FCI Bennettsville: Inmate Search, Visiting, Programs

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

FCI Bennettsville at a glance

FCI Bennettsville is a medium-security federal prison for men in Bennettsville, South Carolina, with an adjacent minimum-security satellite camp. It stands on Muckerman Road in Marlboro County, in the Bureau’s Southeast Region, and the Bureau activated it in fiscal year 2005. As of September 2026 it held 1,136 people: 1,049 at the institution and 87 at the camp.

Official name	Federal Correctional Institution, Bennettsville
BOP code	BEN
Security level	Medium; men · adjacent minimum-security satellite camp
Population	1,136 (as of September 2026) · 1,049 at the FCI, 87 at the camp
Visiting	Friday 5:00–8:00 p.m.; Saturday, Sunday and federal holidays 8:30 a.m.–3:00 p.m. · see visiting hours
Inmate mail	Inmate Name & Register Number · FCI Bennettsville · Federal Correctional Institution · P.O. Box 52020 · Bennettsville, SC 29512 Camp: no published address
Send money	Lockbox · Western Union (code city FBOP, DC) · MoneyGram (receive code 7932)
Phone	843-454-8200 · Fax 843-454-8219
Street address	696 Muckerman Road, Bennettsville, SC 29512 · Marlboro County
Judicial district	District of South Carolina
BOP region	Southeast
Designated capacity	1,280 · FCI 1,152, camp 128
Housing	14 housing units: 13 multiple-occupancy cell units, 1 open-bay dormitory
Special Housing Unit	Yes · 96 segregation cells
Medical care level	Level 1
Mental health care level	Level 1
RDAP	None at the institution or the camp
UNICOR	Yes, at the institution
Camp	Minimum-security satellite camp for men, adjacent to the institution

Two recent changes set it apart. In March 2026 it held 1,620 men; as of September 2026 it held 1,136, a fall of almost a third. And between August 3 and 6, 2026, the Bureau and the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General ran a joint contraband operation here that ended with forty men transferred to other prisons in the region.

Two prisons in Bennettsville, South Carolina, share a ZIP code

Bennettsville has two medium-security prisons for men, one federal and one run by the State of South Carolina, and they share the ZIP code 29512. Check which one holds the person before you send anything.

Place	Run by	Address	How to find someone
FCI Bennettsville (this page)	Federal Bureau of Prisons	696 Muckerman Road, Bennettsville, SC 29512	BOP Inmate Locator
Evans Correctional Institution	South Carolina Department of Corrections	610 Highway 9 West, Bennettsville, SC 29512	SCDC inmate search
Marlboro County Detention Center	Marlboro County Sheriff’s Office	Bennettsville	County jail roster

Evans opened in 1989, and the South Carolina Department of Corrections lists it as medium security for men, the same words the Bureau uses for the federal prison down the road. If the person you are looking for was sentenced in a South Carolina state court, they are at Evans or somewhere else in the state system, and the federal locator will never find them. The two systems share a town, a ZIP code and nothing else: different rules on mail, money, visiting, telephone calls, release dates and grievances.

Two other things mislead people searching for this place. There is no USP Bennettsville: a high-security penitentiary with a camp appears under that name in the Bureau’s bed-projection tables in its annual financial statements from 2011 onward, and it was never built. And the Bureau’s own facility page prints a heading reading “Other facilities at the Bennettsville Federal Correctional Complex” with nothing underneath it. There is no complex here, and the roster record carries no complex code.

There are four federal prisons in South Carolina. FCI Bennettsville, FCI Edgefield and FCI Williamsburg are medium-security institutions for men with satellite camps; FCI Estill is low security and holds women. Our guide to federal prisons in South Carolina covers all four.

What is the security level at FCI Bennettsville?

Inside the fence, FCI Bennettsville is a medium-security institution; the satellite camp alongside it is minimum security. The 2026 PREA audit records the custody levels the Bureau assigns here as Medium and In Custody on one side of the fence and Minimum and Out Custody on the other. They share an address, a telephone number, a commissary list and a visiting supplement, and they are different sentences to serve.

The March 2026 PREA audit counts 14 housing units across 21 buildings: 13 multiple-occupancy cell units, one open-bay dormitory, no single-cell units at all, and 96 segregation cells. No one here is housed alone as a matter of routine. Inspectors in November 2014 described general-population units of about 500 men, four pods to a unit and 64 cells to a pod, two or three men to a cell. Our guides to the intake process and how to prepare for prison cover the first days after arrival.

Whether a man lands at the institution or the camp is decided before he arrives, by his security point score and by whether a Public Safety Factor applies. A Public Safety Factor overrides the points: a man can score low enough for a camp on every measure the Bureau counts and still be barred by a factor on his record. Waiving one, or applying a Management Variable, is argued with the Designation and Sentence Computation Center in Grand Prairie, Texas, not with the warden here. Our guide to designation explains the process.

The population has fallen fast, and the 2026 PREA audit form records the March population twice. Its “Current Population of Facility” field gives 1,620 in March 2026 — 1,530 at the institution, 90 at the camp. Its count of who was actually here on the first morning of the on-site visit gives 1,599 — 1,517 and 82. Against a designed capacity of 1,280 those are 127 and 125 percent, and the average over the preceding twelve months was 1,603, which is why the form answers yes to whether the facility had been over capacity that year. As of September 2026, the Bureau’s population report shows 1,136, or 89 percent: a fall of between 463 and 484 people in six months, depending which March figure you start from. The camp barely moved either way, ending at 87 against a designed camp capacity of 128, so the fall came almost entirely on the secure side.

Who are the notable inmates at FCI Bennettsville?

No widely known person is held at FCI Bennettsville. Michael C. Finton, register number 17031-026, whom some published lists place here, is held at FCI Loretto in Pennsylvania: his Bureau record carries facility code LOR, the locator screen reads “Located at: Loretto FCI,” and his projected release date is January 11, 2034.

The one other name in circulation is Dawud Khalid, register number 16531-171, described as having walked away from the compound in July 2012 and been recaptured the same day. His Bureau locator record confirms only the end of that story: he was released on January 13, 2017, from the residential reentry office in Raleigh.

