FDC Houston: Visiting, Mail, Legal Access and Programs

By Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., and Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA

FDC Houston at a glance

FDC Houston is a federal detention center at 1200 Texas Avenue in downtown Houston, holding 840 men and women as of September 2026. Most of the people inside have not been sentenced: they are awaiting trial or sentencing in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, or are held for the U.S. Marshals Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement or a branch of the military.

Official name	Federal Detention Center, Houston
BOP code	HOU
Security level	Administrative; men and women; pretrial, presentence, holdover and short-sentence, plus a small sentenced work cadre
Population	840 (as of September 2026)
Visiting	Rotates by housing unit and month: weekdays 8:00 a.m.–1:30 p.m. and 2:00–8:00 p.m.; weekends 8:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m. (units 3 East and 3 West only) · see visiting hours
Inmate mail	Inmate Name & Register Number · Federal Detention Center · P.O. Box 526255 · Houston, TX 77052
Send money	Lockbox · Western Union (code city FBOP, DC) · MoneyGram (receive code 7932)
Phone	713-221-5400 · Fax 713-229-4200
Street address	1200 Texas Avenue, Houston, TX 77002 · Harris County
Judicial district	Southern District of Texas
Designated capacity	992
Housing	One building; eight housing units, all multiple-occupancy cells; no single cells or dormitories
Special Housing Unit	Yes · 86 segregation cells
RDAP	No
Camp	None · no satellite low or complex

FDC Houston is not a prison in the ordinary sense. It is one of only five institutions the Bureau’s own facility roster types as a Federal Detention Center, the only Bureau facility in Houston, and the only Bureau institution in Texas holding both men and women.

What is FDC Houston, and who is held there?

FDC Houston is a federal jail for people whose cases are still moving, most of them awaiting trial or sentencing. The Bureau’s own Pretrial Detention Legal Access Handbook, which FDC Houston binds into the back of its admission handbook, names ten institutions whose primary job is pretrial detention: MDC Brooklyn, MCC Chicago, MDC Guaynabo, FDC Honolulu, FDC Houston, MDC Los Angeles, FDC Miami, FDC Philadelphia, FDC SeaTac and MCC San Diego. Houston is one of them.

That single fact changes almost everything a family needs to know. A person here has usually not been sentenced, so there is no release date to look up, no designation yet, and no long-term programming to enroll in. The institution’s 2025 legal guide describes four groups: people in pretrial custody for the Southern District of Texas; people serving short sentences, ordinarily from the south-central United States; people finishing a longer sentence near release; and holdovers awaiting sentencing, designation or transportation elsewhere.

The traffic through the building surprises people. The 2025 PREA audit records 2,048 admissions in the preceding twelve months, of which 1,886 stayed longer than 72 hours and 1,429 longer than 30 days, with an average stay of 356.2 days. A building that reads on paper as a way-station holds most of its population for the better part of a year.

It is also a building of unusual linguistic complexity. On April 1, 2025, the first day of the PREA audit, 413 of the 883 people held here — 47 percent — were recorded as limited English proficient. That is why the admission handbook runs in English and Spanish in parallel, and why the facility page offers the Bureau’s pretrial legal-access handbook in 24 further editions besides English, from Arabic to Vietnamese.

Two things FDC Houston is not. It is not a county jail: someone booked by Harris County or a Texas state agency will not appear in the federal locator, and none of the rules here apply to them. And it is not the only place around Houston holding people for the federal government — the Marshals Service also contracts with private and county facilities, and a person can move between one of those and this one without notice. FDC Houston is the only Bureau institution in Houston and one of thirteen in the state; see federal prisons in Texas.

What is the security level at FDC Houston?

FDC Houston is an administrative-security institution. That is the Bureau’s label for an institution with a special mission that takes people of every security level, and it means the usual arithmetic of security points does not govern who is here. The 2025 PREA audit records the custody levels actually in use as “Administrative/Community, In, Out, Maximum” — that is, the full range, in one eight-unit building.

No one is scored into FDC Houston. A pretrial defendant is here because a magistrate judge ordered detention and the Marshals Service lodged them at the nearest federal facility. Designation — the Bureau’s decision about which prison a sentenced person serves in — happens afterward, at the Designation and Sentence Computation Center in Grand Prairie, Texas, under the Bureau’s security designation rules, using the security-point score, any Public Safety Factor, the judicial recommendation and bed space. The wait between sentencing and the bus is measured in weeks and sometimes months, and it is spent here.

That gap is where a defense lawyer can still do something useful. A judicial recommendation is worth making at sentencing because the Bureau considers it; it does not bind the Bureau. A federal court in Houston said so in 2023, rejecting a claim that counsel should have asked for FPC Bastrop and advised against self-surrendering here: it stated no claim under 28 U.S.C. § 2255, and a prisoner has no right to choose his place of incarceration. Bentley v. United States, No. 4:23-cv-04383 (S.D. Tex. Dec. 5, 2023).

One right does turn on being unsentenced. Under 28 C.F.R. § 551.106, carried into the Bureau’s pretrial inmates policy, Program Statement 7331.05, a warden may not require someone in pretrial status to work at anything beyond housekeeping in their own cell and the community living area unless that person signs a waiver on form BP-A0203. The waiver can be withdrawn at any time, and psychology staff must confirm the person is competent to sign it. People do sign, because a work assignment is money and movement, but signing is a choice.

Who are the notable inmates at FDC Houston?

FDC Houston has no stable list of notable prisoners. With 2,048 admissions a year and a population that turns over roughly once every twelve months, the people here today are largely people whose cases are not yet public. The register number of each person below is printed so you can repeat the search in the Bureau’s inmate locator.

