FCI Butner Medium II: Visiting, Mail and Programs

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

FCI Butner Medium II at a glance

FCI Butner Medium II is a medium-security federal prison for men at the Federal Correctional Complex in Butner, North Carolina, one of four prisons on the complex and one of the federal prisons in North Carolina. It held 1,304 people as of September 2026 in housing units made up entirely of multiple-occupancy cells, and it holds the complex’s entire Special Housing Unit capacity: 96 segregation cells.

Official name	Federal Correctional Institution, Butner Medium II
BOP code	BTF · complex BUX
Security level	Medium; men
Population	1,304 (as of September 2026)
Visiting	Saturdays, Sundays, and federal holidays, 8:30 a.m.–3:00 p.m. · see which schedule controls
Inmate mail	Inmate name and register number · FCI Butner Medium II · Federal Correctional Institution · P.O. Box 1500 · Butner, NC 27509
Send money	Lockbox · Western Union (code city FBOP, DC) · MoneyGram (receive code 7932)
Phone	919-575-8000 · Fax 919-575-8020
Street address	Old NC Highway 75, Butner, NC 27509 · Granville County
Judicial district	Eastern District of North Carolina
BOP region	Mid-Atlantic
Designated capacity	960
Housing	13 housing units, all multiple-occupancy cells; no dormitories and no single-cell units
Special Housing Unit	Yes; 96 segregation cells, all of the complex’s segregation capacity
Medical care level	Level 3
Mental health care level	Level 2
RDAP	Yes; one of the complex’s two residential drug programs, a blended unit with a dual-diagnosis component
Sex offender treatment	None; neither the residential nor the non-residential program is approved here
UNICOR	Yes
Camp	None; the Butner camp belongs to FCI Butner Medium I

The complex is a 770-acre reservation in Granville County north of Durham, and the institution reports to the Bureau’s Mid-Atlantic Region. People sentenced in the Eastern District of North Carolina are designated here, and so are people from anywhere in the country, because the Bureau designates by security points and program need, not by home state.

Four federal prisons share the Butner address

Four separate federal prisons share one campus and one street address at Butner, and FCI Butner Medium II is the one with facility code BTF, P.O. Box 1500, and the 919-575-8000 switchboard. All four sit under the same complex and are routinely called “FCI Butner” in press reports, court filings, and directory listings, but they have different switchboards, post office boxes, security levels, and missions. Mail sent to the wrong one is returned, not forwarded.

Prison	Code	Security	Population	Mail to	Phone
FCI Butner Medium II (this page)	BTF	Medium	1,304	P.O. Box 1500	919-575-8000
FCI Butner Medium I, with the satellite camp	BUT	Medium / minimum	823 (536 + 287 at the camp)	P.O. Box 1000	919-575-4541
FCI Butner Low	BUF	Low	942	P.O. Box 999	919-575-5000
FMC Butner	BUH	Administrative (medical)	801	P.O. Box 1600	919-575-3900

The Bureau’s Inmate Locator prints each institution’s full name and type, and the names differ by a word or a numeral: “Butner Medium II FCI” is this prison, while “Butner Medium I FCI,” “Butner Low FCI,” and “Butner FMC” are the other three, so “Butner” alone does not identify a prison. The complex’s own paperwork adds a second trap: the April 2026 visiting supplement prints P.O. Box 1500 against the Federal Medical Center’s entry, but the Bureau’s facility pages give the medical center P.O. Box 1600 and give P.O. Box 1500 to this institution. A letter addressed from the supplement’s entry for the medical center arrives at Medium II.

The Bureau’s roster and web page call the low-security institution “FCI Butner Low,” while the April 2026 complex supplement calls it the LSCI throughout; both names mean the same prison.

What is the security level at FCI Butner Medium II?

FCI Butner Medium II is a medium-security institution with no camp and no satellite low attached; the Butner camp is administered by FCI Butner Medium I and receives mail at P.O. Box 1000. Someone designated to BTF is designated to a cell-housed medium and stays there unless the Bureau redesignates them.

The February 2026 audit under the Prison Rape Elimination Act counted 14 buildings and 13 housing units here, all of them multiple-occupancy cell units: no open-bay dormitories and no single-cell housing. The Inspector General wrote in 2021 that at the medical center and Medium II, “most inmates are confined in locked cells with solid doors.” A person arriving here will share a cell, and refusing a cellmate is an incident report.

