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Anthony Correctional Center

Located at Neola, Greenbrier County, the Anthony Correctional Center was a minimum-security facility for young adults, primarily ages 18 to 24. The center’s goal was to rehabilitate its inmates through vocational training, academic classes, individual and group counseling, a work program, and job placement services. Young adults were sent to Anthony instead of serving a prison sentence, often as the result of a plea bargain.

All inmates received an individual program plan, which had to be completed before they could leave the center. Most inmates completed the program in six months, but others took longer. From July 1998 to June 1999, 86 percent of the inmates successfully completed the center’s programs and were not imprisoned again.

The facility, completed in 1966, was originally used by the federal government as a Job Corps Center. In 1970, the West Virginia Department of Public Institutions (now Division of Corrections) leased the facility for use as a correctional center for juvenile males. The center began accepting adult males in 1980 and females in 1985. The state bought the property in 1995.

Anthony Correctional Center housed 220 offenders. In 2001, the center began housing adult male prisoners in its diagnostic unit due to overcrowding in the regional and county jails. The center was closed in 2018 due to issues with black mold, and some 200 prisoners were transferred elsewhere. Plans to renovate and reopen the correctional center have been underway since that time. For reporting purposes, individuals sentenced to serve at Anthony Correctional Center are still counted as such even if they are actually held at other facilities, such as the correctional centers in Denmar or Lakin. As of 2022, plans were still being debated whether to rebuild the center or mitigate the problem. The state has pointed out that many other correctional facilities have problems that need to be addressed system wide, but funding has not been available.