Name	Status	Case
Joel Lopez	Former. Held here in 2007; Bureau records now place him at FCI El Reno, Oklahoma, register number 20142-079, projected release LIFE	Convicted after a one-week jury trial of conspiracy to commit kidnapping and murder-for-hire. In June 2007, while in federal custody at FDC Houston, he solicited the killing of U.S. District Judge Ricardo H. Hinojosa — who had sentenced him to life in a 2006 drug case — for $2 million, and of a woman in Roma, Texas, for $1 million. Sentenced to a second life term on October 23, 2009. Neither intended victim was harmed
Julia Ann Poff	Former. Register number 30835-479; released from Bureau custody on May 16, 2025, from FMC Carswell	Held in pre-sentence detention here from November 9, 2017, to November 18, 2019; she pleaded guilty on July 1, 2019, to transporting explosives with intent to kill, injure and intimidate; the 739 days were credited against her 120-month sentence under 18 U.S.C. § 3585(b)

The 2009 Federal Bureau of Investigation announcement of Lopez’s sentence said he had been moved to the federal prison at Pollock, Louisiana; the facility code in his Bureau record is now ERE, FCI El Reno in Oklahoma. Julia Poff is no longer a federal prisoner: her Bureau record shows an actual release date of May 16, 2025, from FMC Carswell.

How do I find someone at FDC Houston?

To find someone at FDC Houston, use the Bureau’s free Inmate Locator. Search by the eight-digit register number if you have it, because names repeat and the locator matches the committed name. It covers everyone in federal custody since 1982, and a current result names the facility in words: someone held here shows as “Located at: Houston FDC,” with no three-letter code on the screen.

Two traps are specific to a detention center. A newly arrested person often does not appear for several days, because the locator lists people in Bureau custody and someone still in the Marshals Service’s hands has not been booked in. And a record the Bureau marks “IN TRANSIT” — in its words, someone “moved from a BOP facility” who “may or may not be returned,” its example being a pretrial prisoner removed by the Marshals Service — shows on the screen as “NOT IN BOP CUSTODY”, usually with “Release Date: UNKNOWN”. Our guide to how federal register numbers work explains what the number’s suffix tells you about the district that prosecuted the case.

How do I write to someone at FDC Houston?

Letters to someone at FDC Houston go to P.O. Box 526255, Houston, TX 77052, not to Texas Avenue. Put the committed name and register number on the first line, and add the housing unit — the handbook asks for it and it speeds delivery in a building with eight units.

Personal and legal mail	Freight and non-USPS parcels
Inmate Name & Register Number Federal Detention Center P.O. Box 526255 Houston, TX 77052	Staff Name FDC Houston Federal Detention Center ATTN: WAREHOUSE 1200 Texas Avenue Houston, TX 77002

Incoming mail is photocopied. Under the 2026 admission handbook, “all incoming mail with the exception of Special/Legal mail will be photocopied. You will not have access to your original mail which will be maintained on file for 30 days. After 30 days, it will be destroyed.” The person receives a copy of your letter, not the letter — photographs and children’s drawings included. Polaroid and nude photographs, stamps, musical greeting cards and plant material are rejected outright, no one may hold more than five publications at once, and at an administrative institution even softcover books must come from a publisher or bookstore.

Legal mail is handled differently, and the marking on the envelope is the whole of it. The envelope must be marked “Special Mail — Open only in the presence of the inmate” and the sender identified by name and title. The 2025 legal guide is explicit that “Esquire” is not enough: write “Attorney” or “Assistant Federal Public Defender” after the name. Marked properly, the envelope is opened in front of the person and inspected but not read. Marked improperly, it is general correspondence — opened, read and photocopied. The Bureau’s correspondence rules and our guides to attorney-client communication in the Bureau of Prisons and to writing to someone in federal prison go through the rest.

The institution’s own paperwork contradicts itself on outgoing legal mail. The 2026 handbook says on one page that “no outgoing mail may be sealed by the inmate” and that all mail is read “including outgoing Special Mail.” Three pages later it states the national rule correctly; the pretrial handbook bound into its back says outgoing legal mail “must be labeled… and sealed”; and the 2025 legal guide says inmates “may seal outgoing special mail” and staff “will at no time read the contents.” The national rule at 28 C.F.R. § 540.18 controls. Inmates here also cannot receive faxes or use express mail, and an attorney may not send stamps, though an unstamped self-addressed envelope is allowed.

How do I send money to someone at FDC Houston?

Money for someone at FDC Houston never goes to the Houston address. It goes to the Bureau’s lockbox in Des Moines, or by one of the two wire services. All three routes need the committed name and the eight-digit register number, and the electronic routes want the register number and last name run together with no spaces.

Route	Where it goes	How fast it posts
Postal money order or cashier’s check	Federal Bureau of Prisons Committed Name Eight-Digit Register Number Post Office Box 474701 Des Moines, Iowa 50947-0001	Cash, personal checks, letters and photographs are not accepted at the lockbox and are returned. The Bureau’s help line for funds problems is 202-307-2712
Western Union Quick Collect	Code city FBOP, DC; account number is the register number followed by the last name, no spaces; attention line is the full committed name	Sent between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. Eastern, posted in two to four hours; later than that, by 7:00 a.m. the next morning. Seven days a week including holidays
MoneyGram Express Payment	Receive code 7932, company name Federal Bureau of Prisons, Washington, DC; up to $300 online	The same posting times as Western Union

Money sent here buys less than most families expect. Under the Bureau’s trust fund rules, commissary spending is capped at $460 a month, and shopping happens every two weeks, so money beyond the ceiling sits in the account. A court-ordered financial obligation may take a share of it through the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program.

What are the visiting hours at FDC Houston?

Visiting at FDC Houston rotates by housing unit, and the rotation flips between odd-numbered and even-numbered months, so there is no single set of hours. Your visiting day depends on which unit the person is in and on what month it is. Institution supplement HOU 5267.09C, dated January 16, 2024, and the 2026 admission handbook print the same schedule under the Bureau’s national visiting regulations.

