FCI Lompoc I (formerly FCI Lompoc) | Lompoc Federal Prison

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

FCI Lompoc I at a glance

FCI Lompoc I is a low-security federal prison for men at 3600 Guard Road in Lompoc, California, holding 885 people as of September 2026. It has no camp. It sits inside Federal Correctional Complex Lompoc, next to FCI Lompoc II, the larger prison it is constantly confused with, and it was called simply FCI Lompoc until 2024.

Official name	FCI Lompoc I (Federal Correctional Institution, Lompoc I) · FCI Lompoc until 2024
BOP code	LOF · complex LOX
Security level	Low; men
Population	885 (as of September 2026)
Visiting	Saturdays, Sundays and federal holidays, 8:30 a.m.–3:00 p.m. · see visiting hours
Inmate mail	Inmate Name and Register Number · FCI Lompoc I · Federal Correctional Institution · 3600 Guard Road · Lompoc, CA 93436
Send money	Lockbox · Western Union (code city FBOP, DC) · MoneyGram (receive code 7932)
Phone	805-736-4154 · Fax 805-736-1292
Street address	3600 Guard Road, Lompoc, CA 93436 · Santa Barbara County
Judicial district	Central District of California
BOP region	Western
Designated capacity	900 · 3,244 across the complex
Housing	Open dormitories
Special Housing Unit	Z-unit
Medical care level	Level 2 · complex-wide
RDAP	See the two records that disagree
Camp	None · both Lompoc camps belong to FCI Lompoc II

FCI Lompoc I is one of the federal prisons in California, in Santa Barbara County, and falls in the Bureau’s Western Region. The Bureau added the “I” to its name in 2024 for a reason that had nothing to do with anything that happened here: the penitentiary next door was renamed.

Which Lompoc prison is this, and which is the other one?

FCI Lompoc I is the older of the two Lompoc prisons, the one that carried the plain name FCI Lompoc for decades: 3600 Guard Road, no camp, and 885 men as of September 2026. The other prison at this complex, at 3901 Klein Boulevard, was the penitentiary; it is now FCI Lompoc II, and it holds the camps. “At Lompoc” therefore covers two separate prisons and four separately reported populations, served between them by exactly two inmate mailing addresses.

One table settles it

Match the institution name in a locator result, or the street address, against this table. Counts are as of September 2026.

Institution	Code	Old name	Street	Camp	Held there
FCI Lompoc I (this page)	LOF	FCI Lompoc	3600 Guard Road	No	885
FCI Lompoc II	LOM	USP Lompoc	3901 Klein Boulevard	Two	2,234

The camp is the reliable tell. Every camp bed at Lompoc reports under the other institution’s code: the Bureau publishes a single inmate mailing address and a single population line for LOF, and a camp address on West Farm Road and three population lines for LOM. If the person you are writing to is at a camp, the page you need is FCI Lompoc II.

Why this institution has a Roman numeral

Because the prison next door changed, and this one had to be distinguished from it. On April 4, 2024, the Bureau announced that six penitentiaries would be renamed as correctional institutions to match missions and security levels that had already changed, under Program Statement 1001.14 on naming Bureau property. USP Lompoc was one of the six. Once it became an FCI, the complex had two institutions both entitled to be called FCI Lompoc, so the Bureau numbered them: the older one became Lompoc I and the renamed penitentiary became Lompoc II.

Nothing about this institution changed. Its security level is what it has been; its address, telephone number and mission are unaltered; and it is not on the list of recently renamed facilities kept by the Bureau’s own website, which is why its page carries none of the name-change disclaimer that appears on its neighbor’s. The clearest proof is a table the Bureau gave to the Justice Department’s Inspector General, published in July 2025 in the Inspector General’s audit of the Bureau’s oversight of restraints. That table lists every institution whose name or security level changed — Thomson, Lewisburg, Atlanta, two Yazoo City institutions, Morgantown and Lompoc. There is exactly one Lompoc row, and it is the penitentiary’s: name USP to FCI on April 4, 2024, security level medium to low on March 23, 2023. This institution does not appear in it at all.

An FCI has operated at Lompoc for longer than most write-ups say. In 1961 a federal court was already deciding an indictment for escape from “the Federal Correctional Institution at Lompoc,” holding that the escape statute, 18 U.S.C. § 751, reaches any person confined there by direction of the Attorney General, including a juvenile delinquent so committed. United States v. Kinsman, 195 F. Supp. 271, 272–74 (S.D. Cal. 1961). Opinions through the 1960s and 1970s record men sent to the same address under the Federal Youth Corrections Act.

The Bureau’s two Lompoc pages have each other’s audit labels

Open this institution’s page on bop.gov and the PREA audit is offered under the link text “FCI Lompoc II PREA Report”; FCI Lompoc II’s page offers the same document as the “FCI Lompoc I PREA Report.” Both links serve the identical file.

Neither label is right. There is one audit, of Federal Correctional Complex Lompoc as a whole, conducted on site March 5–7, 2024, and running to 149 pages. It covers this institution, the penitentiary-turned-FCI next door and both camps together. The auditor’s form breaks its figures out under the headings Camp, FCI and USP, so the column headed FCI is this institution’s, and the figures below are taken from that column. The crossed labels are a web error, not evidence of two audits.

Where the old names are still in use

Several current Bureau documents still use them. The Bureau’s own population reporting still labels this institution “LOMPOC FCI,” and the First Step Act Approved Programs Guide of August 2026 still keys the pair as “Lompoc FCI · FCI · LOF” and “Lompoc USP · USP · LOM,” twenty-eight months after the renaming. The Admission & Orientation handbook on this institution’s page is older still, from 2015: it calls this institution “the Low” and the other one “the Medium,” and several of its rules differ between them. When you read that handbook, “the Low” means here.