Whether someone lands here rather than at the low or the camp turns on their security point score and on whether any Public Safety Factor applies. A Public Safety Factor overrides the point total: it keeps a person out of a camp however low the score, and it is the part of designation families most often misunderstand. Our pages on the Bureau’s security designation rules and on designation explain the scoring. Our guide to the intake process covers the first days after arrival, and how to prepare for prison covers a self-surrender date.

The institution is classified at medical care level 3, the second-highest of the Bureau’s four levels, for people with chronic conditions needing regular clinical contact. The Bureau’s 2024 care-level chart gives that level, and the Inspector General’s January 2021 report records the same Bureau classification in a footnote: “FCI I (including the Camp), FCI II, and the LSCI are all Medical Care Level 3 institutions,” with the medical center at level 4. It is one reason this population is older than a medium’s usually is: the age range at the January 2026 audit ran from 18 to 90. Our guides to medical designations and federal medical centers explain the system.

Is FCI Butner Medium II a sex offender prison?

No: on the Bureau’s current records, FCI Butner Medium II runs no sex offender treatment program of any kind and is not a Sex Offender Management Program institution. Butner is known as the home of the Bureau’s Adam Walsh Act work, and that reputation attaches to the whole complex indiscriminately, but the civil-commitment program behind it is at FCI Butner Medium I.

What runs at FCC Butner, and where

The Bureau runs two things at Butner that get conflated. The first is the Commitment and Treatment Program, which holds people “certified or civilly committed as a sexually dangerous person” under the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 — the civil-commitment scheme at 18 U.S.C. § 4248 that the Supreme Court upheld in United States v. Comstock, 560 U.S. 126 (2010), a case that began in the Eastern District of North Carolina with men held at Butner. People in that program are not serving a sentence; they are detained after one ends. The Bureau’s 2026–2027 psychology internship brochure for FCC Butner lists seven Commitment and Treatment Program posts by name, and every one is at FCI-I; its clinical coordinator’s biography records that in 2020 she “moved into the role of Clinical Psychologist in the CTP for sexually dangerous persons at FCI-I Butner, where she has remained until present.” Not one such post is listed at Medium II.

The second is the Sex Offender Management Program: a designation given to particular institutions, which concentrate men with sex offense histories, assess all of them, and offer treatment to volunteers. The Bureau’s sex offender programs policy, Program Statement 5324.10, is explicit about what a SOMP must provide. “All SOMPs offer the Non-Residential Sex Offender Treatment Program,” it says, and its treatment chapter opens: “SOMP institutions are required to offer sex offender treatment services.” The Bureau’s August 2026 First Step Act Approved Programs Guide names where those programs run. The residential one is “available at two institutions”: FMC Devens and FCI Marion. The non-residential one is “available in nine institutions”: FMC Carswell (women only), FCI Elkton, FCI Englewood, FCI Marianna, FCI Marion, FCI Milan, FCI Petersburg Medium, FCI Seagoville, and USP Tucson. The same guide’s programs-by-institution table also marks nine but has FCI Fairton in place of FCI Petersburg Medium; the two halves of the document disagree on that point, and neither marks any Butner institution.

In the guide’s institution-by-institution matrix, both treatment rows are blank at BTF, BUT, BUF, and BUH, and so is the Sexual Self Regulation activity. The word “SOMP” appears nowhere in the seventy-one pages of the Bureau’s 2026–2027 psychology brochure for this complex, which says instead: “The LSCI, FCI-I, and FCI-II facilities serve general offender populations with appropriate security needs.”

What that means for someone designated here

The consequences cut in different directions. A man who wants sex offender treatment cannot get it here. He has to be referred and redesignated to one of the nine institutions running the non-residential program, or to Devens or Marion for the residential one, and the Designation and Sentence Computation Center must approve the referral. It is a transfer request, not a sign-up sheet, and it takes months.

A Correctional Management Plan — the individualized set of restrictions on property, mail, telephone, and visiting that a SOMP psychologist can impose on someone assessed as showing risk-relevant behavior — cannot be imposed here either. Program Statement 5324.10 says so in terms: such plans “may be imposed only at SOMP institutions.” A person whose conduct warrants one is referred out to a SOMP institution to receive it, which is itself a transfer.

None of that means no one here has a sex offense conviction. The April 2026 complex supplement has a paragraph headed “Walsh Act Requirements” that applies campus-wide: anyone “identified as being convicted of a sex offense involving a minor, shall be seated in an area closest to the officer’s station within the visiting room, to enhance observation,” and anyone with both that classification and a history of escape attempts visits only under direct supervision, never on the outdoor patio. That flag follows the person, not the program, and it is applied here like everywhere else at Butner.