Published lists go out of date. If where someone is held matters to you, check the register number in the Bureau’s locator yourself.

How do I find someone at FCI Bennettsville?

To find someone at FCI Bennettsville, start with the Bureau’s free public Inmate Locator, which covers everyone in federal custody since 1982: for someone still held it gives the facility and a projected release date, and for someone released it shows “Not in BOP Custody as of” and a date, with no facility. Search by the eight-digit register number if you have it; if you do not, search by last name and first name, and expect to sift.

The register number is the reliable key: assigned once at the first federal commitment and never changed. The locator matches the committed name on the judgment, not the name the family uses, so a man everyone calls by a middle name may not surface at all. See how register numbers work.

For someone still held it gives the facility, the age and the projected release date (for someone released, “Not in BOP Custody as of” and a date instead of a facility), and nothing else — no housing unit, no telephone number, no halfway house date, and no reason for a move.

The screen names the prison and its type, “Bennettsville FCI” here; the three-letter code sits only in the record behind it, and that is where directory sites go wrong. BEN is this institution; BER is FCI Berlin in New Hampshire and BEC is FCI Beckley in West Virginia.

The two populations at this address do not show separately. The Bureau publishes them separately in its population report — 1,049 at the institution and 87 at the camp as of September 2026 — but the locator returns “Bennettsville FCI” for a man in either place. There is no public way to tell from it alone whether someone is inside the fence or at the camp, and that changes what a visit will look like and what jobs and programs are open to him. Ask him, or ask the unit team.

If the locator returns nothing, the likeliest answers here are state custody — Evans Correctional Institution is in this same town — or pretrial detention in a jail the Marshals Service uses (a pretrial defendant held in a Bureau institution does appear, with a release date of “UNKNOWN”), or a committed name spelled differently on the judgment. The screen never prints “IN TRANSIT”: a record the Bureau marks that way — in its explanation of inmate records, someone “moved from a BOP facility” who “may or may not be returned” — names no facility and shows “NOT IN BOP CUSTODY,” usually with “Release Date: UNKNOWN.”

The locator also records deaths: a death shows on the screen as “Deceased:” and a date. The Bureau’s own record confirms each of the four deaths in custody described below.

How do I write to someone at FCI Bennettsville?

Write to someone at FCI Bennettsville at P.O. Box 52020, Bennettsville, SC 29512, not at the street address, and put the committed name and the eight-digit register number on the first line. A letter that arrives without one goes back to the sender.

Purpose	Address
Mail to someone held here	Inmate Name & Register Number FCI Bennettsville Federal Correctional Institution P.O. Box 52020 Bennettsville, SC 29512
Mail to staff	Staff Name FCI Bennettsville Federal Correctional Institution 696 Muckerman Road Bennettsville, SC 29512
Freight and non-USPS parcels	Staff Name FCI Bennettsville Federal Correctional Institution Attn: Warehouse 696 Muckerman Road Bennettsville, SC 29512

The Bureau publishes no camp mailing address. Its facility page prints a block headed “For inmates at the Camp” containing “Inmate Name & Register Number” and “Satellite Camp” and then a bare comma where a box number, city, state and ZIP should be. Directory sites close the gap by guessing. Call 843-454-8200 and ask before you post anything to a man at the camp.

Ordinary letters are opened, searched for contraband and may be read straight through. Under the Bureau’s correspondence rules, legal mail is opened only in the prisoner’s presence and is not read, but only if the envelope identifies an attorney and carries the special-mail marking. The institution’s own handbook puts the burden on the prisoner rather than the lawyer: “It is your responsibility to advise your attorney about this policy. If legal mail is not properly marked, it will be opened and processed as general correspondence.” Our guide to attorney-client communication in the Bureau of Prisons covers the privilege, and writing to someone in federal prison covers what gets rejected.

Three local rules trip people up. Certified, registered and insured mail can only be sent from inside at the mail room open house, Tuesday and Thursday, 11:00 a.m. to noon — two hours a week, a tight window when a filing has to be provably posted by a date. The only package anyone may receive from home is release clothing, in the last thirty days before release. And when a man transfers, the mail room forwards general mail for thirty days only, while special mail is supposed to keep being forwarded after that. The federal docket in this district shows that forwarding failing.

How do I send money to someone at FCI Bennettsville?

Money for someone at FCI Bennettsville goes to the Bureau’s national lockbox in Des Moines, Iowa, or through MoneyGram or Western Union, never to the institution’s address. Every route needs the committed name and register number on the instrument itself.

Route	Where it goes	What to know
Postal money order, Treasury or state check	Federal Bureau of Prisons Committed Name Eight-Digit Register Number P.O. Box 474701 Des Moines, Iowa 50947-0001	U.S. postal money orders and government checks post without a hold; other money orders and checks are held 15 days, and foreign instruments payable in U.S. dollars 45 days. Cash and personal checks are not accepted. The undated institution handbook still lists cash and personal checks as accepted and foreign checks as held 60 days; follow the Bureau’s current money page
MoneyGram	Receive code 7932, company name Federal Bureau of Prisons	Cash at an agent, or online by Visa or MasterCard up to $300. Funds sent between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. Eastern, seven days a week, post within two to four hours; later transfers post at 7:00 a.m. the next morning, according to the Bureau’s money page. The handbook’s 10:00 p.m. and 9:00 a.m. figures are out of date; it puts the agent fee at up to $9.95 on cash transfers up to $5,000
Western Union Quick Collect	Code city FBOP, DC	The institution’s handbook names Western Union as an accepted route but does not print the code city; the code city above is the Bureau’s national one

Put the sender’s name and return address in the upper left corner of the envelope. If the funds cannot be posted because a name is misspelled or a register number is wrong, that corner is the only thing standing between the money and the Treasury. Do not enclose a letter or a photograph — the lockbox does not forward them. Our guide to sending money to a federal prisoner compares the routes and their costs.