What is the security level at FCI Lompoc I?

FCI Lompoc I is a low-security prison, with no minimum-security component of its own. The Bureau’s roster records it as a Federal Correctional Institution at the low level, holding male offenders, with no camp — the entry that separates it from every other Lompoc address.

What a low means here shows up in small rules rather than in fences. A man at a low seals his own outgoing letters, and he may receive softcover books from any source where a man at a medium or a high may receive them only from a publisher, a book club or a bookstore. He lives in open dormitory housing: the Inspector General, describing this institution in 2020, wrote that infrastructure problems were “particularly concerning at the FCI, where inmates are housed open, dormitory style, with bunk beds 3 feet apart from each other.” The 2024 audit recorded, across the complex, seven open bay or dormitory units, nine multiple-occupancy cell units, 144 segregation cells and not one single-cell housing unit.

How someone is designated here, and what moves him

Designation is decided at the Designation and Sentence Computation Center in Grand Prairie, Texas, under the Bureau’s security designation rules: security points set the starting level, a Public Safety Factor sets a floor the points cannot go below, and a Management Variable lets staff hold a man at a level his points do not call for. Because this institution has no camp, a man here who scores down to minimum is not walked across a road — he is redesignated onto the other institution’s books even if he never leaves Lompoc. Our guides to the intake process and to federal prison transfers set out what moves a designation; the argument is made in writing to the Unit Team at a program review and, failing that, through the administrative remedy process.

The 2024 audit put this institution’s designated capacity at 900 and its population on the audit date at 909, and recorded that the complex had been over capacity at some point in the preceding twelve months. The count of 885 as of September 2026 is the first figure in years that sits below designated capacity.

Who are the notable inmates at FCI Lompoc I?

Of the names that circulate for FCI Lompoc I, the Bureau’s Inmate Locator ties two to this institution: Chi Mak, whose record ends here, and a Steven Martinez held here now. The Bureau publishes no roster of who is held at any institution, so lists of names on the internet are assembled from old news reports and are usually years out of date.

• Chi Mak, register 29252-112, the former engineer for a defense contractor whom a jury convicted in May 2007 of conspiring to send U.S. naval technology to China; the court imposed 293 months in 2008. His Bureau record names this institution, then called simply FCI Lompoc, as his last facility (code LOF), and the locator now shows “Deceased: 10/31/2022.” Listings that describe him as serving a 24-year sentence here are out of date.
• Henry Uliomere Jones, register 46810-112, the record executive named on many Lompoc lists as serving twenty years. His actual release date is October 11, 2023, and his last recorded facility is FCI La Tuna in Texas, not Lompoc.
• Samuel Bankman-Fried, register 37244-510. National reporting places him at “a federal prison in Lompoc”; the locator is more specific — “Lompoc II FCI” (record code LOM), projected release May 3, 2044. His record points to FCI Lompoc II, one street over.
• Steven Martinez, register 25420-298, aged 64. The locator does place a man of that name here, projected release June 16, 2031. Older write-ups attach a long description to the name — a former IRS agent, mail fraud, identity theft, money laundering, murder-for-hire — but no primary source ties that description to this register number, so only the record is given here.

Christopher Boyce, of The Falcon and the Snowman, is widely said to have escaped from FCI Lompoc in 1980, and he is not listed above. His Bureau record, register 19347-148, shows only that he left custody on March 14, 2003, with a reentry office in Sacramento as his last facility, and no primary source ties the escape to this address.

How do I find someone at FCI Lompoc I?

To find someone at FCI Lompoc I, search the Bureau’s Inmate Locator by register number if you have it, and by name, race, age and sex if you do not. The register number is eight digits with a hyphen, it never changes for the life of a sentence, and it is the one thing worth writing down and keeping.

Then read the answer slowly, because the result names the prison and the two names differ by a single letter. A man here appears as “Lompoc I FCI”; “Lompoc II FCI” is the other institution, with a different street, a different telephone number and two camps. The codes LOF and LOM sit in the record behind the result and never appear on the screen. If the locator returns nothing at all, the person is probably not in Bureau custody: a pretrial detainee held for the U.S. Marshals, someone in state custody or someone in immigration detention will not appear. Our explainer on how inmate number searches work covers the differences between those systems.

How do I write to someone at FCI Lompoc I?

Write to someone at FCI Lompoc I at the one address that serves the whole institution, with the register number on the envelope. Mail without it comes back.

Inmate mail and parcels	Inmate Name and Register Number FCI Lompoc I Federal Correctional Institution 3600 Guard Road Lompoc, CA 93436

The Bureau publishes the same street for inmate mail, staff mail, freight and the physical address. There is no second address here and no camp address; one on West Farm Road belongs to FCI Lompoc II.

Three habits make mail arrive faster. Add his housing unit under the register number, because first-class mail is sorted and handed out unit by unit by the evening-watch officer. Expect a five-day week — mail is processed Monday through Friday and not on weekends or holidays, so a letter posted Thursday from out of state is a following-week letter. And send softcover books freely: at a low a man may receive them from any source, while hardcovers and newspapers may come only from a publisher, a book club or a bookstore. Never put money in a letter; cash enclosed with correspondence is contraband.