Who are the notable inmates at FCI Butner Medium II?

The best-known men the Bureau’s records place at FCI Butner Medium II are Jeffrey MacDonald and Lucchese boss Vittorio Amuso, both serving life, and the Cali cartel co-founder Gilberto Rodríguez-Orejuela is carried here after his death in Bureau custody. Each register number below can be searched in the Bureau’s Inmate Locator.

The Bureau’s records also list a “LARRY D HALL,” aged 63, register 10332-026, at this institution with a projected release date of LIFE. That is the name and roughly the age of the man the Black Bird series is about, but no published court record, Justice Department release, or other public document ties that register number to him, and the table below does not include him.

Name	Register number	Status at Medium II	Case
Jeffrey R. MacDonald	00131-177	Currently held here; projected release LIFE	Former Army physician serving three consecutive life sentences for the 1970 murders of his wife and two daughters at Fort Bragg
Vittorio Amuso	38740-079	Currently held here; projected release LIFE	Boss of the Lucchese crime family, convicted of racketeering and murder in the Eastern District of New York
Gilberto Rodríguez-Orejuela	14023-059	Bureau records carry him here, deceased May 31, 2022 (the Locator shows “Deceased: 05/31/2022,” not a release date)	Co-founder of the Cali cartel; extradited from Colombia and sentenced to 30 years for cocaine trafficking conspiracy
Veronza Leon Bowers	35316-136	Former — released May 7, 2024	Convicted in 1974 of the murder of a U.S. Park Ranger and held long past his presumptive parole date
Glenn Barry McDougald	51291-056	Died here on February 22, 2024, aged 57	Serving 27 years for possession of a firearm by a felon; arrived at Butner on December 14, 2023

Several well-known people linked to Butner are held elsewhere or have left. Bernard Madoff died at the medical center, not at this prison: the Locator’s record for him carries the medical center’s code, BUH, and its screen shows only “Deceased: 04/14/2021.” Kevin Garfield Ricks, register 77607-083, is held at FMC Butner. Jared Fogle has never been at Butner according to the Bureau’s records and is at FCI Englewood, register 12919-028. Cesar Sayoc is at FCI Coleman Low, register 17781-104. Miguel Rodríguez-Orejuela, brother of the man who died here, is at FMC Rochester, register 14022-059. Lee Bentley Farkas left Bureau custody on September 29, 2020.

Jeffrey MacDonald spent years at FCI Cumberland in Maryland; the Bureau’s records now put him here.

How do I find someone at FCI Butner Medium II?

To find someone at FCI Butner Medium II, search the Bureau’s free Inmate Locator by first and last name or by eight-digit register number; the number is the reliable key, because the Locator matches the committed name rather than a nickname. It 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.

On this campus the line that begins “Located at” is the whole answer: “Butner Medium II FCI” means this institution, and “Butner Medium I FCI,” “Butner Low FCI,” and “Butner FMC” mean FCI Butner Medium I, FCI Butner Low, and FMC Butner. Shortening that to “Butner” and taking a mailing address from the wrong page is how letters get returned. Our guides to the Inmate Locator and to how register numbers work explain the search.

If the Locator shows no result, the usual reasons are state rather than federal custody, pretrial detention under the U.S. Marshals Service rather than in a Bureau institution, or a judgment that spells the name differently from daily use.

How do I write to someone at FCI Butner Medium II?

Address mail for someone at FCI Butner Medium II to the committed name and eight-digit register number at P.O. Box 1500, a box none of the other three Butner prisons uses. Without the register number the letter comes back.

Mailing address	Inmate Name & Register Number FCI Butner Medium II Federal Correctional Institution P.O. Box 1500 Butner, NC 27509

Under the Bureau’s correspondence rules, general correspondence is opened and inspected for contraband and may be read. Legal mail is opened only in front of the person it is addressed to and is not read, but only if the sender is clearly identified on the envelope and the front is marked “Special Mail — Open only in the presence of the inmate.” An attorney’s letter without that marking is handled as ordinary mail, and the Bureau puts the burden on the incarcerated person to tell their lawyer to mark it. Our guides to attorney-client communication and writing to someone in federal prison cover the privilege question and what gets rejected.

Never put money in a letter. Funds enclosed in correspondence are rejected, and anything else enclosed with a payment sent to the Bureau’s lockbox is destroyed rather than forwarded.

