It was closed in 2012 due to a decrease in the number of inmates in the Virginia corrections system and expensive ongoing maintenance needs.
At the opening ceremony, Governor Mills E. Godwin Jr. stated that the facility served as a "monument to failure", as the inmates to be housed there were viewed as the most incorrigible and likely unable to be returned to free society.
[6] On August 3, 1998, the male death row moved to its final location, the Sussex I State Prison, from the Mecklenburg Correctional Center.
The inmates who escaped included two of the Briley Brothers (Linwood and James), along with Lem Tuggle, Earl Clanton, Derick Peterson, and Willie Jones.
While returning to the building from evening recreation time around 8:00 pm, Clanton hid in the bathroom next to the entrance of the death row cell block, then charged out on cue from another inmate when the adjacent control room's door was left open.
The six escapees put on riot helmets to conceal their faces and carried the TV out of the unit on a stretcher while spraying it with a fire extinguisher.
A patrol car driving past a laundromat spotted the two men inside, one of them wearing what appeared to be a correctional officers' jacket with the badges torn off.
Tuggle and Jones planned to continue north into Canada, as they knew that Canadian authorities would not extradite fugitives facing execution.
The Brileys were caught last, on June 19, after the FBI traced a phone call they made to a contact in New York City back to the garage where they were working.
Stockton was also on death row for murder and originally planned to escape with them, but backed out because he anticipated his case would be overturned on appeal.
In 2011, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell ordered MCC closed, citing removal of 1,000 Pennsylvania inmates who were housed at another facility (Green Rock Correctional Center) under contract.
[22] The Virginia Department of Corrections plans to limit what is sent to a landfill to just 50 tons of demolition debris, or 2 percent of the project’s estimated total.
[24] In 2023, Microsoft corporation had purchased this land and began constructing additional facilities to expand its existing Boydton data center.