Legal mail is treated as special mail only if the envelope is marked “Special Mail — Open only in the presence of the inmate” and identifies the sender as an attorney on its face; it is then opened in front of him, inspected for contraband and not read. Unmarked, it is ordinary mail. The Bureau’s correspondence regulations and our guides to writing to someone in federal prison and to attorney-client communication in the Bureau set out the rules.

How do I send money to someone at FCI Lompoc I?

Money for someone at FCI Lompoc I goes through one of three national routes, none of which ends at this prison. Nothing is accepted through the mailroom here, and a visitor may not hand over money, a check or a money order for deposit.

• Postal money order to the national lockbox. Made out to his committed name and eight-digit register number, sent to Federal Bureau of Prisons, P.O. Box 474701, Des Moines, Iowa 50947-0001, your name and return address in the upper left corner. Put nothing else in the envelope; anything enclosed is destroyed. Non-postal money orders and non-government checks are held fifteen days. Personal checks and cash are refused.
• Western Union Quick Collect. In person at an agent, by telephone on 1-800-634-3422 option 2, or online at Western Union. The register number goes in with no spaces or dashes followed straight away by his last name; his committed full name goes on the attention line; the code city is FBOP, DC.
• MoneyGram ExpressPayment. At an agent on the blue form, or online through MoneyGram up to $300. The company is Federal Bureau of Prisons in Washington, DC; the receive code is 7932; the account field takes the register number followed by his last name, and his committed full name goes on the beneficiary line.

Money wired between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. Eastern posts within two to four hours, seven days a week; anything later posts by 7:00 a.m. next morning. Get a digit of the register number wrong and the funds can land in a stranger’s account, where neither company undertakes to recover them. Our guide to sending money to a federal inmate takes each route step by step.

What are the visiting hours at FCI Lompoc I?

Visiting at FCI Lompoc I is on weekends and federal holidays only, 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. The hours are set by paragraph 5 of FCC Lompoc Complex Supplement LOX 5267.09d, “Visiting Regulations,” dated July 16, 2025, which names this institution as “FCI I” and replaced the December 2022 edition. There is no weekday visiting for general population.

Two deadlines inside that window matter. No visitor is processed through the Front Entrance after 2:00 p.m., although the room stays open until three, so a visitor who arrives at a quarter past two is turned away with the doors still unlocked. And no vehicle may enter the visitor parking lot before 8:00 a.m.; waiting on the access road, or parking anywhere else on federal property including the staff housing area, can cost that day’s visit and, the supplement says, can lead to suspension of visiting privileges altogether.

The Admission & Orientation handbook on the same Bureau page gives the closing time as 3:30 p.m. The supplement is ten years newer and controls, so plan to 3:00.

The supplement is the only published visiting schedule for this prison. For the national rules behind it, see the Bureau’s visiting regulations and our guide to visiting a federal inmate. Call 805-736-4154 before you travel; the Warden can restrict or cancel visiting at any time.

Who can visit, and how the points work

Visits are rationed by a monthly point allowance: six points a calendar month, two deducted for a Saturday or Sunday visit however long it lasts, and nothing deducted for a visit on a federal holiday. A holiday Monday is therefore a free visit, and at this institution holidays are visiting days.

The approved list holds ten people, of whom approved friends may be held to three depending on how many family members are on it, and anyone outside confirmed immediate family must ordinarily have known him before he was incarcerated unless the Warden waives it. Unit staff re-check the lists at least every thirty days, and the front lobbies keep paper copies in a binder for the days the computerized system is down. Four people may visit at one time, children under sixteen counted. A man convicted of a sex offense involving a minor must sit directly in front of the officers’ station for the whole visit.

What a visit here is actually like

One provision in the supplement applies to this institution and to no other part of the complex: “At the FCI I, inmates and visitors may walk together, utilizing the sidewalks.” Everywhere else at Lompoc, visitors stay seated except to use the vending machines or the restroom. Here you can walk with him, so long as neither of you stops to talk to another man or another family. A visit at the institution across the road is a visit in a chair.

Three smaller rules also apply. A mother who needs to nurse is directed to the legal cubicle area in the corner of the visiting room. A handler with a certified therapy or seeing-eye dog — a California certification is required — is given a relief area in the right-hand corner of the grass and concrete as you look out of the room, and may bring exactly four clear waste bags and no other color. And men here and at the camps may wear a coat into the visiting room; men at FCI Lompoc II may not. What you carry in is one clear purse no larger than eight inches and nothing else; on clothing, the rule people are turned away for is the color rule — no khaki, no gray and no white T-shirt worn as the only shirt — and skirts and dresses must reach the bend of the knee.

Identification and screening

Everyone sixteen and over needs a state or government photo identification bearing the REAL ID compliance marking, a passport carrying a United States visa stamp, or an I-94. What will not be taken matters in a county with this one’s demographics: a passport without a visa stamp, a Mexican consular card, a border crossing card, and photo identification from a bank, a business, a high school or a college. At this institution the Control Center holds your identification and returns it when you are identified on the way out.

Screening is a walk-through metal detector for everyone, plus a random pat search and random ion spectrometry: failing the detector ends the visit before it starts, and refusing the ion scan costs visiting for at least forty-eight hours. Step back outside the Front Entrance after processing and the visit is over. On his side, men from this institution are strip searched and metal-detected in and out, wear issued visiting clothing handed back afterward, and may take in nothing but a wedding band without stones, eyeglasses, approved religious headgear, a medallion and photo tickets.