How do I send money to someone at FCI Butner Medium II?

Money for someone at FCI Butner Medium II goes to the Bureau’s national lockbox in Iowa or through MoneyGram or Western Union, never to the prison’s address, and all three routes need the committed name and the eight-digit register number.

Route	Where it goes	How fast it posts
Postal money order, U.S. government check, cashier’s or certified check, bank draft	Federal Bureau of Prisons Committed Name Eight-Digit Register Number Post Office Box 474701 Des Moines, Iowa 50947-0001	Processed the day it arrives; funds available the next day. Non-U.S. postal money orders and non-government checks carry a 15-day hold; foreign instruments payable in dollars are held 45 days
MoneyGram ExpressPayment	Receive code 7932, company Federal Bureau of Prisons, Washington DC. Account number is the register number with no spaces or dashes followed straight by the last name. Up to $300 online	Two to four hours if sent between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. Eastern; otherwise by 7:00 a.m. the next morning
Western Union Quick Collect	Code city FBOP, DC; in person, by phone on 1-800-634-3422 option 2, or through send2corrections.com	Same as MoneyGram, seven days a week including holidays

No cash and no personal checks. If the committed name and register number are not on both the instrument and the outside of the envelope, the funds go back to the sender, and with no return address they go to the U.S. Treasury. Anything else in that envelope is thrown away. If a deposit does not appear, Bureau staff take questions on 202-307-2712 between 8:00 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Eastern. Our guide to sending money to a federal prisoner compares what each route costs.

Before sending a large sum, know the ceiling on what it can buy. Commissary spending is capped at $460 a month (see below), so money beyond that sits in the account rather than buying anything.

What are the visiting hours at FCI Butner Medium II?

Visiting hours at FCI Butner Medium II are 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on Saturdays, Sundays, and federal holidays, under Complex Supplement BUX 5267.09A of April 1, 2026. That supplement rescinded the October 2025 version and is the most recent visiting document the Bureau has published for this campus. There is no evening visiting at Medium II and no weekday visiting except for the Special Housing Unit.

Two visiting schedules, and the one that controls

The April 2026 complex supplement controls, as the later, complex-wide document. The Bureau’s page for FCI Butner Medium II, however, links a different file under “Visiting Schedule & Procedures”: Institution Supplement BTF 5267.09.04A (2017), which says visiting runs “Thursday and Friday 2:30 p.m. until 8:00 p.m.” as well as on weekends.

Those evenings are gone. Under the April 2026 supplement, evening visiting at this complex survives only at Medium I, where Friday visits run 2:00 to 8:00 p.m. for two named units, and at the camp, 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. Medium II has none. A visitor who follows the schedule the Bureau links will find the visiting room closed on Thursday and Friday evenings.

Document	Year	Days it gives for Medium II
Complex Supplement BUX 5267.09A	2026	Saturday, Sunday, and all federal holidays, 8:30 a.m.–3:00 p.m. Special Housing Unit on Mondays
Institution Supplement BTF 5267.09.04A (still linked from bop.gov)	2017	Thursday and Friday 2:30–8:00 p.m.; Saturday, Sunday, and holidays 8:30 a.m.–3:00 p.m.; Mondays for the Special Housing Unit only
Admission & Orientation Handbook	2008	Monday, Thursday, and Friday 2:30–8:00 p.m.; Saturday, Sunday, and holidays 8:30 a.m.–3:00 p.m.

Neither supplement expressly rescinds the other, and the older one is the file the Bureau’s page links, so call 919-575-8000 before you travel and say which Butner institution you mean.

Special Housing Unit visits run every Monday except federal holidays: 9:00 to 11:00 a.m., with administrative detention visits of two hours from 12:00 to 2:00 p.m. and disciplinary segregation visits of one hour. Restraints differ by building. Here, a person is removed from ambulatory escort restraints on arrival in the visiting room and re-restrained on the way back; at FCI Butner Low, they stay in restraints throughout.

Who can visit, and how the sixteen points work

Medium II is the only institution at Butner that rations visits by points. The medical center, the low, and Medium I all have “no limitations placed on the frequency of visits.” Here: “Inmates will be allotted 16 visiting points per calendar month. A total of 4 points will be used per visiting day. No points will be used for federal holidays.”

Sixteen points at four points a day is four visiting days a month, and since the only visiting days are Saturdays and Sundays, that is two weekends. Federal holidays cost nothing. The 2017 supplement counted differently — a weekday evening cost one point and a weekend day four — which is how the same sixteen-point allowance used to buy considerably more time.

