United States · Iowa · Fort Madison
Iowa State Penitentiary
Data is aggregated from public sources and may be incomplete or out of date. Always verify with primary sources before acting on any figure. See data sources.
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Iowa State Penitentiary is a state prison located in Lee County, Iowa. Rated capacity: 772. Reported population: 688. Security level: Maximum. Data sourced from the HIFLD Prison Boundaries open dataset.
Background
The Iowa State Penitentiary (ISP) is an Iowa Department of Corrections maximum security prison for men located in the Lee County, Iowa, community of Fort Madison. This facility should not be confused with the Historical Iowa State Penitentiary, which was shut down in 2015 after being open for 175 years. The HISP itself was a 550-person maximum security unit. Also on the complex was a John Bennett Correctional Center - a 169-person medium security unit. The HISP included two minimum-security farms with about 170 people who were located within a few miles of the main complex.
Source: Wikipedia article lead, CC-BY-SA.
Capacity
772
Current population
688
Occupancy
89%
Year opened
1836
Operational
Figures from official sources · verified 2 Jun 2026 · methodology
Facility profile
Operator
Iowa Department of CorrectionsPopulation held
Mixed/unknown
Opened
1836
Region
Iowa
Security level
Maximum
Death-row facility
No
Conditions
No conditions summary available yet.
Visiting
No visiting information available.
Mailing
No mailing information available.
Practical info
Contact the operator's website for inmate-specific procedures.
Known issues
No major issues documented in our database.
Contact & address
Conditions Risk Score
Derived signal — not a judgement. How it's calculated
- Overcrowding
- 0/30
- Oversight reports
- 0/30
- Structural flags
- 0/15
- Death signals
- 0/15
- Conditions text
- 0/10
This facility scores 0. The national average across 7,437 scored United States facilities is 2 — 2 points below national average.
Related facilities
Same country, matched on type + security level where possible.
- Woodman State JailGatesvilleMaximumState prison720% occupancy
- Centinela State Prison (Cen)ImperialMaximumState prison150% occupancy
- Kern Valley State Prison (Kvsp)DelanoMaximumState prison152% occupancy
- Diagnostic And Evaluation CenterLincolnMaximumState prison178% occupancy
- High Desert State Prison (Hdsp)SusanvilleMaximumState prison152% occupancy
- Calipatria State Prison (Cal)CalipatriaMaximumState prison161% occupancy
Compared to other facilities in United States
7436 peersData completeness
74%How many of our profile fields are populated. We surface this so families and researchers know the limits.
Sources
- HIFLD Prison Boundaries
- HIFLD dataset query
- Wikipedia — Wikimedia Foundation
- HIFLD Prison Boundaries — US Department of Homeland Security â HIFLD Open Data
- OpenStreetMap — OpenStreetMap Contributors
- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation
- Wikidata (Q14687623)
- Wikipedia
- See /data-sources for our overall methodology.
Cite this page
Under CC-BY-4.0. Include the URL and access date; the site is a living reference and entries can change.
World Prisons. (2026). Iowa State Penitentiary. Retrieved October 23, 2026, from https://worldprisons.com/prisons/iowa-state-penitentiary
"Iowa State Penitentiary." World Prisons. Accessed October 23, 2026. https://worldprisons.com/prisons/iowa-state-penitentiary.
@misc{worldprisons-iowa-state-penitentiary,
author = {{World Prisons}},
title = {Iowa State Penitentiary},
year = {2026},
url = {https://worldprisons.com/prisons/iowa-state-penitentiary},
urldate = {2026-10-23}
}