Before sending a large amount, understand what it can be used for. Commissary spending here is capped, money above the cap sits in the account, and if a court imposed restitution or a fine the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program draws against the balance on a schedule. Refusing that schedule has consequences this institution spells out: no assignment to UNICOR, no performance pay above the maintenance level, and a refusal status that follows a man into every progress report and weighs on his custody classification, his job and his program changes.

What are the visiting hours at FCI Bennettsville?

Visiting at FCI Bennettsville runs Friday 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., and Saturdays, Sundays and federal holidays 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. The schedule comes from a 2013 supplement, so call 843-454-8200 to confirm the day and the hours before you drive.

The supplement is Institution Supplement BEN 5267.08G, “Visiting Regulations,” dated July 1, 2013, and signed by Warden M. Travis Bragg; it rescinded the December 2011 version. It is still the only visiting document the Bureau publishes for this facility. The visiting-days field in the Bureau’s own facility data is empty, for this prison and for every other Bureau institution, which is why its facility page shows no visiting table and directory sites that copy that page have nothing to copy.

The supplement sets two cutoffs inside those hours. No visitor is processed in after 7:00 p.m. on Friday or after 2:00 p.m. on weekends and holidays — an hour before the posted closing time on each. And on weekends the visitors’ handout sets a deadline for the count: “All visitors must be completely processed through the Front Lobby by 9:15 a.m. Arrival of those visitors who are not processed at 9:15 a.m. will result in a delay until the official count is clear.” Camp residents held in the Special Housing Unit visit on Wednesdays from 9:00 to 11:00 a.m., processed through the institution’s front lobby like everyone else.

Who can visit, and how many

• Normally a maximum of twenty people on the visiting list, and a maximum of five visitors at a time. The camp and the institution run the same numbers.
• Immediate family identified in the presentence report go on the list after a National Crime Information Center check — but the prisoner has to send the form out first, and the visitor has to send it back, before the check even starts.
• No social visits in the first 72 hours. After that, immediate family only until the rest of the proposed visitors are verified. A man transferring in keeps his approved list.
• Neither the institution nor the camp is a holdover facility. A man passing through on holdover status may be visited only by verified immediate family or his attorney of record, on a day’s notice, under Special Housing Unit rules.

What visitors can wear and bring

Three colors will turn you away at the door: camouflage, khaki and green. Khaki is the uniform on this compound, which is why it is barred here rather than merely discouraged.

Tops have to cover the stomach, the chest and the back, and men are held to the same standard on sleeveless shirts as women. Out: sun dresses, sheer or low-cut tops, halter tops, spaghetti straps, spandex, form-fitting clothing, pants with holes, jogging and sweat suits. Anyone over ten is barred from shorts altogether, a skirt or dress and any slit in it must reach the bend of the knee, and an open-toed shoe needs a strap around the back of the ankle. Hats and bandanas are barred; religious headwear is not, and the supplement is explicit that “Visitors will not remove their religious headwear and it will not be searched other than through a metal detector” unless there is reasonable suspicion. Only the Duty Officer or Operations Lieutenant can turn a visitor away over attire.

What you may carry in is short: a wallet or a small clear plastic bag, a Debitek card, a coat in cold weather, and essential medication held by the Visiting Room Officer. Vending money is capped at $25.00 and must go onto the Debitek card — “No cash will be permitted beyond the front lobby.” An infant is allowed four diapers, wipes, a change of clothing, two clear bottles, two small clear jars of food, a blanket and a see-through cup — but no stroller and no toys. No cameras, recorders, telephones, pens, makeup, photographs, newspapers or magazines.

Identification and screening

Bring a valid driver’s license, a government or state-issued photo identification card, or a passport; a birth certificate is not accepted, and the handbook says so explicitly. Children under sixteen must be accompanied by an adult visitor.

Screening here includes something most federal prisons do not publish: an ion scan of every visitor. “All visitors will be subject to a search by the ION Drug Detection Unit. Any visitor refusing to be tested by the ION Drug System will not be allowed to visit.” Ion scanners detect trace particles, which can come from handled currency or a borrowed car as easily as from anything else, and there is no published appeal from a positive. Everyone must also clear a metal detector, and refusing a search, or refusing to sign the Notification to Visitor form, means you do not come in. See searches, shakedowns and contraband, the Bureau’s national visiting regulations and our general guide to federal prison visitation.

The visitors’ handout attached to the supplement prints the institution’s number as 842-454-8200; the Spanish version of the same handout prints it correctly. The number is 843-454-8200.

Getting there

The institution is at 696 Muckerman Road, outside the town of Bennettsville in Marlboro County, in the northeastern corner of South Carolina against the North Carolina line. The Bureau publishes no written directions for this facility — the “Driving Directions” link on its page is a bare map coordinate — and the 2013 supplement contains none either.

Reaching the prison without a car is the hard part. The Corrections Information Council, which inspected in 2014 because District of Columbia residents were held here, recorded that the facility is “not accessible by bus or other public transportation,” and its first listed finding was that the distance “prevents inmates from receiving visitation.” That finding concerned D.C. families, but the last mile is the same for everyone.

How do phone calls and email work at FCI Bennettsville?

Calls from FCI Bennettsville go one way: the man inside places them, and there is no number that reaches a person here. Telephones sit in each housing unit and run from 6:00 a.m. to 9:45 p.m. daily. The man calling works from an approved list of up to 30 numbers and dials with a nine-digit personal access code; the handbook says calls end after 15 minutes, and national policy says a single call should generally not exceed 15 minutes. Under the Bureau’s telephone regulations, Program Statement 5264.09, issued September 3, 2026, each person is limited to 510 minutes of completed calls a month, collect and direct combined: 300 are free to anyone eligible for First Step Act telephone incentives, and anyone who uses up those 300 minutes, eligible or not, may buy the other 210.

Two local rules cost families time. Money has to be moved from the commissary account to the telephone account, and that transfer can only be done after 4:30 p.m. or on weekends — so a man who runs out at nine in the morning waits. And the approved number list may be changed only once a month, through the unit counselor. A number left off, or a family that moves, is a month of silence. See federal inmate phone calls.