If he is in the Special Housing Unit

The visit still happens, but not here and not face to face. The Special Housing Unit at this institution is Z-unit, and every social visit for a man in it runs by live video from the non-contact room at the South Camp visiting room — on the other institution’s ground, under the other institution’s code. You report there, not to Guard Road. No more than three visitors including children may be in that room at once, the visit is capped at one hour and timed, and he is escorted to his end of it in restraints and may refuse. If you are driving to Lompoc to see someone in segregation, confirm with the Unit Team where to present yourself before you leave.

Getting there

Navigate to the street number, not to the name. Typing “Lompoc federal prison” into a phone gives you whichever of the two addresses the application prefers, and they are not the same gate. This institution is 3600 Guard Road; its neighbor is 3901 Klein Boulevard.

The handbook’s written directions run from the south on U.S. 101 to the Lompoc and Vandenberg exit, onto Highway 1 into the city, left at the end of Highway 1 onto Ocean Avenue, through to Floradale Avenue, right on Floradale and then by the facility signs — fifty to sixty minutes from Santa Barbara, which is the nearer airport at fifty miles. From the north it is Highway 135 to Highway S-20 to the Santa Lucia Canyon Road exit, about twenty-five miles from Santa Maria, a field the handbook warns is often fogged in first thing. From Los Angeles International the handbook allows three to four hours.

Arriving without a car needs one piece of planning. City of Lompoc Transit runs 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. on weekdays and 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Saturdays, and not at all on Sundays or legal holidays — so two of this institution’s three kinds of visiting day cannot be reached by city bus. Curb-to-curb service for seniors and people with disabilities is arranged on 736-7666, a dropped-off visitor may not arrive before 8:15 a.m., and the front lobby keeps a few lockers for people who came by bus. The directions are the 2015 handbook’s, and it still calls the neighboring base Vandenberg Air Force Base; it was redesignated Vandenberg Space Force Base on May 14, 2021.

How do phone calls and email work at FCI Lompoc I?

Phone calls at FCI Lompoc I run one way: he places them, and you cannot call him. The system is the Bureau’s TRUFONE, using a nine-digit access code and a voice enrollment, every number has to be added to an approved list first, and every call except a properly arranged unmonitored legal call is recorded and may be monitored.

The allowance is 510 minutes a month under the Bureau’s telephone regulations, Program Statement 5264.09, issued September 3, 2026: 300 minutes free to anyone eligible for First Step Act telephone incentives, and 210 more that anyone can buy once the 300 are used up. A single call should generally not exceed 15 minutes, at least 30 minutes must pass between completed calls, and the monthly limit does not apply to unmonitored legal calls. The extra 100 holiday minutes in the 2008 policy did not survive its rescission. The hours matter more than the allowance. Telephones at this complex operate from 6:00 a.m. until no later than 9:45 p.m., with one exception — men in the re-entry unit keep phone access until 11:00 p.m. — and access is normally blocked Monday to Friday from 7:30 to 10:30 in the morning and again from 12:30 in the afternoon until after the 4:00 p.m. count has cleared. Those are working hours: a call at two o’clock on a weekday afternoon falls inside a blackout.

Email runs on TRULINCS and is not the internet: he types on a shared terminal, you reply through CorrLinks after accepting an invitation, messages are plain text with no attachments, and he pays by the minute. Mailing labels and the BP-199 fund-transfer form print free here, and the terminal carries a Justice Department mailbox for reporting sexual abuse that goes straight to the Inspector General rather than through the institution. Our guides to CorrLinks and TRULINCS and inmate telephone calls cover setting both up from outside.

What can people buy at the FCI Lompoc I commissary?

People at FCI Lompoc I can spend up to $460 a month at the commissary. That ceiling is set by the Bureau’s trust fund rules, Program Statement 4500.13, the Trust Fund/Deposit Fund Manual, issued May 7, 2026, which records the increase from $360. During the November and December holiday period the ceiling rises by a further $50, for no more than one validation period. Items outside the limit include stamps, over-the-counter medication and vitamins, nicotine-replacement patches and lozenges, copy cards and copy paper, footwear, mattresses and a secured media device. Revalidation happens automatically once a month, on a date derived at this complex from the fifth digit of the register number.

The 2015 handbook on this institution’s page states that “the National Spending Limit is 370.00 but may be further restricted at the local level,” a figure that has never been the national limit in that form. Listings that give $360, the limit until May 2026, or $320 are out of date.

The commissary order form is the oldest document on this institution’s page: headed “FCC LOMPOC COMMISSARY,” revised in 2014 and signed by an Associate Warden. Treat its prices as history and its rules as probably still in force, because the rules are what a man needs on his first shopping day. He shops one day a week, fixed by a two-digit range of his register number that rotates every quarter — four times a year his day moves, and the form never says which two digits it means. Before handing the sheet in he has to read the “out of list” board, because there are no add-ons and no substitutions, and everything is final the moment he steps away from the window.

The two most expensive items on the list are a G-Shock watch at $75.00 and a basketball shoe at $64.95 — a seventh of a year’s spending in one purchase, which is why watch bands are sold separately at $2.50. Weekly caps run through the food pages: six packs of tortillas, two ice creams, twenty of any one kind of nut. A combination lock, limit one, is $7.65, and in an open dormitory it is the item that decides whether a man keeps what he buys. For the rules that apply at every institution, see our page on federal commissary items and limits.

What programs are available at FCI Lompoc I?

The programs available at FCI Lompoc I are the ones the Bureau’s First Step Act Approved Programs Guide (August 2026) marks for it, and that guide is the list that counts, because it records which programs at which institution earn First Step Act time credits. For this institution it marks anger management, basic cognitive skills, criminal thinking, emotional self-regulation, the literacy program, English as a second language, faith-based conflict management, family programming, national parenting, all four categories of occupational education, post-secondary education, social skills training, Threshold, Seeking Safety, WAYSAFE, both forms of drug treatment and Federal Prison Industries, alongside productive activities including the twelve-step groups, drug education, opioid use disorder treatment, victim impact and trauma education.

