 MCI-Norfolk was founded in 1927 as the Norfolk Prison Colony, a "model prison community" conceived by sociologist and penologist Howard Belding Gill (Harvard 1913, M.B.A. 1914), who was appointed its first superintendent in 1931.Gill was dismissed in 1934 after an escape by four inmates, and replaced by his deputy Maurice N. Winslow, who served as superintendent from 1934 to 1950.The name of the prison was changed to the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Norfolk in the mid-1950s.