What gets people written up here is the three-way call, and the handbook’s definition is wide enough to catch ordinary family behavior: clicking another person in, clicking back, relaying information, conference calling, letting another prisoner join, or having the person called forward their calls elsewhere. All of it is charged as Code 297 under the Bureau’s discipline rules. A contraband telephone is a different order of trouble — Code 108, possession of a hazardous tool, one of the most serious offenses in the Bureau’s code.

Email runs on TRULINCS, which families reach from outside through CorrLinks; our guide to CorrLinks and TRULINCS explains how accounts and messages work. Messaging another prisoner is allowed here only where he is immediate family or a party or witness in shared litigation, and both unit managers have to approve it in writing. There is no TRULINCS access in the Special Housing Unit.

Email with a lawyer is not privileged, anywhere in the Bureau. Privileged writing travels as marked special mail. An unmonitored attorney telephone call is harder to get here than at most institutions, and that is covered below with the rest of the legal-access rules.

What can people buy at the FCI Bennettsville commissary?

The FCI Bennettsville commissary stocks lines from postage stamps to halal sausages and miswak, and spending on most of them is capped by a national ceiling of $460 a month. The Bureau’s trust fund rules, Program Statement 4500.13 (2026), set that ceiling, record the increase from $360, and raise the limit by $50 during the November and December holiday period, for no more than one validation period. What this institution’s own published documents say is a different matter, and no two of them agree.

Source	Limit it states	Date
Program Statement 4500.13 (national)	$460 per month, plus $50 during the November and December holiday period for no more than one validation period	Effective May 7, 2026
FCI and camp Admission and Orientation handbooks	$80 per week, accounts revalidated on Mondays	Undated; signed by a warden in post from 2013
The institution’s commissary order form	$290 per validation cycle	No date printed at all
District of Columbia Corrections Information Council	$320 per month, shopping once a week	Published June 2016

The $460 is a ceiling, not an entitlement, and the program statement expressly allows an institution to revalidate weekly or every two weeks instead of monthly — which is what both handbooks here describe — so a lower local figure is lawful. The order form carries no date; it is signed “D. Drew, Warden,” and a Warden Darlene Drew was the lead named defendant in 2012 litigation out of this institution, while by July 1, 2013, the warden signing documents here was M. Travis Bragg. On the face of the public record, the spending limit the Bureau publishes for this prison today is at least thirteen years old. Ask the unit team for the current figure before you budget, and see our page on the federal prison commissary.

Items excluded from the limit include postage stamps, nicotine replacement products, over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, copy cards, footwear and mattresses. Stamps carry their own cap here: $25.20 in postage and 60 stamps for a man in general population.

Shopping is once a week, on an assigned day, with sales Monday to Thursday 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. and a Friday special-sales window. The rules printed on the order form are strict. Prices change without notice. All sales are final. Nothing is substituted for an out-of-stock item and nothing may be added once the list is in. A highlighted list is rejected outright. And walking out of the commissary after handing in the list voids it and costs the next shopping day as well.

The stock reflects the population. Halal beef summer sausage, halal hot beef sausage and halal spicy sausage are stocked lines, as is miswak, the traditional chewing stick used for cleaning teeth — a small sign of a Muslim population large enough to order for. Under the Bureau’s national rule everything is marked up 30 percent, religious items excepted.

What programs are available at FCI Bennettsville?

FCI Bennettsville offers GED and English as a Second Language classes, Pell-funded post-secondary education, vocational training certified through Northeastern Technical College, UNICOR work, faith-based programming and release preparation, but no residential drug treatment program.

Why there is no RDAP here

The Residential Drug Abuse Program does not run at FCI Bennettsville, and it does not run at the camp either. For anyone with a drug history and a sentence to serve, that absence matters most: completing RDAP is the only route to a discretionary reduction of up to twelve months under 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e).

Three separate Bureau documents say so. The institution’s own handbook: “No RDAP exists within FCI Bennettsville, but inmates meeting eligibility criteria may be transferred to other institutions which do offer this program.” The camp’s handbook says the same words about SCP Bennettsville. And the Bureau’s published lists of RDAP locations name neither — not the standalone list updated January 2025, nor the newer one, updated in June 2026, inside the August 2026 First Step Act Approved Programs Guide. The only RDAP in South Carolina is at the Edgefield camp, across the state.

At Bennettsville, RDAP is not a program application. It is a transfer argument, and it starts years before release rather than months, because the request has to be made, a bed found, and the program itself takes six to twelve months on top; our guide to federal prison transfers sets out how that argument is made. One disqualifier for the § 3621(e) reduction catches more men than any other: the Bureau treats a firearm offense under § 922(g) or § 924(c) as a crime of violence for this purpose, so a man can complete the whole program and receive nothing off it. A detainer disqualifies too, and the residential psychology programs are not offered here either.

What is offered is the lower tier. The 40-hour Drug Abuse Education class is mandatory where the presentence report shows drugs or alcohol contributed to the offense, where use caused a supervision violation, or where the judge recommended it, and the sanction for refusing or being expelled is stated flatly: held at the lowest pay grade in the institution and ineligible for community programs. When inspectors looked in 2016, about 60 percent of the District of Columbia residents here were enrolled in non-residential drug education — in a prison with no residential program to graduate into.

Education, vocational training, and UNICOR

Bennettsville is one of sixteen federal prisons the Bureau names as offering post-secondary education funded by Pell grants; the August 2026 First Step Act Approved Programs Guide lists the sites by code, and BEN is among them. Availability has varied: the same institution reported zero enrollments and zero completions in post-secondary education in fiscal 2013, and told inspectors an earlier free-books-and-tutoring program had been dropped after a year because fewer than ten men paid the tuition. Whether a class is running in any given term is a question for the Supervisor of Education, not for a published list.

Education runs GED instruction in English and Spanish across four levels, plus English as a Second Language, Adult Continuing Education and parenting. A man without a verified high school credential must complete 240 instructional hours before he may withdraw, and the requirement reaches beyond the classroom: under the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and the Prison Litigation Reform Act it decides whether good conduct time vests at 54 days a year or 42. Passing the GED or the ESL certification here carries a $25 award and priority enrollment in one vocational course. See prison education.

