Spring Creek Correctional Center is an Alaska Department of Corrections maximum security prison for men located in

Seward, Alaska Seward (Alutiiq: ; Dena'ina: ''Tl'ubugh'') is an incorporated home rule city in Alaska, United States. Located on Resurrection Bay, a fjord of the Gulf of Alaska on the Kenai Peninsula, Seward is situated on Alaska's southern coast, approximat ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

.Spring Creek Correctional Center
." Alaska Department of Corrections. Retrieved on August 15, 2010. The prison is located approximately south of

Anchorage Anchorage () is the largest city in the U.S. state of Alaska by population. With a population of 291,247 in 2020, it contains nearly 40% of the state's population. The Anchorage metropolitan area, which includes Anchorage and the neighboring ...

. The prison is located on about of land surrounded by

national park A national park is a natural park in use for conservation purposes, created and protected by national governments. Often it is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns. Although individua ...

s. The prison capacity consists of over 500 inmates and 97 correctional officers. Built as a decentralized campus, the prison construction was completed in 1988 at a cost of $44,678,000. A large portion of the prisoner population consists of "hard core" felons who committed violent crimes, such as murder. The Alaska DOC says that these prisoners "will probably spend the rest of their life in prison." Spring Creek also houses prisoners who committed less serious crimes like assault and burglary and usually have sentences from three years to ten years.

Operational history

In the prison's history, there have been two murders inside the prison, one escape and at least one failed escape plot.

Murders

In 2004, Spring Creek inmate Carl Abuhl, already incarcerated for another murder, killed his cellmate Gregory Beaudoin. Abuhl was convicted of Beaudoin's murder and sentenced to an additional 30 years in prison. In 2008, convicted murderer John Carlin III was beaten to death in Spring Creek. Carlin was the alleged co-conspirator in the case of Mechele Linehan, a former stripper convicted in the death of her former fiancé Kent Leppink.

Escapes and escape attempts

An escape involving two inmates from Spring Creek occurred in 1994; both were subsequently recaptured. A second, unrelated escape plot in 2001 was unsuccessful.

2015 incident

In July 2015 a distraught woman from

North Pole The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's rotation, Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True North Pole to distingu ...

approached the prison gates with a gun and demanded that "murderers" be freed. She proceeded to shoot herself in the head when the prison did not immediately comply. Although prison staff responded and applied

CPR Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is an emergency procedure consisting of chest compressions often combined with artificial ventilation in an effort to manually preserve intact brain function until further measures are taken to restore spont ...

, the woman died from the head wound within a few hours. Her exact motivations or possible relationship to inmates at Spring Creek are unknown.

Notable inmates

Robert Hansen Robert Christian Hansen (February 15, 1939 – August 21, 2014), known in the media as the Butcher Baker, was an American serial killer. Between 1971 and 1983, Hansen abducted, raped, and murdered at least seventeen women in and around Anchor ...

, a serial killer convicted of killing numerous women in or near

Anchorage, Alaska Anchorage () is the largest city in the U.S. state of Alaska by population. With a population of 291,247 in 2020, it contains nearly 40% of the state's population. The Anchorage metropolitan area, which includes Anchorage and the neighboring ...

. *Evan Ramsey, perpetrator of the Bethel Regional High School shooting in Bethel, Alaska that occurred on February 19, 1997. His story was profiled on A&E's Kids Who Kill.

MSNBC Documentary

Spring Creek was profiled in an

MSNBC MSNBC (originally the Microsoft National Broadcasting Company) is an American news-based pay television cable channel. It is owned by NBCUniversala subsidiary of Comcast. Headquartered in New York City, it provides news coverage and politic ...

documentary entitled Lockup: Spring Creek, Alaska. Numerous Spring Creek inmates were profiled, including Carl Abuhl, John Bright and Cordell Boyd.

References

External links

Official site
{{State prisons in Alaska Prisons in Alaska Buildings and structures in Seward, Alaska Government buildings completed in 1988 1988 establishments in Alaska