Established in 1923, it was built to replace the Indiana State Reformatory located in Jeffersonville after a fire severely damaged the original property.

In 1897, due to the belief that young male offenders should not be housed with their older counterparts, inmates were divided by age between the South and North.

A plot of land south of the city of Pendleton was selected because Fall Creek provided a source of running water.

"[2] According to a report on the Reformatory, Folz "made a conscious effort to arrange the buildings within the enclosure in such a manner that a maximum of light and air and green grass would be in evidence."

Construction on the prison continued until March 1924 when A. F. Miles, the General Superintendent, ended the contracts with the architect and other contractors.

Miles continued his cost-cutting ways by purchasing materials at a lower price than the plan had originally allotted.

An inmate, Lincoln Love, who also referred to himself as Lokmar Yazid Abdul Wadood and passed away in 2020 while serving a sentence for involvement with the riot,[3][4] was badly beaten by correctional officers after he refused to vacate his cell during a weapons check, also called a shakedown.

Michael claims that Love's targeting was the result of racial tensions between the almost exclusively white correctional officer staff and majority black population of the time.

[6] In 1988, the superintendent of the Indiana Reformatory, Edward L. Cohn, was reprimanded for shackling inmates in manners that violated current prison standards.

[7] This position is achieved by placing handcuffs around an inmates wrists and connecting them to leg irons with a short chain.

His two assistants were suspended for a number days without pay, denied their merit raises, and required to undergo performance evaluations quarterly instead of annually.

In 1990, Pendleton came under fire for allowing an unsafe environment for inmates after two prisoners were fatally stabbed within a two-week period.

[11] On May 1, 2004, an unidentified caller phoned the Pendleton Correctional Facility about plans of assaults and escape attempts by the inmates.

During the lockdown, brown bag lunches were served, classes were not allowed to meet, and visiting hours were cut down.

Attempts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful and he was pronounced dead at 1:20 a.m. Rios was convicted in October 2007 for the murder of his three children and his wife in Fort Wayne, Indiana in December 2005.

Jackson, who previously lived in Marion, was transported to the facility's emergency room, where he was pronounced dead about 45 minutes later.

The offenders stabbed Dewitt several times in an act of gang violence and he was pronounced dead at a local hospital hours later.