Correctional Training Facility (CTF), commonly referenced as Soledad State Prison, is a state prison located on U.S. Route 101, 5 mi north of Soledad, California, adjacent to Salinas Valley State Prison.

Facilities

The institution is divided into three facilities: North Facility, Central Facility, and South Facility. All offer their own programs to the inmate/prisoner population. In March 2012, the facility's total population was 5,684, or more than 171.6 percent of its design capacity of 3,312. As of July 31, 2022, Soledad was incarcerating people at 123.0% of its design capacity, with 4,761 occupants. The South Facility dates back to 1946, when it was used as "Camp Center" and administered by San Quentin State Prison. In 1951, the Central Facility opened, and in 1958 the Northern Facility opened. By 1984, an additional dormitory was added to the Central Facility. Three more dormitories were added in 1996, two more to the Northern Facility and one to the Southern Facility. The Correctional Training Facility covers 680 acre. As of 2006–2007, there was total number of 1,643 staff and an annual budget of US$150 million. On April 13, 2021, CDCR announced that the Southern Facility would close by July 2022 due to a decreased minimum security inmate population.

Programming

The facility offers educational, vocational, volunteer, mental health, and self-help programming. Incarcerated individuals at Correctional Training Facility help train service dogs and have organized fundraising efforts to give back to their communities. Correctional Training Facility was the primary filming location for the CNN documentary, "The Feminist on Cellblock Y," which highlighted some of the rehabilitative and advocacy efforts of people incarcerated in CDCR. Correctional Training Facility offers a dedicated Veterans housing and rehabilitation program for centralizing services for incarcerated Veterans. The Veterans hub is the first of its kind in the United States and has the capacity to house and treat up to 1200 Veterans.

Officer deaths

Four correctional staff from the Correctional Training Facility have been killed while on duty: Officer John V. Mills, Officer William Shull, Officer Robert McCarthy and Program Administrator Kenneth Conant. Most prominently, Officer Mills, a correctional officer on a maximum security unit, was beaten to death on January 16, 1970, in Y-Wing in retaliation of the killing of three inmates by another correctional officer during a riot in the Adjustment Center (O-Wing) a few days prior. A group of three prisoners, known as the Soledad Brothers, were later indicted for Mills's death and acquitted. Six months later, on July 23, 1970, Officer Shull was stabbed to death with a shank fashioned from a sharpened steel file. on the North Facility recreation yard. He was discovered in a equipment shack with a multitude of stab wounds. Officer McCarthy was murdered on March 4, 1971, while working in X-Wing, collecting mail from inmate Hugo Pinell at cell 104. As he opened the food port to collect the out going mail, Pinell stabbed McCarthy in the neck with a shank. The incident occurred on March 3, 1971; however Officer McCarthy succumbed to his injuries the following morning at a hospital located at Fort Ord in Seaside, California. Program Administrator Conant was murdered on May 19, 1971, the last of the four killed in the line of duty.

Notable inmates

Notable staff