Being on that list is not the same as having a seat: a program appears against an institution because the institution is approved to run it, not because a class is running this quarter or has room. Put the question to the Unit Team in writing and keep the copy — when does the next cycle start, and where is he on the list?

RDAP, and the two records that disagree about it

The Residential Drug Abuse Program carries up to a year off a sentence under 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e), which makes it the most important program question here, and the Bureau’s own documents point in two directions.

The current national record puts the program here. The August 2026 guide carries a list of RDAP locations totaling 57 programs at 50 locations, and the Western Region column names “FCI Lompoc” once — code LOF on the guide’s own key. Its programs-by-institution table agrees, marking residential drug treatment for LOF and leaving it unmarked for LOM, and no Lompoc camp appears on the list at all.

The complex’s own handbook says the opposite, and contradicts itself while doing it. In one place it states that the residential program “is available at the South camp” and that men “found qualified for RDAP at the Low and Medium will be transfer to another site for program participation” — a man here who qualifies leaves. In another it puts a psychology office “in RDAP at North Camp.” South camp and North camp are different places, and both report under the other institution’s code.

The newer document should control, and the newer document is the guide — but the handbook is the only source that says where the unit physically sits, and it is still the handbook men arriving here are given. Both halves agree that drug education and non-residential treatment run at this institution and that a man found qualified for the residential program goes wherever it is delivered. If early release under § 3621(e) is the point of the sentence plan, ask the Drug Abuse Program Coordinator in writing which unit a qualification would send him to, and ask early: the interview window opens roughly 42 to 24 months before release, and missing it is the most common way the year is lost.

Education, correspondence courses and work

A man without a high school credential must enroll in the literacy program, and refusing costs more than a class: good conduct time does not vest while he is coded as making unsatisfactory progress, and he cannot hold most jobs above entry level. All four occupational education categories are marked here in the August 2026 guide, along with post-secondary education, but which of them is running changes with the instructor and the funding — ask education for the current vocational training catalog rather than relying on any list, this one included.

Correspondence courses are the option families most often get wrong. A man may enroll in essentially any course conducted entirely by mail, but he pays for it himself, courses requiring on-site attendance are not authorized, and a high school credential earned by correspondence does not satisfy the Bureau’s literacy requirement — so a man who takes that route is still in the GED program afterward. Before paying for a course as a gift, ask the education department which providers they will process.

On work, the guide’s Federal Prison Industries entry names this institution and its neighbor by code, so a UNICOR assignment is possible here, with the ordinary priorities: men within three years of release and military veterans go up the list. Industrial work here has contracted, though. When the Inspector General inspected the complex in 2020 it recorded emergency cots set up in this prison’s gymnasium and in a closed UNICOR factory — a factory existed, and by then it was not running.

Veterans, faith and peer support

One program is marked here and not next door. The guide’s programs-by-institution table marks Redefining the Mission: Veteran’s Reentry Program — a twenty-four-session journaling group on the barriers veterans meet on release — for this institution and leaves it unmarked for FCI Lompoc II. The guide’s own written description says it may be offered at any Bureau institution, so the split exists only in the table; for a veteran that is a question for the Special Populations Coordinator, not an assumption to draw from a grid. Veteran Resilience Support and the eight-week Service Fit program are marked here too.

Requests for a religious diet, a ceremonial meal or a minister of record go to the chaplain rather than to the Unit Team, as our overview of religious programs in federal prison explains. Psychology keeps a self-help library and an audiovisual resources center in its department here, and a man asks for a place in a group by cop-out.

One structural difference between the two Lompoc institutions matters to a family with a vulnerable relative. Suicide watches at this complex are conducted only at the other institution, so the trained inmate companion program — men who sit with someone on watch — exists only there; this institution runs a Peer Mentor program instead, and the August 2026 guide records exactly that split. If a man here is placed on suicide watch, the watch happens somewhere other than the building he lives in.

What is daily life like at FCI Lompoc I?

Daily life at FCI Lompoc I is built around counts and around a weekly rotation that decides most of what a man can do on a given day. There are at least five counts in twenty-four hours, standing counts at 4:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. and an extra one at ten in the morning on weekends and holidays, when the compound is secured at 9:30. Wake-up is 6:00 a.m. Outside working hours no one crosses the compound at will: movement is called in the ten minutes before each hour, and a man who misses the window waits for the next.

The table sets out the fixed points of the week at this institution, from the 2015 Admission & Orientation handbook and the 2025 visiting supplement. Treat the 2015 times as the shape of the week rather than as a timetable, and check anything you are planning around.

What	When, at this institution
Sick call sign-up	Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, 6:00–7:00 a.m. No sick call on Wednesday
Pill line	Weekdays 6:00–7:15 a.m., 10:30 a.m.–12:15 p.m. for prescription pickup, 5:00–6:00 p.m.; weekends 8:30–9:30 a.m. and 5:00–6:00 p.m.
Clothing and linen exchange	Monday to Wednesday, 6:30–8:30 a.m. and 10:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m., at the central laundry — there are no self-service machines here
Commissary	One assigned day a week, set by a two-digit range of the register number, rotating each quarter
Mail delivery	Monday to Friday except holidays, by the evening-watch officer in each unit
Counts	Standing counts 4:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m.; extra 10:00 a.m. count weekends and holidays
Visiting	Saturdays, Sundays and federal holidays, 8:30 a.m.–3:00 p.m., last entry 2:00 p.m.