Vocational training is the institution’s strongest program, and every course is certified through Northeastern Technical College, the local two-year college, with further certification from Automotive Service Excellence, the National Center for Construction Education and Research and the National Restaurant Association. The handbook lists automotive chassis and powertrain, culinary arts, electrical technology, HVAC, mechanical maintenance, construction, machine shop, welding and an NCCER core class taught in English and Spanish, plus apprenticeships in industrial cleaning and electrical work. All of it requires a verified GED. Inspectors recorded transferable college credit — about 30 hours for the basic automotive course, 50 for the advanced — mock job fairs four times a year, and waiting lists of three to eight months. See vocational training.

UNICOR operates at the institution — the Bureau’s own programs guide lists Federal Industries staff as authorized facilitators here, and the handbook counts Federal Prison Industries among the work assignments. What the factory makes is not published, and the product line given on directory sites has no published source. New arrivals go to Food Service for their first ninety days regardless, and a man must hold a job for ninety days before asking to change it.

Faith-based and reentry programming

Religious Services ran with four dedicated staff and one chaplain post vacant when inspectors last looked, serving twelve faith groups. There is an indoor chapel and an outdoor worship area with a sweat lodge; the chapel is divided on Fridays for Jumu’ah prayer; a rabbi visits monthly; the institution ran a fifteen-person choir and a Hispanic choir. Around 23 volunteers came in then. The 2026 PREA audit counts 16 volunteers with prisoner contact across the whole institution. See religious programs in prison.

The Bureau described release preparation here in writing to inspectors: 88 separate courses running from one hour to 402 hours, taught by Bureau staff and by representatives from the Social Security Administration, United States Probation, child support services, vocational rehabilitation and the Veterans Administration. The Council’s June 2016 report records a sanction for any man not enrolled by 30 months before his projected release date; the Bureau’s release preparation rules, Program Statement 5325.09, issued June 22, 2026, now enroll people “between 18 and 24 months prior to” departure. Halfway house placement runs through the reentry office for the district a man is releasing to; for South Carolina that is RRM Atlanta, whose Bureau page lists that district alongside the three Georgia districts.

What is daily life like at FCI Bennettsville?

Daily life at FCI Bennettsville runs on a fixed schedule, from a 6:00 a.m. wake-up to a 10:00 p.m. lights-out at the institution (11:00 p.m. at the camp), with official counts through the day and night and controlled movement on the hour. The table below comes from the institution’s Admission and Orientation handbook; treat it as the rhythm of the place rather than a timetable to rely on.

	Weekdays	Weekends and holidays
Wake-up, lights on	6:00 a.m.
Official counts	Midnight, 3:00 a.m., 5:00 a.m., 4:00 p.m. standing, 10:00 p.m. standing	Same, plus a 10:00 a.m. standing count
Census checks in quarters	About 8:00 a.m. and about 12:30 p.m.	—
Beds made	By 7:30 a.m.	On leaving the room, no later than the 10:00 a.m. count
Sick call sign-up	6:30–7:00 a.m., Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday (camp 6:15–6:30 a.m.)	Emergencies only
Pill line	Insulin 6:00–6:15 a.m.; morning 6:15–6:30 a.m.; insulin 4:30–4:45 p.m.; night 7:00–7:30 p.m.	—
Linen exchange	6:00–7:15 a.m., Monday to Thursday by register number; Friday for new arrivals and the SHU	—
Controlled movement	Hourly, on the hour to ten past — but only the first five minutes to leave where you are
Commissary (institution)	9:00 a.m.–7:00 p.m. Monday to Thursday; Friday special sales 10:30 a.m.–noon	Closed
Telephones	6:00 a.m. – 9:45 p.m.
Restricted movement	9:00 p.m. – 6:00 a.m.; outside the unit only on a detail or under escort
Lockdown, lights out	10:00 p.m. at the institution; 11:00 p.m. at the camp

Two rules in that table cost people most. Movement runs hourly and the door closes fast: the handbook allows ten minutes for the move but “you will only have the first five minutes of each movement to depart your location,” and missing it is an incident report. And sick call is a thirty-minute window on four mornings a week, with the handbook adding that “you must be present in the Health Services Unit before 6:45 a.m.” — fifteen minutes into a half-hour window. A man held up on a work detail can lose the appointment. The co-payment is $2.00 for a prisoner-requested non-emergency visit. See medical care in federal prison.

Meals are three a day with a salad bar, a beverage bar and a hot bar, and religious diets run through the Religious Common Fare program. Nothing may leave the dining room. Inspectors counted a dining hall seating 368 and food spending of about $3.12 a man a day. Recreation is the institution’s other strength: intramural basketball, flag football, softball and soccer, an asphalt track and a dirt track, a sand volleyball court, a bocce court, eight racquetball courts, an art room, and a band room holding a piano and more than a dozen guitars that eight separate bands used. The institution holds an annual show of prisoners’ artwork at a local museum.

The camp is a different place: one housing unit with a laundry room, three television rooms, telephones, TRULINCS terminals and microwaves, and an administration building holding the classrooms, the libraries, the chapel, health services and its own visiting room. Its handbook puts capacity at approximately 156 men; the 2026 PREA audit gives it 128; 87 men were there in September 2026. The boundary is described rather than fenced: “Inmates are not authorized outside of immediate environs of the Satellite Camp. This includes all wooded areas, retention ponds or any area away beyond the routine walking path located around the recreation area.” Stepping past that line is an escape.

Getting legal work done here

The unmonitored attorney telephone call is harder to arrange at Bennettsville than the national rule requires, and a lawyer should know the local test before promising a client a confidential call. The request goes on an Inmate Request to Staff Member form to the Associate Warden for Programs at least 72 hours in advance, and then: “A check will be conducted for any legal phone call requests. Inmates must provide proof of an imminent court deadline and that the case is related to the inmate’s reason for his current incarceration.”

