Holliday, one of the largest transfer facilities in Texas, is across the street from the Texas Prison Museum.[3] Holliday is one of two prisons in the TDCJ that, as of 2003, is named after an African-American.[4]
Richard Watkins, a senior African-American prison warden, lead an effort to have a prison named for C. A. Holliday, an African-American community activist and pastor in the Huntsville area. Watkins sent many letters to Governor of TexasAnn Richards, asking her to name a prison after Holliday.[4] The $30 million Holliday Unit, with a capacity of around 2,000 beds,[5] opened in January 1994.[2] Cigarette smoking at Holliday was forbidden since the facility's opening, while a TDCJ-wide smoking ban, stemming from a November 18, 1994 Texas Board of Criminal Justice unanimous decision to forbid smoking at all TDCJ facilities, began on March 1, 1995.[5]
Facility
Holliday, an industrial-scale complex, has sheet metal siding and low sloping roofs. Robert Perkinson, author of Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire, said that the "hastily-constructed" transfer unit "looks like an assemblage of discount tire outlets," and that the only features that indicate that it is a prison is the razor wire and guard towers. Jim Willett, a Huntsville resident and a former warden, said that Holliday is "a giant tin barn that serves as Texas's prison purgatory, the place you go between jail and the real thing."[3]
↑ 5,05,1Power, Stephen. "At tobacco-free prison, a smoke's expensive." The Baltimore Sun. December 18, 1994. 2A. Retrieved on July 23, 2010. "But after 10 months the $30 million 2000bed Holliday Unit has one problem guards and inmates say Tobacco is still getting in."