Day	Odd months (Jan, Mar, May, Jul, Sep, Nov)	Even months (Feb, Apr, Jun, Aug, Oct, Dec)
Monday	6 East 8:00 a.m.–1:30 p.m.; 6 West 2:00–8:00 p.m.	6 West 8:00 a.m.–1:30 p.m.; 6 East 2:00–8:00 p.m.
Tuesday	Legal visits only in the morning; 3 West 2:00–8:00 p.m.	Legal visits only in the morning; 3 East 2:00–8:00 p.m.
Wednesday	Legal visits only in the morning; 3 East 2:00–8:00 p.m.	Legal visits only in the morning; 3 West 2:00–8:00 p.m.
Thursday	4 East 8:00 a.m.–1:30 p.m.; 4 West 2:00–8:00 p.m.	4 West 8:00 a.m.–1:30 p.m.; 4 East 2:00–8:00 p.m.
Friday	5 West 8:00 a.m.–1:30 p.m.; 5 East 2:00–8:00 p.m.	5 East 8:00 a.m.–1:30 p.m.; 5 West 2:00–8:00 p.m.
Saturday	3 West 8:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m.	3 East 8:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m.
Sunday	3 East 8:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m.	3 West 8:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m.

Only units 3 East and 3 West ever get a Saturday or Sunday visit, and which of the two changes with the calendar month. Everyone in units 4, 5 and 6 visits on a weekday. If you work Monday to Friday and your relative is in 5 East, the only hours available to you are a Friday afternoon.

The rotation is the trap

The Bureau’s page for this facility shows no visiting days at all: it has no visiting-hours block, because the location record behind it carries an empty list of visiting days for HOU, as the Bureau’s records did for all 118 institutions as of September 2026. The schedule is only in the supplement the page links as a PDF.

The Bureau still serves a Spanish-language visiting supplement for this institution: 32 pages, institution supplement HOU 5267.08, dated Enero 26, 2007. It implements a program statement replaced in 2015, and it gives a wholly different schedule — Sunday, Monday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday sessions of 8:00 to 11:00 a.m. and 12:00 to 3:00 p.m., evening sessions on Mondays and Thursdays, no social visiting at all on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, and an eight-week rotation.

Listings that give that 2007 schedule are out of date. A Spanish-speaking family that finds the Bureau’s Spanish document will plan a Tuesday visit that cannot happen, in a building where 47 percent of the population was recorded as limited English proficient. The January 2024 English supplement and the 2026 handbook control, because they are the current editions. Call 713-221-5400 before you travel, and confirm the unit.

Two more timing rules will cost you a visit. Visitor processing stops one hour before a session ends, so a 2:00 to 8:00 p.m. session closes its door at 7:00 p.m. And processing stops 30 minutes before every count — 4:00 p.m. daily, plus 10:00 a.m. on weekends and on federal holidays — with counts taking 30 to 40 minutes to clear.

Who can visit, and how many

• Pretrial and holdover visiting lists are normally limited to immediate family: mother, father, step-parents, foster parents, brothers, sisters, spouse and children — the floor Program Statement 7331.05 sets nationally, and here the ceiling for most people. A documented common-law partner can be approved. Every visitor is checked against the National Crime Information Center, which normally takes about seven days once the institution has all the forms.
• A maximum of four visitors at one time, “including children and small babies,” and visits are rationed by points: four a month for most people, eight for third-floor cadre, with a three-hour session costing two points and an hour-and-a-half session one. Work cadre and designated short-term female inmates are the exception to the immediate-family rule, and may add up to ten other relatives and friends.
• The visiting room holds 179. When it fills, staff ask for volunteers to leave and then terminate visits in the order they began; a visit can also be cut short to make room for someone from the unit the session is dedicated to.
• People in the Special Housing Unit get one 30-minute non-contact visit a month, over a video monitor on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, with the visitor in the visiting room and the inmate in the SHU. Visitors under 18 are not permitted in the SHU non-contact rooms.

What visitors can wear and bring

Dress to the stricter of the two published rules. The January 2024 supplement bars any skirt or dress “shorter than one (1) inch above the knee”; the May 2026 handbook says about two inches while sitting, and the handbook itself says a local supplement controls where the two conflict. The rest of the list is the national one — nothing revealing, see-through, sleeveless or resembling an inmate uniform, and closed-toed shoes. One local exception: attorneys and law-enforcement officers are exempt from the khaki-clothing and footwear rules.

What you may carry in is answered three ways in the institution’s own documents. The 2026 handbook allows identification; infant-care items; necessary medication such as an inhaler, declared at the front desk; and “debit/credit card and/or cash, not to exceed $25 per family, for vending machine use.” The 2024 supplement’s body allows identification, money, infant care and medication; its visitor handout allows identification and personal keys only. Take the handbook’s list, the newest of the three, and no more than $25.

Infant items are specified to the piece: one pacifier, two diapers, five wipes, one clear bottle or sippy cup with its contents and one infant-size blanket, all inside a single one-gallon clear zip-lock bag. No diaper bag, no purse. Contact is limited to a handshake, a brief embrace and a brief kiss at the start and end of the visit; an inmate who leaves the room with an item receives an incident report.

Identification and screening

Everyone over 16 needs a valid photo identification — a passport, driver’s license or state or federal photo card. One exclusion is stated in terms in the supplement and matters in this city: “Mexican consulate identification cards will not be allowed as identification.” Visitors under 16 must be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian.

All visitors clear a walk-through metal detector and personal effects are inspected. Under the Bureau’s visitor search rules, visitors are randomly tested for drug traces by an ion-detection unit in the front lobby, and the supplement specifies that attorneys are excluded from that testing. A visitor who refuses a search and leaves may not return without the Associate Warden of Programs’ approval. How those rules are applied is covered in searches, shakedowns and contraband, and the system-wide rules in federal prison visitation.

Getting there

The institution occupies a single building downtown at the corner of Texas Avenue and San Jacinto Street, which makes it one of the more reachable federal facilities in the country. From Dallas, take I-45 south into downtown, exit 48A for I-10 East, keep left for Milam Street, then left onto Texas Avenue; from Austin, US-290 east to I-10 East and exit 769A for Smith Street; from Louisiana, I-10 west to exit 769B toward San Jacinto Street. METRO rail and bus, 713-635-4000; Amtrak, 800-872-7245; Greyhound, 713-759-6565.

How do phone calls and email work at FDC Houston?