The second half of that sentence is narrow. As written, it excludes a confidential call about anything other than the federal case a man is serving — a state charge, an immigration matter, a family court proceeding, a tort claim against the Bureau itself, or an investigation that has not yet produced a case. Combined with the first half, it also excludes the call a lawyer most often needs: the one that happens before there is a deadline, to work out whether there is anything to file. The alternatives are a marked special-mail letter and an in-person visit, and a visit needs ten business days’ notice.

One more thing surprises attorneys who plan to leave papers with a client: “Legal material may not be transferred during attorney visits unless previously approved. You are expected to handle the transfer of legal materials through the mail.” Approval is available, but it is arranged in advance, not at the front desk. The law library carries the United States Code Annotated, the Federal Reporter, the Supreme Court Reporter and Bureau program statements, with a prisoner law clerk to help; men in the Special Housing Unit get access by written request and copies are 15 cents a page. The Bureau publishes no institution supplement on legal activities for Bennettsville — its facility page links the national program statement instead. See our guide to the prison law library.

What do inspectors say about conditions at FCI Bennettsville?

The only independent inspection of conditions at FCI Bennettsville was by the District of Columbia’s Corrections Information Council, on November 18, 2014, and it happened only because D.C. Code prisoners were held here. The DOJ Office of the Inspector General has not conducted an on-site inspection of this facility. That statement concerns the unannounced conditions inspections the Inspector General publishes for a handful of prisons, a program that had reached fourteen institutions on the Inspector General’s own count in May 2026 (Report 26-055). It does not mean the Inspector General has never been here; it was here in August 2026.

The only outside account of how this prison treats the men inside it is now almost twelve years old.

What the Inspector General has and has not done here

The Inspector General has announced a criminal case out of this institution in three separate years — an officer sentenced for bribery in 2015, and an officer indicted and then arrested in 2026, both set out in the news section below. In August 2026 it co-led an operation inside the prison: the Bureau’s own announcement names the Southeast Regional Office and the Office of the Inspector General as the two agencies leading a four-day search of the institution.

Its auditors have been inside once. In June 2014 the Inspector General published an audit of 65 pallet-sized x-ray machines the Bureau bought after a smuggling attempt at another prison, and FCI Bennettsville is one of the nine institutions named in that report’s own table of site visit locations. It is an audit of a procurement, not of conditions, but it tested the scanner here: the auditors could not identify some of the items warehouse staff had hidden in the pallets it scanned. Two later products name it in passing: a September 2021 survey of Bureau staff on the pandemic, which publishes response percentages for this prison by name, and a May 2025 evaluation of cancer screening.

The 2026 PREA audit

FCI Bennettsville was audited under the Prison Rape Elimination Act on March 3–5, 2026, by an independent auditor, Brian Sutherland of Corrections Consulting Services LLC; the final report is dated April 17, 2026. The facility passed — 45 standards met, none exceeded, none not met, no corrective action — and the report is the most detailed public description of this physical plant.

Buildings	21
Housing units	14 — 13 multiple-occupancy cell, 1 open bay or dormitory, 0 single-cell
Segregation cells	96
Designated capacity	1,280 — FCI 1,152, camp 128
Population on day one of the audit	1,599 — FCI 1,517, camp 82
Average daily population, preceding 12 months	1,603; over capacity during that year
Staff who may have prisoner contact	272, of whom 16 hired in the preceding 12 months

Two findings qualify the passing result. The audit records that neither the facility nor the agency employs any criminal investigator for allegations of sexual abuse or harassment — those go to a Justice Department component — and that of the six allegations here in the preceding twelve months, none received a criminal investigation. Five were sexual abuse, two of them staff-on-prisoner. All six got an administrative investigation; three were unsubstantiated, one unfounded, one still pending, and none substantiated.

It also sets out who was here on the first morning. Of 1,599 men, 55 had disclosed prior sexual victimization during risk screening, 73 had a cognitive or functional disability, and 227 — more than one man in seven — were limited English proficient. That number helps explain the Spanish handbooks, the Spanish GED classes, the Spanish-language construction course and the Hispanic choir.

A passing audit is not a clean one. The auditor found the intake training lesson plan needed additional language; found “old, confined person handbooks in the intake area that needed to be purged as it contained old victim advocate information”; and, reviewing 18 randomly selected prisoner files, “identified discrepancies with the reassessment and the comprehensive education being completed on time.” The facility retrained all classification staff afterward.

The 2016 inspection report

The Corrections Information Council inspected on November 18, 2014, collected information through June 2016, and published on June 27, 2016. Everything in it describes the prison of 2014 with some 2016 updates from the Bureau, and it should be read as history.

The report publishes no percentages of respondents and no count of how many men it interviewed. It counts concerns: 89 concerns and 14 positive comments in total, drawn from the D.C. Code population at a prison that then held 1,597 men. That population was 66 men at the time of the inspection — the Bureau’s own written response supplies the figure, noting that “less than a quarter (15 of 66) of the DC offenders believe they’ve experienced discriminatory treatment from staff” — and had fallen to 44 by June 2016. Nothing below is a facility-wide rate.

• The prison was at 139 percent of its rated capacity of 1,152 in September 2014, and 122 percent by June 2016. The prisoner-to-staff ratio was six to one.
• The Special Housing Unit is built for 190 and held 164 men on the day of the inspection — 16 in disciplinary segregation and 148 in administrative detention, 30 of them in protective custody, average stay 47 days. That is a very large segregation unit for a prison of this size, and almost everyone in it was there without a disciplinary finding.
• Dental care was the sharpest number: nine months for a checkup or cleaning and three and a half years for dentures or partials, with one dentist and one hygienist. The Bureau’s response was that a second of each had since been added.
• Administrative remedies rarely succeeded. Across every category the report tabulates for September 2014 — staff complaints, disciplinary hearing appeals, transfers, jail time, sentence computation, classification and medical — one remedy was granted, a disciplinary hearing appeal at the regional office. Prisoners filed two grievances about the Special Housing Unit at the institution and none at all above it, in the year in which 148 men were in administrative detention.

Deaths in custody

Four men have died at FCI Bennettsville since 2021, according to the Bureau’s own records; the Inmate Locator shows each death as “Deceased:” beside the date.