Health care, and the day the clinic is shut

Routine care runs through a sign-up system, and the sign-up does not happen every day. Sick call is Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday between six and seven in the morning; the handbook states that there is no sick call on Wednesday. A man who wakes up unwell on a Tuesday evening waits until Thursday morning unless what he has is an emergency, and emergencies are seen by institution clinicians or an after-hours doctor at any time. He is charged a fee for requesting health services, which is the sort of detail that decides whether a man with $20 on his books goes to the clinic at all.

Controlled medication is dispensed at the pill line at fixed times, and men in segregation are dosed by clinical staff on rounds. The complex is a Care Level 2 site on the Inspector General’s July 2020 description — chronic care managed on site, complex conditions referred out, as our guide to federal care levels explains. If care is not arriving, the route is a written request to health services and then the administrative remedy process, every rung of which has a deadline; our page on medical care in federal prison sets them out.

Is the “75 percent tested positive” COVID figure this prison’s?

Yes. The figure belongs to FCI Lompoc I and to no other Lompoc facility. In the spring of 2020 the Bureau tested every man at one facility in this complex and only one: this one.

On May 4, 2020, the institution began testing all 1,162 men held here, through a contracted third party. By May 11 at least 891 of them had tested positive — about 77 percent of everyone in the building, counted as active cases. The Inspector General put it in the opening paragraph of its report: “at the one FCC Lompoc facility where all inmates were tested, the number of inmates testing positive for COVID-19 exceeded 75 percent as of May 11.” Three days earlier, on Bureau data released Friday, May 8, and reported by CNN, the count here stood at 792 of 1,162 — about 68 percent — against 31 men at the penitentiary across the road.

Then the testing stopped. Lompoc officials told the Inspector General that the institution would not continue testing everyone “because the outbreak at the USP and camps had subsided,” with targeted testing in units with an active case if needed. So the complex has one facility with a measured infection rate and three without one, and the measured rate belongs here.

Why the virus moved through this building the way it did

Reviewing the whole complex, the Inspector General wrote that infrastructure problems were “particularly concerning at the FCI, where inmates are housed open, dormitory style, with bunk beds 3 feet apart from each other” — and noted in the same breath that the CDC advised six feet. There is no way to socially distance a room of men in bunks at that spacing, and the report said so.

The complex’s executive staff reported the infrastructure concerns to the Office of the Attorney General on April 16, 2020. Cots went into this prison’s gymnasium and a closed UNICOR factory, and the Bureau later told the Inspector General that 252 beds were added across the complex in the chapel, the visiting room, tents and a space used by the residential drug program. It was not enough: “Still, social distancing issues remained at the FCI.”

Two decisions taken here during the lockdown were local ones. The acting Warden of this institution suspended its commissary, on the ground that the building’s design was not conducive to social distancing — and the Inspector General noted in a footnote that the Bureau had not directed institutions to suspend commissary privileges. Men were also barred from the law library, so they could not work on their own cases, and telephone and email terminals here were suspended through May 18. The institution lifted its enhanced measures in May once everyone had been tested.

Leadership was thin throughout: in April 2020 temporary-duty staff held the Complex Warden post, the Warden of this institution, its deputy captain, the operations lieutenant and two associate warden positions, and no permanent Complex Warden was designated until June 7, 2020. The Inspector General’s own inspection was remote — telephone interviews, documents, data and a staff survey between April 23 and May 1, 2020, with no site visit — and was issued on July 23, 2020.

What the courts did, and what they did not do

Five men filed a class petition against the Warden and the Director of the Bureau in the Central District of California on May 16, 2020, represented by the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and the Prison Law Office. On July 14, 2020, Judge Consuelo B. Marshall certified a provisional class and granted a preliminary injunction. The class was every person in post-conviction custody at this institution and at the penitentiary who was over fifty or had one of a long list of underlying conditions — lung disease, serious heart conditions, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, immunocompromise, obesity, asthma, hypertension, HIV and smoking among them. Torres v. Milusnic, 472 F. Supp. 3d 713 (C.D. Cal. 2020).

The court ordered less than the headlines suggested. It released no one. It ordered the Bureau to make “full and speedy use” of its CARES Act authority and to evaluate each class member’s eligibility for home confinement in a way that gave “substantial weight to the inmate’s risk factors for severe illness or death from COVID-19 based on age (over 50) or Underlying Health Conditions,” with a schedule around it: a sealed class list, written notice to each man that he was under consideration, free calls or emails so he could assemble a release plan, and a written explanation for every denial. An individualized evaluation, not a release order. The case was later captioned Garries v. Milusnic and ended on October 11, 2022, with final approval of a class settlement and $375,000 in fees to class counsel.

A more consequential decision came out of this institution three years later. Bruce Sands, a man serving his sentence here, filed a habeas petition on January 29, 2021, during a second outbreak, arguing that the Bureau had failed to treat his hypertension and obesity, failed to follow Bureau and CDC guidance, failed to reduce the population here, and failed to isolate him after an inconclusive test. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of his petition for want of jurisdiction, and in doing so settled the rule for the whole circuit: a claim that succeeds in habeas “necessarily results in release, but a claim seeking release does not necessarily sound in habeas.” Conditions-of-confinement claims lie outside the historic core of the writ, so a district court has no jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 to hear them, and it is not required to convert the petition into a civil rights action. Pinson v. Carvajal, 69 F.4th 1059 (9th Cir. 2023). For anyone whose complaint about this prison is about conditions, that case decides which kind of action to file.

