because of how badly the suffragist prisoners were tortured, beaten, and abused. Portrayals of events at the Occoquan Workhouse played a key part in the 2004 film Iron Jawed Angels, a film about the history of the National Woman's Party, Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, and other members of the 1910s Women's Voting Rights Movement.

The penitentiary buildings of the 1930s were constructed