El Dorado Correctional Facility

The El Dorado Correctional Facility, or EDCF, is a maximum security prison located 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.

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.

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 could expand again as soon as the summer of 2007.

EDCF is the newest prison in the state, and the third largest in inmate population.

Notable Inmates

EDCF is home to convicted serial killer Dennis Rader, known as "BTK", who killed 10 people from 1974 through 1991 and eluded capture until 2005. The Carr brothers, convicted of killing five people in the 2000 Wichita Massacre, are also housed there.Michael Marsh, whose death-sentence appeal reached the U. S. Supreme court and nearly toppled Kansas' death penalty, currently lives at EDCF.

External links

* [http://www.dc.state.ks.us/EDCF/default.htm Official site of the El Dorado Correctional Facility]