Utah State Prison is one of two prisons managed by the Utah Department of Corrections' Division of Institutional Operations. It is located in Draper, Utah, United States, about 20 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.
History
The prison was built to replace Sugar House Prison, which closed in 1951. Its location was once remote and the nearby communities were rural. Since the prison's erection, business parks and residential neighborhoods have developed the once rural area into a suburban one. Seeking the ability to offer better treatment option state legislature initiated a process to build a new prison, deciding it was best to relocate elsewhere. Several sites are still under consideration. An episode of Touched by an Angel was filmed here in 2001. A study was completed in 2005 by Wikstrom Economic & Planning Consultants, Inc., to determine if moving the prison would be feasible. The test of feasibility was whether or not the value of the real estate of the current location could support the cost of relocation. It was determined that the cost of relocating the prison far exceeded the value that could be realized from the sale of the Draper prison site. However, on August 19, 2015, a special session of the state legislature voted to move the prison to the west side of Salt Lake City.
Facility
The large prison complex houses both male and female prisoners in separate units. The prison has a capacity of over 4,000 inmates. The Draper site is located near Point of the Mountain along the Traverse Ridge and consists of several units named after surrounding mountains and mountain ranges. These units range from minimum security to supermax. The Uintas house maximum security units for male inmates and include a supermax facility and execution chamber. Wasatch and Oquirrhs house the medium security male inmates. Promontory is a medium security therapeutic community designed to treat drug abusers. Timpanogos houses female inmates and Olympus is the mental health unit. Lone Peak is a minimum security unit. Scott P. Evans Architect & Associates designed the five buildings of the evaluation facility. The same company performed a reroof and a seismic upgrade of the SSD building.
Notable inmates
Ted Bundy, serial killer, was sentenced to 15 years in the Utah State Prison in 1976, but was extradited to Colorado to face other murder charges.
Nathan Martinez, convicted of the October 1994 murder of his stepmother and half-sister.
James W. Rodgers, convicted for murder and the last inmate to be executed by firing squad in the United States in 1960, before a de facto national moratorium on capital punishment was enacted with the U.S. Supreme Court decision of Furman v. Georgia.
Marc Schreuder, convicted in 1982 of second degree murder in the 1978 Franklin Bradshaw murder case that his mother, Frances Schreuder induced him to commit. Marc served 12 years until his release in 1994.
John Albert Taylor, executed by firing squad in 1996 for the 1988 rape and strangulation of an 11-year-old girl.
