Women's prisons are a relatively new concept. In the past, the rare female scoundrel was usually housed in a separate part of a men's facility. The in the United States, Indiana Women's Prison, was built in 1869 and received its first prisoners four years later. The would not follow for decades. The Federal Industrial Institution for Women was built in Alderson, West Virginia, where it opened on April 30, 1927.
It was a far cry from the hardscrabble penitentiaries of modern times, with practically nonexistent security and inmates put to work with clerical, cooking, and farming duties instead of being locked in cells 23 hours a day. The facility's stated goal was not to punish the inmates for the misdeeds but to reform them so they could become upstanding members of society. After all, most of these women were not black widow murderesses but girls who had fallen under the sway of drugs and alcohol during the Prohibition era.
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