In the 20th century, it became known for housing political prisoners and dissidents under the Stalinist regime, particularly the future Communist President of Czechoslovakia Gustáv Husák, who was imprisoned after an intra-party purge.

The building complex was also severely damaged during the riots, and in 1990, the Slovak National Council officially voted to close the prison down, before the decision was ultimately reversed in 1993, allowing it to continue operating in the present day after modernization and reconstruction.

At that point there were approximately 2500 inmates in Leopoldov, including 370 burglars, 320 thieves, 200 murderers, and 170 rapists, with most of them falling under the provisions of Paragraph 41 and its category of high-risk and repeat offenders, and were thus not eligible for the Presidential amnesty.

By January 1990, the unrest was initially suppressed, but tensions in the prison continued to persist, with another riot breaking out on March 1, 1990, when 217 inmates barricaded themselves inside a structure called the Castle, the sleeping quarters of the III.

On March 15, 1990, the situation escalated even further, when hundreds of prisoners started a mass revolt, resisting arrest for two weeks, seizing control of buildings and barricading themselves inside, and using iron rods, razors, petrol bombs and improvized flamethrowers as their weapons against the guards.

In November 1991, seven escapees from the Leopoldov prison murdered five guards and forced their way out of the facility,[1] stealing several cars after becoming wanted fugitives, fleeing the town on a train before they were recaptured in a manhunt.

block of the facility, when Jozef Vígh from Čenkovice and Stanislav Zimmermann from Malá Lehota strangled their cellmate to death with a leather belt, and then attempted to cover up the crime as a suicide.

It is divided into an administrative sector, multiple prisoner cellblocks, a cafeteria, and workshops, and severalparts of the complex are protected as cultural and historical landmarks.