Derek Chauvin is being held at the Minnesota Correctional Facility-Oak Park Heights to await sentencing. The correctional facility is in Stillwater, about 25 miles east of downtown Minneapolis. Oak Park Heights operates at the highest custody level of any facility in the Minnesota DOC system. Most individuals housed in the facility are designated at either maximum or close custody levels. (Reference) Chauvin is being held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day in a special wing. Ref. He’s there for his own safety.
According to the NY Daily News this is where he is being held:
“The ACU is the state’s most secure unit,” Fitzgerald (spokeswoman) said. “Administrative segregation is used when someone’s presence in the general population is a safety concern.”
Every cell in the unit has a camera that is monitored at all times and corrections officers do rounds every half-hour to check each inmate’s status, she said. Chauvin is one of 41 inmates housed in that facility, out of nearly 350 who are being held at Oak Park Heights, she said.
Here are some more photos.
I’m retired now but over my career as a clinical social worker and having been a reserve police officer for 20 years I’ve had occasion to be inside state prisons and county jails. I’ve helped arrest drunk drivers and taken them to be processed at the county jail. I’ve done mental health evaluations and suicide assessments of inmates at two county jails. I worked closely with the stress officer of a large correctional complex in Massachusetts who referred correction officers to me for counseling. He gave me personal tours of the prisons there. I went to a conference and had a tour of Bridgewater State Hospital, the correctional facility where Albert DeSalvo, the Boston Strangler, was held.
When I entered such a facility and heard the doors shut behind me sometimes with a metallic clang and sometimes with an electronic whoosh I’d be in a small holding area which is called a sally port where I’d wait until the staff opened the second door. It took a half dozen times for me not to get to me not to feel a twinge of anxiety even though I knew I wasn’t the one who was going to be locked up.
At our county jail when he had a prisoner we’d radio the jail a code and they’d open a garage door and close it behind us. We’d put our guns in a sliding drawer where the corrections officer would secure them until we left. Only then would we let the prisoner out of the car where we would enter the sally port. I expect this is similar to what Chauvin went through.
No doubt Derek Chauvin entered and exited his local jail with prisoners who he arrested and handcuffed numerous times. Once secured inside as long as the prisoner was compliant he'd be the one to take the handcuffs off.
This all was done to him when he was found guilty and taken to a prison where he would be incarcerated for eight weeks before he finds out how long his sentence will be. We saw a deputy handcuff him but Chauvin seemed ready as he put his hands behind his back when he stood up.
Whatever happened next wasn’t made public. I expect the authorities made sure he left the courthouse away from the cameras.
He would have been transported in a prison transport vehicle possibly with escort cars to prison. Most likely the vehicle transporting him where his handcuffs would have been removed. For TV shows you are already familiar with the process of being incarcerated is like so I don’t have to describe it beyond this.
This all had to have been a rude awakening for him and when he wakes up in his cell every morning it literally is a rude awakening.