Calls at FDC Houston are placed outward only; no one can call in. A new arrival is usually given a nine-digit phone access code and a four-digit PIN the day after arrival, and may register up to 30 numbers, added and deleted through TRULINCS. The handbook limits every social call to 15 minutes, and FDC Houston imposes a lockout that is stricter than the national rule: “after inmates have completed a call, you will not be able to make another call for one hour.”

Across the Bureau the allowance is 510 minutes a month under the Bureau’s telephone regulations, Program Statement 5264.09, issued September 3, 2026, which rescinded the 2008 policy: 300 come free to people eligible for First Step Act telephone incentives, and anyone who uses up those 300, eligible or not, may buy the other 210. The extra November and December minutes did not survive the rescission, and properly arranged unmonitored legal calls do not count against the 510 at all. This institution’s 2025 legal guide still prints the old “300 minutes per calendar month… increased to 400 minutes in November and December.” The program statement controls.

The local detail that matters is when the clock resets. FDC Houston runs on revalidation cycles, and the handbook prints the calendar: cycle 0 revalidates on the 1st of the month, cycle 1 on the 4th, then the 7th, 10th, 13th, 16th, 19th, 22nd, 25th and 28th for cycles 2 through 9. The monthly telephone allowance resets on the person’s own cycle date, not on the first of the month, which is why a family that budgets calls by the calendar runs out early. Commissary runs on a separate two-week cycle, on the 1st and the 15th.

Phones run daily from 6:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. and 5:00 to 8:30 p.m., and 6:00 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. on weekends and on federal holidays. Collect calls are possible, collect international calls are not, and everything except a properly placed legal call is recorded. See federal inmate phone calls.

Electronic messaging runs on TRULINCS, reached from outside through CorrLinks, with no internet access and no attachments; the person inside enters your address, and you must accept the emailed invitation before anything passes. Time is bought in TRU-Units, which the 2026 handbook prices at half a cent a minute — a tenth of the five cents a unit other Bureau detention centers print, so check the kiosk before budgeting — and sessions last 60 minutes and are followed by a 60-minute wait, on the same hours as the phones. Email with a lawyer is not privileged: the legal guide says any attorney communication by this route “is subject to monitoring.” See CorrLinks and TRULINCS.

How does a lawyer reach a client at FDC Houston?

A lawyer reaches a client at FDC Houston through the institution’s legal mailbox, [email protected], which handles legal-assistant approvals, the unmonitored legal phone and video visits, and access is better than at almost any sentenced institution because of the mission. FDC Houston publishes its own 23-page Legal Guide to the Federal Detention Center Houston, Texas, dated February 2025 and written for defense counsel rather than for prisoners; it houses a Consolidated Legal Center with a supervisory attorney and two staff attorneys on site; and it has a Legal Access Officer whose job is the things in this section. The supervisory attorney is on 713-229-4104 and the Legal Access Officer on 713-221-5400, extension 2602.

Legal visits and the attorney rooms

Legal visiting runs seven days a week: 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Monday to Friday and 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. on weekends, no appointment needed, and the guide says attorneys “will generally be processed ahead of social visitors when possible.” Anything outside those hours needs the Warden’s approval, requested through the unit team 48 hours ahead.

Three timing rules decide whether a trip is wasted. Processing begins 30 minutes before a session and stops one hour before it ends; shift change is at 2:00 p.m., with processing stopping 30 minutes before it and resuming around 2:15; and processing stops 30 minutes before every count. The guide’s own advice is to “arrive no later than 15 minutes prior to the cutoff.”

Private attorney-client rooms sit inside the visiting room, and the guide gives their number twice, inconsistently, as “five (4).” Either way there are four or five for a population of 840 as of September 2026, first come first served, and when they are full the choice is to wait, meet in the open visiting room, or come back. A separation order can stop a visit dead: counsel whose client has a separatee already in the room “will be asked to wait or reschedule.”

Attorneys and approved legal assistants may bring in a laptop, a tablet and an external memory device; everything is x-rayed, and phones, newspapers, gum and highlighters stay outside. A legal assistant — law clerk, investigator, interpreter, paralegal, notary, mitigation specialist or mental health professional — needs prior approval on the institution’s own form, emailed to the legal mailbox and “normally completed within two business days,” renewed annually, with a separate form for working without the sponsoring attorney present. Co-defendant meetings need 24 hours’ notice and a PACER docket sheet.

The legal phone booth and video visits

For a defense lawyer, this is the most useful arrangement at the institution. FDC Houston “has installed a phone booth in each pre-trial housing unit that inmates may use to make confidential legal calls to their attorney’s office.” The attorney emails the legal mailbox asking for the office number to be added to the unmonitored system; the Legal Access Officer verifies it and assigns the office a four-digit extension, which any client who wants to call that office dials from the unit. The client initiates the call and it is not recorded, and it cannot be forwarded to a third party.

That arrangement is not unique to Houston — the Bureau’s national pretrial handbook says all ten pretrial detention facilities have such a phone, and a July 2023 Justice Department review counted dedicated legal telephones at eight, this one included — but Houston is one of the few institutions that publishes how to get a number onto it. Register the number at the start of the case, not during an emergency.

Unmonitored video legal visits are available as well, over WebEx, arranged through the same mailbox and facilitated by the client’s unit team; the Legal Access Officer verifies the requesting lawyer and may ask for photo identification and a bar number, and pre-approved defense-team members may join. The guide says video is the slow option: “for local attorneys it will usually be faster to visit your client in-person, or rely on the legal phone booth.”

Electronic discovery

FDC Houston takes electronic discovery on a thumb drive or USB hard drive sent in by defense counsel, or by the prosecuting office to a pro se defendant. Each drive must carry the client’s name and register number, be numbered in sequence, and travel with the institution’s Electronic Discovery Material Authorization Form, on which counsel designate one of two categories that decides where the client can read it:

Designation	What it means in practice
Normal Access (NAED)	The default. The client keeps the drive and reviews it during free time on a computer in the housing unit’s common area. The Warden may still require it to be stored by a department when it is not being read
Sensitive Access (SAED)	The client may not hold the drive at all. Staff secure it and the client books time with the Legal Access Officer to review it in a private, secure area. Typically, though not always, material under a protective order

Computer Services scans every device outside the client’s presence. The guide lists what fails: viruses, personal communications from family, executable programs including readers and viewers, password protection, and pornography. A failed drive goes back to the sending attorney.

