The State Correctional Institution – Phoenix is a state prison in Skippack Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, with a Collegeville postal address, in the Philadelphia metropolitan area. Operated by Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, it was named after the phoenix bird. Built for $400 million, making it the state prison built for the highest cost in Pennsylvania history, it has a capacity of 3,830 prisoners, and as of September 2018, its full time workforce numbered 1,200. Heery International designed the facility. It replaced SCI Graterford. Most prisoners are male, located in the East and West sub units, while it has a re-entry unit for female prisoners with a capacity of 192. The female unit is not in the main prison perimeter. SCI Phoenix houses some men who are sentenced to death under Pennsylvania law. The department of PA Corrections anticipated that most of the prisoners would be from the area of Philadelphia, and currently SCI Phoenix is the state prison closest to Philadelphia. History The SCI Phoenix buildings were built on the SCI Graterford land area, and the Phoenix and Graterford buildings are about apart, with SCI Phoenix fencing beginning about 1,100 feet east of SCI Graterford's fencing. The first bidding for construction of this prison occurred in the decade of the 2000s. The prison, originally to open in November 2014, opened late since Walsh Heery Joint Venture, the construction company, and Hill International, a Philadelphia company representing the State of Pennsylvania, had a dispute over whether the prison was ready to open. , the prison's final cost was still not finalized. On June 1, 2018, its dedication ceremony was held, and the prison began operations on July 9, 2018. The state began moving Graterford prisoners there on July 11, 2018, and Graterford ended operations on July 15. Graterford's employees now were employees of Phoenix. Some inmates disliked the move as they feared they would be sharing cells with other inmates, while at Graterford they had single cells. The population of Graterford was to reduce to 2,588 inmates by June 2018, so that the transfer of inmates to Phoenix would not involve as many people, and Phoenix eventually opened, with 2,633 prisoners. Initially, prisoners with life sentences who had single cells at Graterford would continue to have single cells at Phoenix. Composition Many prisoners are two to a cell, and most cells have the dimensions by . Phoenix has 3,422 beds. It