Name	Date on the Bureau’s record	What the Bureau published
Rakeem Baskerville, 46	September 4, 2021	Tested positive for COVID-19 on August 30, 2021, taken to a local hospital the same day, ventilated on September 3, pronounced dead on September 4. Serving a life sentence from the District of New Jersey; here since 2017
Eugene Lamont Friend, 50	October 19, 2021	Found unresponsive, pronounced dead at hospital, tested positive for COVID-19 postmortem; the autopsy determined the death was COVID-related. Serving a life sentence from the Eastern District of Virginia; here since 2016. Announced eight months later
Keenan Joshua Byrd, 28	December 18, 2024	No release on its press-release list
David Glenn Manuel, 52	May 22, 2025	No release on its press-release list

The Bureau’s press-release list carries releases for the two 2021 deaths (posted September 8, 2021, and June 27, 2022) and none for the two since. It carries death announcements for other institutions as recently as August 2026 and nothing for Keenan Byrd or David Manuel; it also carries no death release for any institution between April 7, 2023, and July 28, 2025, the period that includes both deaths. For those two families, the only public record of either death is the word “Deceased” and a date in a search tool.

What the court record shows

The federal docket shows mail failing after a transfer. In two petitions under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 filed by the same man in 2024, the court’s order telling him how to correct his petition was mailed to FCI Bennettsville and returned as undeliverable after the Bureau moved him to the Atlanta reentry office; copies sent to Atlanta arrived. He filed nothing further and both petitions were dismissed. Reynolds v. United States, Nos. 9:24-cv-04056 and 9:24-cv-04358 (D.S.C. Dec. 27, 2024 and Feb. 18, 2025). The institution’s own handbook says special mail keeps being forwarded after a transfer. Do not rely on it. File a change of address with every court that has your case, the week you move.

A transfer can move the case itself, and this prison’s docket shows it running both ways. Moved off this compound to FCI Memphis with a § 2241 pending, one man lost his forum: the District of South Carolina held it no longer had jurisdiction over his custodian and sent the action to Tennessee. Cooper v. Warden, FCI Bennettsville, No. 4:20-cv-01437 (D.S.C. Oct. 28, 2020). Moved the other way, a different man kept his: the Western District of Tennessee held that a transfer during a pending petition does not generally defeat jurisdiction, and changed the address on its docket. Braswell v. Owens, No. 2:21-cv-02422 (W.D. Tenn. Aug. 5, 2024). The lesson is the same both ways: tell the court, in writing, the day you learn of a move.

FCI Bennettsville in the news

News about FCI Bennettsville centers on contraband, the recurring subject of official attention here for more than a decade: two prosecuted or charged staff cases eleven years apart, a 2023 firearm scare, and the August 2026 four-day joint operation in which the Inspector General worked inside the institution and forty men were moved out. The other items concern deaths in custody.

• September 2026 — the Bureau announced a multi-agency contraband operation conducted here from August 3 to 6, 2026, led by its Southeast Regional Office and the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General, with the Bureau’s National Gang Unit, the FBI, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of South Carolina, and K-9 units from the South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division and the Chesterfield and Marlboro County Sheriff’s Offices. “Teams recovered electronic devices, drugs, homemade weapons, and gang-related intelligence across various areas of the institution. Forty inmates were transferred to other facilities in the Southeast Region as part of follow-up actions.” If someone was moved off this compound in August, this is the public record of why.
• August 2026 — a former correctional officer here, Joseph Templeton, 30, was arrested on federal charges. A grand jury in Florence had indicted him on July 28 on bribery, money laundering and possession of marijuana with intent to distribute. The indictment alleges he took more than $60,000 in bribes from a prisoner and others and smuggled in cell phones, cigarettes and THC, then “falsely processed the contraband as a contraband seizure before distributing the contraband within FCI Bennettsville.” The Inspector General, the FBI’s Columbia Field Office and the Marlboro County Sheriff’s Office investigated. An indictment is an accusation, and he is presumed innocent unless and until the government proves its case.
• December 2025 — the Marlboro County Sheriff’s Office arrested Templeton after seizing what investigators valued at more than $100,000 in contraband and narcotics, charging him at that stage under state law.
• May 2025 and December 2024 — David Glenn Manuel, 52, and Keenan Joshua Byrd, 28, died here. The Bureau’s press-release list carries no release for either; its Inmate Locator records both deaths.
• April 2023 — the institution went onto modified operations after what the Bureau described as “critical information that a firearm may have been introduced.” It was searched and returned to normal operations on April 13, and a Bureau spokesman then said, for clarification, that “there were no firearms identified or recovered.”
• June 2022 — the Bureau announced the death of Eugene Lamont Friend, which had happened on October 19, 2021, and was determined after autopsy to be COVID-related.
• September 2021 — the Bureau posted one news release reporting the death of a person held at FCI Bennettsville; the Bureau’s releases are listed on its press release page.
• February 2015 — Charlotte McLaughlin, a correctional officer here, was sentenced in federal court in Florence to 13 months’ imprisonment and three years of supervised release for bribery. The evidence at her guilty plea established that in 2012 and 2013 she accepted bribes from prisoners and their associates and brought in tobacco and cell phones. The Inspector General investigated.

Frequently asked questions about FCI Bennettsville

Problems at FCI Bennettsville: where we can help

The problems FCI Bennettsville’s own record points to first are a drug program that does not exist here, a segregation unit that is large and mostly non-disciplinary, and a contraband investigation that has now reached inside the compound. Each runs on a deadline.