One deadline is easy to miss. “At the completion of an inmate’s criminal case, and no later than his transfer from FDC Houston to his or her designated facility, the inmate must either mail the discovery out at his or her own expense, or otherwise return the discovery to defense counsel. The inmate will not be allowed to take the device to a designated facility.” A client designated and moved without arranging that loses access to their own discovery just as they start thinking about an appeal.

Legal mail, records and the law library

There is a legal drop box in the front lobby, open to any member of the legal community whether or not they are visiting. Papers handed to a client at the end of a visit must be loose sheets — no folders, clips or binding beyond a staple — and are inspected before the client returns to the unit; clients may not return from court with additional legal material.

Electronic law libraries sit on every housing unit, with one in the Special Housing Unit, and the terminals are “generally available from 8:00 a.m. until 10:00 p.m.” Extra time for research or discovery review is granted on a written request supported by documentation of an imminent deadline — so send the client a copy of the scheduling order, not a letter about it.

Presentence reports are the reverse of what most people assume. A sentenced person may not keep a copy of a presentence report or a statement of reasons, and one arriving in the mail is contraband. The guide records the exception that matters here: “a pretrial inmate scheduled for sentencing may possess and review the PSR in preparation for sentencing. After sentencing, however, the inmate is prohibited from retaining a copy.”

For records, the institution directs counsel away from itself. Health Services staff “are not at liberty to discuss information with an inmate’s attorney.” The fast route for medical records is an email to the Bureau’s FOIA office with a notarized or sworn client authorization, which the guide says is “ordinarily processed within 24 hours of receipt” for up to two years of records.

What can people buy at the FDC Houston commissary?

The monthly commissary spending limit at FDC Houston is $460, stated in the 2026 admission handbook and matching the Bureau’s trust fund rules, Program Statement 4500.13, issued May 7, 2026, which raised the national ceiling from $360. Stamps, over-the-counter medications and copy cards are exempt. Listings that give $360 or $320 are out of date.

Shopping here works differently from a sentenced prison. Purchases are made every two weeks rather than weekly, the order list goes into the commissary box in the unit by 6:00 a.m. the day before delivery, and the goods are delivered to the unit rather than collected at a window. If the person is at court, at work or on a callout when delivery comes round, staff make at least two attempts — but the order form warns in capitals that commissary is returned to stock after two days if the person is out to court. In a building where people go to court constantly, that is a real risk.

The 2026 commissary sheet prices a Score 7 tablet at $141.70, a Sangean radio with ear buds at $59.80, a Casio watch at $51.20 and a card for 50 photocopies at $6.50 — one radio, one watch, one padlock and one pair of shower shoes each. Category caps run through the list: 24 soups, six bags of chips, seven of each meat item. Religious items, from a $13.50 prayer rug to a $69.50 cross pendant, need Religious Services approval first.

Two things about the list say more about the institution than the prices do. It stocks a full women’s section — sports bras, underwear, maxi pads, cosmetics, a women’s watch — which most Bureau commissary sheets do not, because most Bureau institutions hold one sex. And it stocks no typewriter ribbon, correction tape or typing paper, which the Bureau’s national pretrial handbook tells detainees to buy “from the Commissary” — because at this institution they are issued instead. The 2026 handbook puts typewriters “in each housing unit for the typing of legal materials only” and says “correction tape and typewriter ribbon will be furnished by the Education department.” A client who needs to type a filing asks Education, not the commissary. See the federal prison commissary.

What programs are available at FDC Houston?

FDC Houston offers fewer programs than a prison, by design rather than neglect. A detention center holds people whose cases are live, and the Bureau does not build long courses around a population that turns over every twelve months. Expect short classes, drug education, religious services and a law library; the substantial programming starts after designation.

The Bureau’s August 2026 First Step Act Approved Programs Guide has two halves: narrative pages naming the institutions where each program runs, and a by-institution grid at the back. Not one narrative page names FDC Houston — all 107 entries that reach it do so through a blanket location cell — 87 saying “may be offered at all BOP institutions” and 20 “at all BOP institutions with designated women” — which is permission, not a report that anything is running. The grid marks 38 programs at HOU, and that grid is the only Bureau record that this institution offers any of them.

What the grid marks: sixteen evidence-based recidivism reduction programs, among them Anger Management, Basic Cognitive Skills, Criminal Thinking, the Bureau Literacy Program at 240 hours, English-as-a-Second Language at 500 hours, parenting, Assert Yourself for Female Offenders, the non-residential drug program and Threshold; and twenty-two productive activities, including Drug Education, Money Smart for Adults, Square One and the trauma-education workshop. Whether a class is meeting, and whether there is a waiting list, is a question for the unit team in writing.

Drug programs and RDAP

There is no Residential Drug Abuse Program at FDC Houston. The RDAP location list inside the August 2026 guide records 57 programs at 50 locations, and this is not one of them; the Bureau’s psychology treatment programs policy governs RDAP screening. The program’s own narrative page names no institution at all: its location cell says only to see page 29, which is that list. What is offered is the drug abuse education course — required for anyone whose offense involved drugs or alcohol or whose judge recommended treatment — and the non-residential drug abuse treatment program, marked at 24 hours.

For a family hoping for the year off a sentence that completing RDAP can bring under 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e), the practical consequence is that the clock starts somewhere else: screening happens at the designated institution, and the judicial recommendation made at sentencing is what travels with the file.

Education and work

The Education Department runs literacy and GED classes, English as a second language, adult continuing education and a leisure library in each unit. Completing a GED or the ESL requirement carries a financial award and a certificate. The 2025 audit counted 413 people with limited English proficiency on its first day, the population the 500-hour ESL course serves.

