A campus of the Box Hill Institute of TAFE operates at the prison providing a corrections education program.

A 2012 art exhibition called The Barwon Interviews, comprising video footage of twelve inmates, was part of a Monash University PhD project that was focused on examining prisoners adjusting to life inside Barwon Prison, their family struggles, and guilty consciences.

[3] In February 2012, while visiting Barwon Prison to speak to Indigenous inmates as part of a mentoring program, former AFL player Wayne Carey was found to have traces of cocaine on his clothing following a routine drug scan.

[5][6] On 11 February 2019, two members of Barwon Prison's Pacific Islander 'G-fam' group stood over Tony Mokbel and stabbed him with an improvised knife.

It is likely that the attack was a result of the previous day's newspaper headline story, that Mokbel was being an 'enforcer' within the prison and one of the men also accused the drug kingpin of "talking to the screws, you f***ing dog!