• RDAP, and the transfer it requires. There is no Residential Drug Abuse Program at the institution or the camp, so the § 3621(e) year is only reachable by being designated somewhere that runs one. That is an argument about points, Public Safety Factors and a Management Variable, made to Grand Prairie, and it takes time. See RDAP and early release and federal prison transfers.
• Transfers out of here after the August 2026 operation. A move made on intelligence can carry consequences a family only discovers later — an investigation, a delayed incident report, a security-level increase, a gang or Security Threat Group designation in the central file. All of those are reviewable, and the central file can be read; see our help with federal prison problems.
• Disciplinary proceedings that threaten good conduct time. The docket out of this prison shows an incident report issuing two months after the event because an investigation was running, and a Code 220 finding built largely on a man’s own account of horseplay. Say nothing at a Unit Discipline Committee hearing that you would not want quoted at the hearing officer’s.
• Special Housing Unit placements that outlast their justification. Inspectors found 148 of 164 men in segregation here held on administrative detention rather than a disciplinary finding, 30 of them in protective custody, average stay 47 days — and, in the same year, not a single grievance about the unit filed above the institution.
• Medical and dental care that has stopped happening. Health care drew the most complaints in the only independent inspection this prison has had, with dentures at three and a half years, and the sick-call window is thirty minutes on four mornings a week. The route is a written request to staff and then the administrative remedy process, where the BP-9 must be filed within 20 calendar days. Where neglect has caused injury or death, see Federal Tort Claims Act claims — and note that the tort case from this prison that reached a decision was lost on missed deadlines, not on the facts.
• First Step Act time credits and sentence computation, checked against the computation rather than assumed. See First Step Act time credit help and sentence computation challenges.
• Halfway house and home confinement placement through the reentry office for the release district (RRM Atlanta for South Carolina), and compassionate release under 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A), which starts with a request to the warden and a clock that runs from it. See also early release from federal prison.
• Challenges to the conviction or sentence itself, through a direct appeal or a § 2255 motion.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. practices federal criminal defense, appeals and post-conviction law from Columbia, South Carolina. This institution sits in our home district, the District of South Carolina, and the Fourth Circuit is our court of appeals, which means the habeas petitions, tort claims and Bivens actions filed out of this prison are filed in the courts we appear in. We practice nationwide and advise 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

• FCI Bennettsville, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The Bureau’s facility page, with addresses, telephone and fax, and the camp mailing block.
• Institution Supplement BEN 5267.08G, Visiting Regulations, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCI Bennettsville, 2013. Replaced Institution Supplement BEN 5267.08F (2011).
• FCI Bennettsville Admission and Orientation Handbook, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCI Bennettsville, undated. Approved by Warden M. Travis Bragg.
• FCI Bennettsville Satellite Camp Admission and Orientation Handbook, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCI Bennettsville, undated.
• FCI Bennettsville Commissary List, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCI Bennettsville, undated. Signed by Warden D. Drew.
• 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).
• Release Preparation Program, Program Statement 5325.09, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026.
• First Step Act Approved Programs Guide, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Reentry Services Division, 2026. RDAP locations, Pell-funded education sites and UNICOR facilitators.
• Residential Drug Abuse Programs and Locations, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2025.
• Community Ties, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. How to send money to a person in federal custody.
• RRM Atlanta, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The reentry office for releases to South Carolina.
• About Federal Inmate Records, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. What each field in the Bureau’s inmate search results means.
• State of the Bureau 2005, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2006. Records the institution’s activation in fiscal year 2005.
• Multi-Agency Operation Conducted at FCI Bennettsville, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026.
• Inmate Death at FCI Bennettsville, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2022. The death of Eugene Lamont Friend.
• Inmate Death at FCI Bennettsville, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2021. The death of Rakeem Baskerville.
• Press Releases, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2021. The Bureau’s list of news releases.

Audits and inspections

• PREA Audit Report: FCI Bennettsville, Corrections Consulting Services LLC, 2026. Auditor Brian Sutherland; on-site audit March 3–5, 2026.
• Inspection of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ U.S. Penitentiary Canaan (Report 26-055), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2026.
• Evaluation of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Colorectal Cancer Screening Practices for Inmates and Its Clinical Follow-up on Screenings (Report 25-057), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2025.
• Staff Perceptions of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Management of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic: A Follow-Up Survey of BOP Staff (Report 21-126), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2021.
• FCI Bennettsville Inspection Report, District of Columbia Corrections Information Council, 2016. Inspection of November 18, 2014, published with the Bureau of Prisons’ 2016 response; the source of the care levels.
• Audit of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ September 2011 Procurement of X-Ray Equipment Under Contract GS-07F-0182T (Report 14-27), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2014. Site visit locations and the x-ray scanner test.

Court records

• Federal Bureau of Prisons Correctional Officer Indicted for Bribery, Drug Scheme, U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of South Carolina, 2026. Joseph Templeton’s indictment.
• Former BOP Correctional Officer Arrested for Bribery, Possession of Marijuana with Intent to Distribute, and Money Laundering, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2026. Joseph Templeton’s arrest.
• Coleman v. Onuoha, No. 9:24-cv-03158, U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, 2025. Ruling of September 9, 2025.
• Reynolds v. United States, No. 9:24-cv-04358-SAL, U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, 2025.
• Reynolds v. United States, No. 9:24-cv-04056-SAL, U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, 2024.
• Braswell v. Owens, No. 2:21-cv-02422, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee, 2024.
• Trejo-Munoz v. FCI Bennettsville, No. 2:22-cv-02159, U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, 2023. Ruling of September 27, 2023.
• Hampton v. Barnes, No. 1:20-cv-03896, U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, 2022. Ruling of March 24, 2022.
• Marshall v. Ortiz, No. 1:19-cv-19557, U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, 2022. Ruling of March 7, 2022, on a delayed incident report and a Code 220 finding.
• Cooper v. Warden, FCI Bennettsville, No. 4:20-cv-01437, U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, 2020. Transfer order of October 28, 2020; the Western District of Tennessee docketed the case as No. 2:20-cv-02783.
• Federal Correctional Officer Sentenced on Bribery Charges, U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of South Carolina, 2015. Charlotte McLaughlin’s sentence.

News and other sources

• Feds: Former S.C. Correctional Officer Took More Than $60K in Bribes from Inmate, The State, 2026. By Javon L. Harris; republished by Corrections1.
• Search Found No Weapons at Federal Prison in Bennettsville, WPDE, 2023.
• Institutions, South Carolina Department of Corrections, 2026. Evans Correctional Institution’s address, opening year and custody level.
• 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A), Imposition of a sentence 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).
• 28 U.S.C. § 2241, Power to grant writ, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).

Sources reviewed September 2026.

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