High Security Center (ACI)

Rhode Island's most restrictive facility — about 80 men, all visits non-contact, in short module-based sessions whose weekly number depends on the person's program step.

Overview

The High Security Center is Rhode Island’s supermax — the small, most restrictive facility on the ACI campus, opened in 1981, holding roughly 80 men who require close custody and control. It includes a Rehabilitation Treatment Unit offering programming and structure as an alternative to more restrictive housing, plus a library, classroom, and chapel inside the secure perimeter.

For families, the rules here are categorically different from the rest of the campus, and knowing them before the first trip prevents the hardest kind of surprise.

What Makes the High Security Center Different

• Every visit is non-contact — conducted by telephone through a glass panel, for every module. There is no greeting hug here.
• Visit frequency is earned by step: the posted schedule ties weekly visits to the person’s program level — Step 1 gets one visit a week, Step 2 two, Step 3 three. Families need to know the person’s current step and module before planning.
• Sessions are the shortest on the campus — 45-minute blocks in the mornings and early afternoons only, with no evening options.
• People in disciplinary confinement or on loss-of-privileges status receive no social visits at all — attorney and clergy of record only.
• The schedule runs seven days a week and through holidays — when a visiting day lands on a holiday, visits happen.
• It is the hardest building to find: past the women’s facilities, bearing left down Power Road, about another half mile from the bottom of the hill.

Visiting Hours and Procedures

The statewide rules above — the 9-name visiting list, the dress code, ID, and screening — apply at the HSC. What follows is specific to this facility.

The monthly schedule PDF on RIDOC’s facility page assigns each day’s modules, and module assignments aren’t published — the facility at (401) 462-2028 confirms which block applies. The full approval-list process, dress code, and entry rules are in Visiting in Rhode Island.

Getting There and Parking

RIDOC’s published directions: I-95 to Exit 14 (14B northbound), Route 37 West to Exit 3 (Pontiac Avenue), left at the end of the exit, right onto Howard Avenue at the third light; right at the intersection past Minimum Security toward the women’s facilities, then follow Power Road bearing left — the HSC is on the left about half a mile from the bottom of the hill.

Distances are approximate, based on map routing. RIDOC publishes no visitor parking guidance for the HSC.

Nearby Services

Same campus as the rest of the ACI: the Chapel View retail area and gas stations are about a mile away, lodging clusters near T.F. Green Airport in Warwick, Kent Hospital in Warwick has a 24/7-staffed emergency department roughly 10 minutes away, and Rhode Island Hospital in Providence is the state’s only Level I trauma center.

Learn More

For detailed information about visiting and communicating with someone at the ACI:

• Visiting in Rhode Island — the 9-name list, dress code, and entry rules
• Mail & Packages — addressing mail to the facility’s post office box
• Phone & Video Calls — the Securus system
• Sending Money — the visiting-list deposit rule
• Medical & Mental Health — the Patient Liaison line for families
• Transfers — how classification moves people around the campus