurred on October 28, 2007. Inmates Jesse Bell and Steven Ford escaped with the assistance of former corrections officer, Amber Goff.^[1] The three were apprehended in Grants, New Mexico, less than three days later. Bell and Ford were arrested in an apartment complex parking lot. Goff was found asleep in the driver's seat of a car parked in the driveway of a nearby vacant Grants home; a stolen handgun was found under a newspaper next to her.^[2]

Notable inmates

• Jonathan Carr and Reginald Carr, convicted of killing five people in a crime spree in 2000, dubbed the "Wichita Massacre".
• Dennis Rader,^[3] aka "BTK", is a convicted serial killer who murdered ten people from 1974 through 1991 and eluded capture until 2005
• John Robinson is a convicted serial killer, con man, embezzler, kidnapper, and forger who was found guilty in 2003 of three murders and received the death sentence for two of them. He subsequently admitted responsibility for five additional homicides, and investigators fear that there might be other, undiscovered victims as well. Because he made contact with most of his post-1993 victims via on-line chat rooms, he is sometimes referred to as "the Internet's first serial killer".

References

External links

• Official site of the El Dorado Correctional Facility
• Kansas Prison Inmate Database - Kansas Department of Corrections

Coordinates: 37°48′15″N 96°48′59″W / 37.80417°N 96.81639°W / 37.80417; -96.81639