What do inspectors say about conditions at FCI Lompoc I?

Three bodies have published findings that reach this institution: a contract auditor under the Prison Rape Elimination Act in 2024, the Justice Department’s Inspector General in 2020, and the federal courts. The District of Columbia’s Corrections Information Council, which inspects prisons holding D.C. Code offenders, has published no inspection of either Lompoc institution.

The 2024 audit, and the figures that are this institution’s

The most recent independent review is the Prison Rape Elimination Act audit of the complex, conducted on site March 5–7, 2024, by Mark McCorkle of Corrections Consulting, LLC, and finalized on March 28, 2024. Most of its findings are complex findings, but the form separates its counts by facility, and the column headed FCI is this building.

On the audit form	This institution	Whole complex
Designated capacity	900	3,244
Population during the on-site audit	909	3,193
Average daily population, previous 12 months	945	2,734
Age range	19 to 83	19 to 83
Admissions in the previous 12 months	426	1,523
Of those, staying 30 days or more	400	1,437

Two things stand out. This institution was carrying more men than it was designed for on the day the auditor walked in, and the form answers “yes” to whether the complex had been over capacity in the previous twelve months. And the age range here, 19 to 83, runs higher than either camp or the penitentiary, both of which topped out at 78 — the oldest man at Lompoc was in this building.

On the audit’s own subject the complex did well: 38 standards met, 7 exceeded, none unmet. In the twelve months before it, six allegations of sexual abuse were recorded across all four facilities — four inmate-on-inmate and two staff-on-inmate — producing five administrative investigations, no criminal investigations and no allegations of harassment at all. The complex employs no criminal investigators of its own, so criminal investigation falls to an outside Justice Department component, and forensic medical examinations after an assault are done at a rape crisis center rather than on site or at a hospital. It has not been accredited by the American Correctional Association, the NCCHC or CALEA in the past three years.

One finding carries a deadline. The complex replaced a five-recorder camera system installed in 2018 with an eight-recorder system, and that upgrade raised how long recorded video is kept from fourteen days to thirty. Thirty days is the whole life of the footage of an assault, a use of force, a fall or a missed medical emergency, and a month is not long when mail into a federal prison takes a week each way.

What the Inspector General has and has not done here

The DOJ Office of the Inspector General has not conducted an on-site inspection of this facility. Its 2020 review of this complex was expressly remote — interviews by telephone, document and data review, and a staff survey, with no visit — and it has not come back. Since 2023 the Inspector General has run a program of unannounced on-site inspections of federal prisons; in its report on USP Canaan dated May 21, 2026, it put its own running total at fourteen institutions, seven inspected individually, six as part of a concurrent review of food service operations, and a further effort under way at FCI Berlin. Neither Lompoc institution is on that list.

Twenty-six published Inspector General products name this complex, four of them criminal prosecutions of its staff — most recently a guilty plea by a serving correctional officer and his wife in August 2026 to conspiring to introduce contraband. Those cases concern the complex rather than this institution and are set out on the FCI Lompoc II page.

The most searching published account of how this complex handles a complaint is a Ninth Circuit opinion, and it concerns an employee rather than a prisoner. A Bureau psychologist assigned to the Special Housing Unit here reported that a corrections lieutenant who supervised SHU custody staff ran an Instagram page followed by more than a hundred prison employees and posted sexually offensive content that came to target her; leadership told her the page was “funny,” the appointed investigator said the content was not “a problem,” and after a cease-and-desist letter two months later the posting went on for another month. The Ninth Circuit reversed summary judgment for the government, holding that the totality of the circumstances in a Title VII hostile work environment claim includes harassment that does not expressly target the plaintiff and that conduct outside the physical workplace, social media included, is not excluded, and that triable issues existed on whether the Bureau took prompt and effective remedial action. Okonowsky v. Garland, 109 F.4th 1166 (9th Cir. 2024).

FCI Lompoc I in the news

Recent news about FCI Lompoc I centers on two Ninth Circuit decisions that arose at this complex and the Bureau’s 2024 renumbering; older items concern the Lompoc coronavirus class action, three deaths the Bureau reported in 2020 and the May 2020 mass testing.

• July 25, 2024 — the Ninth Circuit decided Okonowsky v. Garland, reviving a hostile work environment claim by a psychologist at this complex and holding that social media conduct outside the prison can count toward a Title VII claim.
• April to June 2024 — the Bureau renumbered this institution FCI Lompoc I after renaming the neighboring penitentiary FCI Lompoc II. Nothing about this prison’s security level, address or mission changed; the name changed on the Bureau’s website between April 12 and June 19, 2024.
• June 8, 2023 — the Ninth Circuit decided Pinson v. Carvajal, on consolidated appeals one of which came from this institution, holding that federal prisoners cannot use habeas corpus to challenge conditions of confinement.
• October 11, 2022 — the district court granted final approval of the class settlement in the Lompoc coronavirus litigation and awarded class counsel $375,000.
• May to December 2020 — the Bureau posted three news releases reporting the deaths of people held at FCI Lompoc, as this institution was then named; the Bureau’s releases are listed on its press release page.
• July 14, 2020 — the district court certified a provisional class covering this institution and ordered the Bureau to evaluate every medically vulnerable class member for home confinement, giving substantial weight to his risk factors.
• May 4–11, 2020 — the Bureau tested all 1,162 men held here; by May 11 at least 891, about 77 percent, had tested positive. It remains the only facility in this complex where everyone was tested.