Whether there is UNICOR work here is a question the Bureau answers two ways in one document. The by-institution grid marks Federal Prison Industries at HOU; the narrative page for Federal Prison Industries names 54 institutions and FDC Houston is not among them. The two halves disagree; the answer for any individual is a written request to the unit team. What is not in dispute is that there are no apprenticeships and no advanced occupational education here; the work that exists is institution work, paid under the Bureau’s performance pay rules.

First Step Act credits before sentencing

Under the Bureau’s First Step Act time credits policy, Program Statement 5410.01 (2022, amended in 2023), an inmate “cannot earn FTCs during pretrial confinement,” and cannot earn them in Marshals Service custody before arriving at the designated institution, “regardless of where they are housed.” Behind it sits the statute, which bars credit for programs completed “during official detention prior to the date that the prisoner’s sentence commences under section 3585(a)” (18 U.S.C. § 3632(d)(4)(B)(ii)). A federal court applied that bar to this building. Julia Poff completed eighteen Bureau courses while held at FDC Houston, five of them approved recidivism-reduction programs finished before she was sentenced; the court dated the start of her sentence to the day it was imposed, November 18, 2019, while she was still here, found no approved programming after that date, and held she had earned no First Step Act credit. Poff v. Carr, No. 4:21-cv-00900 (N.D. Tex. June 14, 2022). The time itself still counts: her 739 days here were credited against the sentence under 18 U.S.C. § 3585(b).

For someone already sentenced and waiting here to be moved, the rule changes on September 30, 2026. The regulation has tied the start of credits to “the date the inmate arrives or voluntarily surrenders at the designated Bureau facility where the sentence will be served” (28 C.F.R. § 523.42(a)); an interim final rule published August 31, 2026, deletes those words, so credits begin “after the inmate’s term of imprisonment commences” (91 Fed. Reg. 55740). The Bureau’s notice ties that moment to 18 U.S.C. § 3585(a), under which a sentence commences when the defendant “is received in custody awaiting transportation to” the prison where it will be served, and says the change “allows inmates awaiting transportation to their designated facilities to begin FSA-approved programming.” Pretrial time is untouched — “[a] sentence cannot begin prior to the date on which it is imposed,” the notice says — and credit still requires completing the programs or activities a person is assigned, so anyone sentenced and still at FDC Houston should ask staff in writing what has been assigned. Program Statement 5410.01, last changed in March 2023, still carries the older wording.

What is daily life like at FDC Houston?

Daily life at FDC Houston is lived indoors, entirely. This is one building in a downtown block with eight housing units stacked in it and no yard of the kind a rural prison has. The 2025 PREA audit records every unit as multiple-occupancy cells: no single cells, no dormitories, and 86 segregation cells.

	Weekdays	Weekends and holidays
Breakfast	6:15 a.m.	7:00 a.m.
Lunch	10:30 a.m.
Cell inspection	7:30 a.m., by the unit officer and a member of the unit team	—
Main count	4:00 p.m. daily; an additional 10:00 a.m. count on weekends and on federal holidays
Dinner	After the 4:00 p.m. count clears
Mail distribution	After the 4:00 p.m. count, Monday to Friday
Telephones and TRULINCS	6:00 a.m.–3:30 p.m. and 5:00–8:30 p.m.	6:00 a.m.–8:30 p.m.
Electronic law library	Generally 8:00 a.m.–10:00 p.m., on the housing unit

There is no central dining hall: food is carried to each housing unit from the main kitchen three times a day, eaten in the unit’s common area, and nothing may be taken back to a cell. Religious diets are arranged through the chaplain under the Bureau’s religious practice rules.

The house rules are close-quarters rules. Shirts tucked and fully dressed from breakfast through the evening meal; beds made with the blanket tucked under the mattress; nothing hung to block a staff member’s view into the cell; cells inspected every morning at 7:30. Callouts for the next day are posted in the unit the night before, and it is the individual’s responsibility to read the sheet.

Health care is on site but not around the clock. The 2025 legal guide states that “on-site emergency medical care is available 16 hours a day at FDC Houston.” Pretrial detainees are entitled to the same basic medical, dental, psychiatric and psychological care as sentenced prisoners under 28 C.F.R. § 551.114; no one may be treated by their own outside physician, and a defense expert may examine a client only on a court order. The Health Resources and Services Administration lists FDC Houston as an active National Health Service Corps site with a health professional shortage area score of 12 for primary care, dental and mental health, serving 8,713 patients a year.

What do inspectors say about conditions at FDC Houston?

The Prison Rape Elimination Act audit of April 2025 is the only systematic external examination this institution has ever had. The DOJ Office of the Inspector General has not conducted an on-site inspection of this facility. Nor has the District of Columbia’s Corrections Information Council, which inspects Bureau institutions holding D.C. residents, ever come here.

The Inspector General has been here in a limited way. Its 2023 capstone review of the Bureau’s pandemic response (Report 23-054) analyzed responses from eleven detention facilities — the ten named above plus MCC New York, since closed — FDC Houston among them, on the question of inmate access, and its 2021 follow-up survey of staff perceptions publishes response percentages for “Houston FDC” by name. Neither is an inspection of conditions here. As of September 2026, six Bureau-wide engagements were open on the Inspector General’s ongoing-work list — on lockdowns and modified operations, medical intake screening, monitoring of inmate email, drone interdiction, food-service equipment and the $5 billion appropriated in Public Law 119-21 — and none names this institution.

The 2025 PREA audit

The 2025 Prison Rape Elimination Act audit was conducted by Elaine Bridschge of Corrections Consulting Services, on site from April 1–3, 2025; she signed the final report on May 3, 2025. The facility passed: four standards exceeded, 41 met, none unmet, no corrective action required. The four exceeded were supervision and monitoring, employee training, volunteer and contractor training, and staff first-responder duties — the first of them because the staffing plan is reviewed quarterly rather than annually, unannounced rounds happen weekly and once a shift in every unit, and the Warden certified no deviation from the staffing plan in twelve months.

