In 1939 (or 1943, depending on various sources), the government began the construction of Chi Hoa prison by hiring French contractors and using the design of local Vietnamese architects.

After the fall of Saigon in 1975, the new government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam has continued to use this prison until the present day.

[4] The prison's main structure is a three-floor octagonal building, heavily influenced by the I Ching's eight trigrams theory.

[1] Later, a Christian chapel and a Buddhist temple was built in the land surrounding the main building but they are all destroyed now.

The outermost part of the prison is separated from the populous residential areas by a squared brick wall plus barbed-wire fence.

In the time of the French colonial government, the prisoners were confined in the light-lacking cells and were usually fettered.

[6] After the fall of Saigon, the prison was kept running by the new Socialist Republic of Vietnam government but there is only little information in regards to the way it was being operated.

There is some brief information in The Black Book of Communism which describes the conditions of the prison as extremely bad.