Frequently asked questions about FCI Lompoc I

Problems at FCI Lompoc I: where we can help

The problems we help with at FCI Lompoc I are the ones this institution’s own record shows, and they are not the problems of a prison with cells and a camp.

• Conditions complaints that have to be filed in the right court. The Ninth Circuit settled that question on a petition from this very institution: a federal prisoner cannot use habeas corpus to attack the conditions he is held in, and a district court is not obliged to convert a habeas petition into a civil action. Filing in the wrong form costs a year. The starting point is the administrative remedy process, exhausted properly and on time.
• Injury and neglect in open dormitory housing. This is a low with dormitories, no single cells anywhere on the site, and a population running to men in their eighties. Where delay or neglect has caused harm, a Federal Tort Claims Act claim runs on its own two-year clock, and the video that would show what happened is kept for thirty days.
• Getting a straight answer about RDAP, where the Bureau’s national list and the complex’s own handbook point at different buildings. That confusion costs men the § 3621(e) year; the way out is a written question to the Drug Abuse Program Coordinator inside the 42-to-24-month window. See our federal prison early release practice.
• Designation and transfer, including the fact that a man here who scores down to minimum cannot simply be moved to a camp on this institution’s books, because it has none. See federal prison transfers and our federal prison consulting services.
• First Step Act time credits — whether the programs he is in are the ones the August 2026 guide credits here, and whether the credits are being calculated and applied.
• Disciplinary proceedings that put good conduct time at risk under the Bureau’s discipline rules, and Special Housing Unit placements that outlast their reason — remembering that a man in Z-unit here is visited by video at a camp belonging to the other institution, which is its own hardship on a family.
• Medical care that is not arriving in a building where sick call runs four mornings a week and carries a fee. See medical care in federal prison.
• Halfway house and home confinement placement under the Bureau’s placement procedures; compassionate release under the Bureau’s reduction-in-sentence rules where health has changed materially since sentencing; and sentence computation errors measured against the Bureau’s sentence computation manual.
• 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

• FCI Lompoc I, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The Bureau’s facility page, with address, contact details, population and links to the complex documents below.
• Visiting Regulations, Complex Supplement LOX 5267.09d, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCC Lompoc, 2025. Hours and cut-offs, visiting points, visitor lists, identification, screening, dress, the FCI I sidewalk provision and Special Housing Unit video visits.
• FCC Lompoc Inmate Admission & Orientation Handbook, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2015. The 3:30 p.m. visiting time, directions and transit, deposits, telephone and TRULINCS rules, counts, laundry, sick call and pill line, mail and publications, correspondence courses, the Peer Mentor program, the RDAP location and the $370 figure.
• FCC Lompoc Commissary Order Form, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2014. Shopping-day rotation, order rules, quantity caps and prices.
• Trust Fund/Deposit Fund Manual, Program Statement 4500.13, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Sets the $460 commissary spending limit, the holiday increase, the exclusions and revalidation.
• Inmate Telephone Regulations, Program Statement 5264.09, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The 510-minute monthly limit, call length and the gap between calls; replaced Program Statement 5264.08 (2008).
• First Step Act Approved Programs Guide, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Reentry Services Division, 2026. Program availability by institution, including the RDAP locations list.
• Name Changes Approved for Seven FBOP Facilities, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2024. The renaming of USP Lompoc, made under Program Statement 1001.14, Naming Bureau Property.
• Press Releases, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2020. Includes the three 2020 releases reporting deaths at FCI Lompoc.

Audits and inspections

• PREA Audit Report: Federal Correctional Complex (FCC) Lompoc, Corrections Consulting, LLC, 2024. One audit of the whole complex, both institutions and both camps, by auditor Mark McCorkle; the Bureau serves the same file on both Lompoc facility pages.
• 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. The Inspector General’s count of institutions inspected since 2023.
• Audit of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Oversight of the Use of Restraints (Report 25-070), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2025. Bureau data on institution name and security-level changes, including the single Lompoc row.
• Remote Inspection of Federal Correctional Complex Lompoc (Pandemic Response Report 20-086), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2020. COVID-19 testing, dormitory spacing, added beds, the local commissary and law library suspensions, and acting leadership.

Court records

• Okonowsky v. Garland, 109 F.4th 1166 (9th Cir. 2024), U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 2024. A Title VII hostile work environment claim by a psychologist at the complex.
• Pinson v. Carvajal, 69 F.4th 1059 (9th Cir. 2023), U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 2023. Consolidated appeals, one arising at this institution; conditions claims lie outside the core of habeas.
• Torres v. Milusnic, No. 2:20-cv-04450 (C.D. Cal.), U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, 2020. Docket of the Lompoc coronavirus class action, reported as 472 F. Supp. 3d 713 and later captioned Garries v. Milusnic, through the 2022 settlement.
• United States v. Chi Mak, 683 F.3d 1126 (9th Cir. 2012), U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 2012. Chi Mak’s conviction and sentence.
• Chinese Agent Sentenced to Over 24 Years in Prison for Exporting United States Defense Articles to China, U.S. Department of Justice, 2008. Chi Mak’s sentence and former employer.
• United States v. Kinsman, 195 F. Supp. 271 (S.D. Cal. 1961), U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, 1961. An escape from the Federal Correctional Institution at Lompoc.

News and other sources

• Nearly 70 Percent of Inmates at Central Coast Federal Prison Test Positive for COVID-19, CNN (as published by CBS San Francisco), 2020. Bureau data of May 8, 2020, for this institution and the penitentiary.
• 18 U.S.C. § 751, Prisoners in custody of institution or officer, 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