The audit is also the fullest public description of the place that exists. It records 883 people on day one, April 1, 2025, against a designated capacity of 992, an average daily population of 804, and a “yes” to whether the facility had been over capacity at some point in the previous year. Ages ran from 19 to 74. Staff numbered 233 on three eight-hour shifts, with nine escorted contractors and 13 volunteers. The institution is accredited by the American Correctional Association and no other body, and sexual assault forensic examinations are done off site at a local hospital.

In the twelve months before the audit the institution recorded eight allegations of sexual abuse — six inmate-on-inmate, two staff-on-inmate — and none of sexual harassment. Two administrative investigations closed as unfounded, five as unsubstantiated, one was open, and none was substantiated. “Unsubstantiated” means there was not enough evidence either way, not that the allegation was false.

Sexual-abuse allegations in the GAO data

In May 2026 the Government Accountability Office published allegation counts institution by institution, this one included. For FDC Houston they are 22 allegations against incarcerated people over 2020 to 2024 counted by year of incident, and 17 against staff counted by year of report — two different Bureau systems with different as-of dates, so the figures cannot be added. The staff series is one, three, two, seven and four, with the spike in 2023.

These are reported allegations, not findings. GAO records that nationally, from 2014 through 2022, most ended unsubstantiated for want of evidence, and it adjusts no count for the size of the population — so a high-turnover institution out-counts a small one at identical risk, and a low count can equally mean no one reports. Do not rank facilities on them, including this one.

Staffing, discipline and the courts

Two staff cases are on the public record. In May 2016 the Inspector General announced that Samuel Hawkins, 51, a former FDC Houston correctional officer, had pleaded guilty to one count of sexual abuse of a ward for conduct in November 2015. And in 2018 the Federal Circuit affirmed the removal of Leonardo Villareal, a senior correctional officer here, after an Inspector General investigation opened in December 2012 into his relationships with two female inmates; the court held that substantial evidence supported the penalty, said it was “concerned by the untimeliness” of a decision that ran from the referral of the investigation on December 6, 2012, to a removal on May 23, 2016, and affirmed anyway because Villareal “made no claim of prejudice resulting from the delay.” Villareal v. Bureau of Prisons, 901 F.3d 1361 (Fed. Cir. 2018).

Medical care here is the subject of the most practically important decision on this list. A federal court in Houston dismissed a Federal Tort Claims Act suit over delayed treatment of an eye infection at FDC Houston for lack of jurisdiction, because the conduct complained of was that of employees of WellPath, a private contractor, and the Act’s waiver of sovereign immunity excludes “any contractor with the United States.” The related constitutional claims failed because the contractor was not a state actor and the allegations described negligence rather than deliberate indifference. Jackson v. United States, No. 4:22-cv-01767 (S.D. Tex. Apr. 4, 2025). Anyone contemplating a claim over medical care here has to establish first whose employee did what.

Two more holdings save wasted filings. A petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 must name the warden of the facility where the person is held, and complaints about prolonged Special Housing Unit placement or about being unable to get help from other prisoners with litigation are conditions-of-confinement claims habeas cannot reach. Kasali v. Kobayashi, No. 4:22-cv-01078 (S.D. Tex. Jan. 25, 2023). And a § 2241 petition filed before the four-step administrative remedy process is finished is dismissed at screening. Watson v. Warden, FDC Houston, No. 4:24-cv-04941 (S.D. Tex. Feb. 5, 2025). Courts have also held repeatedly that FDC Houston is not itself a legal entity that can be sued.

FDC Houston in the news

News about FDC Houston is sparse: the 2025 PREA audit, a 2018 appeals decision on a staff removal, and a 2009 murder-for-hire sentence.

• May 2025 — the auditor signed this institution’s Prison Rape Elimination Act audit report, the first systematic outside examination of the facility on the public record: four standards exceeded, 41 met, none unmet.
• August 2018 — the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the removal of a senior correctional officer at this institution, in a published opinion that criticized the Bureau for taking 1,265 days to act.
• October 2009 — Joel Lopez was sentenced to a second life term for soliciting, from inside FDC Houston, the murder of the federal judge who had sentenced him; his wife received 108 months for her part in the plot.

Frequently asked questions about FDC Houston

Problems at FDC Houston: where we can help

The problems we help with at FDC Houston are those of a detention center rather than a prison, and the institution’s own record shows which ones recur:

• Access to counsel. Registering an office number on the unmonitored legal phone, getting a paralegal, investigator or mitigation specialist approved, arranging a video legal visit, arranging an interpreter for a client with limited English — all of it runs through the institution’s legal mailbox and Legal Access Officer, and all of it moves faster when asked for in writing at the start of a case.
• Discovery. Designating a drive Normal or Sensitive Access decides whether a client can read it in the unit or must book a secure room, and the sending attorney makes that call. So is the deadline: discovery must be mailed out or returned to counsel before a client is transferred.
• Designation after sentencing. A judicial recommendation is worth making because the Bureau considers it, and the security-point score and any Public Safety Factor under the Bureau’s designation rules are arguable before the file leaves the courtroom — a federal court in Houston has already held that a designation complaint is not a claim under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. Presentence time here counts toward the sentence computation under 18 U.S.C. § 3585(b), measured against the Bureau’s sentence computation manual; First Step Act credits are earned only after sentencing. See federal prison transfers, our federal prison consulting services and our federal prison early release practice.
• Medical care that is not happening. The 2025 audit records care as being delivered on site, but a federal court has already held that a Federal Tort Claims Act suit over care here failed because the people involved worked for a private contractor rather than the government. Establishing whose employee did what is the first step, not the last. The routes are set out in our pages on medical care in federal prison and on Federal Tort Claims Act claims.
• Special Housing Unit placement. There are 86 segregation cells in this building and a SHU visit is one 30-minute video call a month. Prolonged placement is not something habeas can reach; it is an administrative remedy matter. Our pages on solitary confinement and special housing units and on protective custody explain how placement is reviewed.
• The administrative remedy clock. Informal resolution and the BP-9 are due within 20 calendar days of the event, and the appeals that follow run on 20-day and 30-day deadlines. Missing the first is the most common way a good complaint dies. An incident report against a pretrial detainee is also reported to the court, the United States Attorney and the probation officer preparing the presentence report. See the administrative remedy program, the Bureau’s discipline rules and disciplinary proceedings.
• Challenges to the conviction or sentence itself, through a direct appeal or a § 2255 motion.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. handles federal criminal defense, appeals and post-conviction matters nationwide, and advises families on Bureau of Prisons issues at institutions across the system. Call (843) 620-1100 or contact us to talk through a specific situation.

Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, the firm’s Managing Director, writes and maintains the federal prison policy material on this site. He is not counsel of record; legal representation is provided by Elizabeth Franklin-Best.

Sources and currency

Bureau of Prisons documents

• FDC Houston, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The Bureau’s facility page, with address, contact details, population and resource links.
• FDC Houston Admission and Orientation Handbook, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FDC Houston, 2026. Mail, visiting schedule, telephone, commissary, daily routine and health services, with the pretrial legal-access handbook bound in.
• FDC Houston Commissary Sheet, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FDC Houston, 2026.
• Legal Guide to the Federal Detention Center Houston, Texas, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FDC Houston, 2025. Legal visiting, legal assistants, electronic discovery, unmonitored legal calls and video visits, legal mail, records requests, medical services, the law library and administrative remedies.
• Institution Supplement HOU 5267.09C, Visiting Regulations, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FDC Houston, 2024. Replaced Institution Supplement 5267.09B (2021).
• Institution Supplement HOU 5267.08, Reglamento de Visitas, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FDC Houston, 2007. The superseded Spanish-language visiting supplement the Bureau still serves.
• Pretrial Detention Legal Access Handbook, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2024. Legal visits, legal calls, legal mail and discovery at the Bureau’s designated pretrial detention facilities.
• Trust Fund/Deposit Fund Manual, Program Statement 4500.13, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Sets the $460 commissary spending limit.
• Inmate Telephone Regulations, Program Statement 5264.09, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Replaced Program Statement 5264.08 (2008).
• First Step Act of 2018 – Time Credits: Procedures for Implementation of 18 U.S.C. § 3632(d)(4), Program Statement 5410.01, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2022. Amended in 2023.
• Pretrial Inmates, Program Statement 7331.05, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2023. Amended in 2025; replaced Program Statement 7331.04 (2003).
• First Step Act Approved Programs Guide, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Reentry Services Division, 2026. Program availability by institution, including the RDAP list.

Audits and inspections

• Ongoing Work, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2026. The Inspector General’s list of engagements under way.
• Federal Prisons: Improvements Needed to Prevent, Detect, and Address Sexual Abuse, U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2026. Report GAO-26-107343, with allegation counts by institution.
• PREA Audit Report: FDC Houston, Corrections Consulting Services, LLC, 2025. On-site audit of April 1–3, 2025, by Elaine Bridschge; capacity, housing, population, staffing and allegation data.
• Report and Recommendations Concerning Access to Counsel at the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Pretrial Facilities, U.S. Department of Justice, Advisory Group of Department of Justice Components, 2023. Dedicated legal telephones at the pretrial facilities.
• Capstone Review of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Response to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2023. Report 23-054.
• Staff Perceptions of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Management of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic: A Follow-Up Survey of BOP Staff, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2021. Report 21-126.

Court records

• Jackson v. United States, No. 4:22-cv-01767 (S.D. Tex.), U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, 2025. Federal Tort Claims Act claims over care by a private medical contractor, dismissed.
• Watson v. Warden, FDC Houston, No. 4:24-cv-04941 (S.D. Tex.), U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, 2025. A § 2241 petition dismissed for failure to exhaust administrative remedies.
• Bentley v. United States, No. 4:23-cv-04383 (S.D. Tex.), U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, 2023. A § 2255 claim about designation and self-surrender, dismissed.
• Kasali v. Kobayashi, No. 4:22-cv-01078 (S.D. Tex.), U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, 2023. The proper respondent in a § 2241 petition, and conditions claims outside habeas.
• Poff v. Carr, No. 4:21-cv-00900 (N.D. Tex.), U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, 2022. First Step Act credit and presentence detention at FDC Houston.
• Villareal v. Bureau of Prisons, 901 F.3d 1361 (Fed. Cir. 2018), U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, 2018. The removal of an FDC Houston senior correctional officer, affirmed.
• Prison Guard Convicted of Having Sex with Inmate, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2016. Samuel Hawkins’s guilty plea.
• Inmate’s Murder-for-Hire Plot to Kill a Federal Judge and Kidnapping Conspiracy Lead to Life Sentence, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Houston Division, 2009. Joel Lopez’s second life sentence.

News and other sources

• Health Workforce Connector site profile: Federal Detention Center (FDC) Houston, Health Resources and Services Administration, 2026. Site-supplied content.
• First Step Act Time Credits—Revisions, 91 Fed. Reg. 55740, Federal Register, 2026. Interim final rule, effective September 30, 2026, amending 28 C.F.R. § 523.42(a).
• 18 U.S.C. § 3585(a)–(b), Calculation of a term of imprisonment, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).
• 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e), Imprisonment of a convicted person, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).
• 18 U.S.C. § 3632(d)(4)(B)(ii), Development of risk and needs assessment system, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).
• 28 U.S.C. § 2241, Power to grant writ, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).
• 28 U.S.C. § 2255, Federal custody; remedies on motion attacking sentence, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).
• 28 C.F.R. § 523.42(a), Earning First Step Act Time Credits, Code of Federal Regulations (Legal Information Institute).
• 28 C.F.R. § 540.18, Special mail, Code of Federal Regulations (Legal Information Institute).
• 28 C.F.R. § 540.21(j), Payment of postage, Code of Federal Regulations (Legal Information Institute).
• 28 C.F.R. § 551.106, Institutional employment, Code of Federal Regulations (Legal Information Institute).
• 28 C.F.R. § 551.114, Medical, psychiatric and psychological, Code of Federal Regulations (Legal Information Institute).

Sources reviewed September 2026.

Reviewed for legal accuracy by Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney·September 2026