Southern Correctional Institution 

Mailing/Street Address: 272 Glen Road, Troy, NC 27371
Phone: 910-572-3784
County: Montgomery
Offender capacity: 664
Facility type: Male, Close Custody

LIMITED VISITATION RESUMES OCT. 1, 2020

The Division of Adult Correction and Juvenile Justice will resume limited visitation at all state’s prisons effective Oct. 1, 2020 with significant restrictions due to the pandemic. Visitation was suspended in all state prisons on March 16, 2020, with the exception of legal and pastoral visits, to help prevent the potential spread of coronavirus (COVID-19).

The health and safety of employees and offenders in our care are the top priorities of the Department of Public Safety. For information on coronavirus and how to protect yourself, please go the NC Department of Health and Human Services website.

To learn what else Prisons is doing to combat coronavirus, click here.

For more information on visitation, click here.

Directions

Take I-85 to US 220 to NC 24/27 to Troy. At Troy, take NC 134 north to Glen Road. The male minimum custody unit and the female medium/close custody units are located approximately 1 mile from NC 134.

SENDING MAIL TO OFFENDERS

Until Oct. 18, letters to an offender must be addressed to the prison where they are currently assigned. Addresses must include the offender’s prison ID number, which is often referred to as the OPUS number.

The letter should be addressed in this format:

Offender Name and OPUS Number
Prison Name
Prison Street Address or Post Office Box number
City, State and zip code of the prison location

Example: 
John Smith #1234567
Avery-Mitchell Correctional Institution
600 Amity Park Road
Spruce Pine, NC 28777

Beginning Oct. 18, the N.C. Department of Public Safety has changed the way offenders receive mail. To help keep contraband out of prisons, all mail to offenders must be sent through a private company, TextBehind.

You must address mail to offenders in this way, or it will be returned:

Offender Name and OPUS Number
Prison Name
P.O. Box 247
Phoenix, MD 21131

Examples:

John Doe #1234567                      Jane Doe #7654321
Polk Correctional Institution          N.C. Correctional Institution for Women
P.O. Box 247                                P.O. Box 247
Phoenix, MD 21131                        Phoenix, MD 21131

The state’s prisons for women have been using TextBehind since February 2020.

Here’s how it works:

• Offender mail is addressed and delivered to TextBehind.
• TextBehind will make digital copies of the contents.
• TextBehind will forward the digital files to the prison.
• The prison will print acceptable pages and deliver them to the offender.

You may also download the TextBehind app to send mail by a smartphone or computer, avoiding paper mail sent via the U.S. Postal Service.

Offenders will continue to receive all acceptable contents of the mail you send — letters, photos, cards, artwork, etc. For more information about TextBehind, including a short video, click here.

Click here for Frequently Asked Questions.

TextBehind will not accept packages or legal mail. For more information on sending packages or legal mail, see the FAQs. You can also contact the prison where the offender is currently assigned.

All Prison facilities encourage family and friends to write to offenders. For security reasons, all incoming mail is checked to see if it contains any illegal or unauthorized items. Outgoing mail from offenders may also be checked.

Personal letters will not be read unless the officer-in-charge or designee has reason to believe the letter contains threats of harm or criminal activity, escape plans or plans to violate prison rules. If the officer-in-charge decides to delay or not deliver the letter to the offender, the offender will be told in writing the reason for this action.

Incoming mail from lawyers, any legal aid service assisting offenders, or state and federal court officials must be opened in the presence of the offender before it is checked for illegal or unauthorized items.

For information regarding sending money to offenders, ordering packages for offenders or about the offender telephone system, please click the links.

Overview

Southern Correctional Institution houses male offenders in close custody.

The two-story prison sits on a 13.7-acre site. There are two separate buildings connected by a long corridor. The administrative building includes a gym, dining hall, vocational area and medical area. The other building is composed of a school area, various staff offices and five housing units. Each housing unit is divided into three wings that have a dayroom and 32 individual cells divided into two tiers.

Offenders have traditionally performed similar duties in the kitchen, maintenance, janitorial assignments, laundry area, and the warehouse. Some have participated in a special program called the Blanket Recovery Project, which converts donated material into blankets and other items donated to disaster relief efforts, housing authority, State Highway Patrol, public schools, and other non-profit organizations for assisting people in need.

Montgomery Community College provides educational opportunities in the areas of vocational classes in food service, preparation for attaining GED certificates and an opportunity to take college-level classes in Business Administration and Computer Technology.

Southern CI opened in 1983 and was built with a similar design and opened several months following Eastern Correctional Institution in Greene County. These two facilities were the first prisons in the North Carolina system to operate under the unit management concept.

Southern originally served as a processing center for male adult offenders receiving felony sentences of 20 years or less, primarily from eastern North Carolina. From 1985 through 1994, the facility housed close custody youth offenders in one of the five housing units. The housing of youth offenders was discontinued in 1994 with the opening of Foothills Youth Institution. The processing center function of the facility was discontinued in 1996 with the opening of Craven Correctional Institution.

In February 1996, the Montgomery Correctional Center, a minimum security prison operating in Troy since the 1930s, was merged with Southern Correctional Institution to form one facility. This enabled the prison system to reduce administrative costs and provide minimum custody offenders to help perform maintenance and landscaping work at the medium/close custody portion of the institution.

In October, 2004, another major change occurred when the medium/close custody facility was converted into a female facility. This conversion took place due to overcrowding taking place at the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women in Raleigh. However, the state prison system underwent a remissioning project at three facilities across the state and Southern CI was converted back to a male close custody facility in the spring of 2019.