The J. Dale Wainwright Unit is a Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) prison for men, located in unincorporated Houston County, Texas. Formerly called the Eastham Unit or "The Ham," the prison was renamed the J. Dale Wainwright Unit after a former chairman of the Texas Board of Criminal Justice. The 12,789 acres (5,176 ha) prison is located on Farm to Market Road 230, near Lovelady and 13 miles (21 km) west of Trinity. the Wainwright Unit is 40 miles (64 km) up the Trinity River from the Polunsky Unit in West Livingston, and it is about one-third of the distance between Polunsky and the Christina Crain Unit (formerly Gatesville Unit) in Gatesville. Robert Perkinson, author of Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire, said that while the TDCJ and other agencies operate many t