Morgan County Correctional Complex (MCCX) is a maximum security

prison A prison, also known as a jail, gaol, penitentiary, detention center, correction center, correctional facility, or remand center, is a facility where Prisoner, people are Imprisonment, imprisoned under the authority of the State (polity), state ...

in unincorporated Morgan County, near

Wartburg The Wartburg () is a castle originally built in the Middle Ages. It is situated on a precipice of to the southwest of and overlooking the town of Eisenach, in the state of Thuringia, Germany. It was the home of St. Elisabeth of Hungary, the ...

Tennessee Tennessee (, ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina t ...

, operated by the

Tennessee Department of Correction The Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) is a Cabinet-level agency within the Tennessee state government responsible for the oversight of more than 20,000 convicted offenders in Tennessee's fourteen prisons, four of which are privately man ...

. It opened in 1980. An expansion was later completed which increased its capacity to 2,128 prisoners. The prison is accredited by the

American Correctional Association The American Correctional Association (ACA; called the National Prison Association before 1954) is a private, non-profit, non-governmental trade association and accrediting body for the corrections industry, the oldest and largest such associati ...

. The current warden is Shawn Phillips. When the Brushy Mountain Correctional Complex closed in June 2009, its functions and most inmates and staff were transferred to the Morgan County Correctional Complex.Todd South
Bars closing on Brushy Mountain after 113 years
''Chattanooga Times Free Press'', April 5, 2009

Notable prisoners

Byron Looper Byron (Low Tax) Looper (born Byron Anthony Looper; September 15, 1964 – June 26, 2013) was a Democratic Party (United States), Democratic turned Republican Party (United States), Republican politician in Tennessee and convicted murderer. To ...

- murderer and former politician; was held at Morgan County at the time of his death in 2013. *Perry March - former Nashville lawyer convicted in 2006 of killing his wife ten years earlier; currently incarcerated at Northeast Correctional Complex. * Brandon Vandenburg - rapist in Vanderbilt rape case,serving 17 years. * Steven Hugueley was sentenced to death in 2003 for stabbing a prison counselor at Hardeman County Correctional Center. He used a homemade knife, stabbing the counselor 36 times until the knife broke. Hugueley had killed before: his mother in 1986 and a prison inmate in 1992. He tried to take the life of another prisoner in 1998. He was found dead in 2021, days after the state requested an execution date for him.

References

External links

Buildings and structures in Morgan County, Tennessee Prisons in Tennessee Capital punishment in Tennessee 1980 establishments in Tennessee {{Tennessee-struct-stub