• Six visitors a day, of whom no more than four may be adults, and an adult here is anyone sixteen or older. More than six needs advance approval from the Unit Manager and the Captain. The other Butner institutions allow only three adults at a time.
• The visiting list may hold ten friends and associates plus immediate family. Friends and associates must ordinarily have had a relationship before incarceration; exceptions need the Warden’s approval.
• Visitors aged sixteen or seventeen not accompanied by a parent, guardian, or immediate family member over eighteen need written permission from the Unit Manager and the Captain. In admission and orientation or holdover status, only immediate family may visit.
• When the room is overcrowded, visits are terminated starting with volunteers, then the first visitor in, with consideration for non-frequent out-of-state visitors.

What visitors can wear and bring

Shorts and dresses must touch the knee while the wearer is standing. Prohibited: khaki, camouflage or ranger green, outerwear, anything revealing, anything above the knee, form-fitting clothing, sleeveless shirts, and open-toe shoes. Nothing may carry offensive language or logos. A visitor turned away for dress gets a Visitor Denial Form with a copy to the Unit Team.

You may bring $20 in coins — no paper currency — for the vending machines, in a clear plastic coin bag no larger than eight by six by two inches, plus sanitary products, one wedding ring set, one religious medallion, one item of religious headwear, and one pair of stud earrings. Prohibited and easy to overlook: watches of any kind, hoop earrings, sunglasses, wallets, credit cards, photographs, pens, cosmetics, gum, candy, and every form of tobacco or nicotine. For a child of three or under you may bring bottles, unopened formula and baby food, two receiving blankets, three diapers, wipes, one change of clothing, and a pacifier — but not a stroller or a baby carrier. The designated nursing area here is Attorney Conference Room #1.

One rule applies to this institution alone: “Lockers are not provided at FCI II. All personal belongings should be left secured in your personal vehicle.” Every other facility on the campus has lobby lockers, so a visitor who arrives without a car has nowhere to leave a bag.

Identification, screening, and the count

Everyone sixteen and over needs valid government-issued photo identification — a driver’s license, a federal or military card, a passport, or a state identification card. Anything altered, defaced, or expired is refused. Every visitor signs a Notification to Visitor form, BP-224, declaring that they carry nothing they know to be a threat to security; refusing to sign ends the visit before it starts.

Visitor processing stops at least thirty minutes before visiting ends. It also stops at 9:15 a.m. on weekends and federal holidays and does not restart until the 10:00 a.m. count clears, and the supplement is explicit that “visitors must return to their vehicles if they arrive after the cut off for processing.” Arrive at 9:20 on a Saturday and you will wait in the parking lot for the better part of an hour.

Inside, the person you are visiting wears a visiting-room-issue jump suit and may carry only prescription eyeglasses, a wedding band, a medical bracelet, religious headgear, and one medallion, each written on a property form at the door. Handshaking, embracing, and kissing are permitted at the start and end of the visit only. The Bureau’s visiting regulations and our guide to federal prison visitation cover the system-wide rules, and searches, shakedowns, and contraband explains screening.

Getting there

The complex sits on Old Highway 75 in Butner, nine miles up Interstate 85 from Durham, according to the April 2026 visiting supplement. Its directions are the same from Durham or Raleigh: I-85 north to exit 189, left on Central Avenue, follow it to Veazy Street, right, then left at the stop sign onto Old Highway 75 for about a mile. The supplement then describes the campus as you meet it (the low and FCI Butner on the first right, the camp on the second, the medical center on the third), so watch for the signed entrance to FCI II rather than turning at the first gate. Park only in marked visitor parking.

How do phone calls and email work at FCI Butner Medium II?

Calls at FCI Butner Medium II go one way: people inside place them, and no number here rings through to a prisoner. Under the Bureau’s telephone regulations, Program Statement 5264.09, issued September 3, 2026, people are allowed 510 minutes a calendar month: 300 free to anyone eligible for First Step Act telephone incentives, and another 210 that anyone, eligible or not, may buy after using up the 300. A single call should generally not exceed 15 minutes, and at least 30 minutes must pass between completed calls. The extra 100 minutes in November and December belonged to the 2008 policy and did not survive its rescission. Legal calls properly arranged as unmonitored do not count against the 510.

The 2008 handbook records the local mechanics that still shape how the system is used: a nine-digit Personal Access Code issued through the Unit Counselor, an approved list of up to 30 numbers, and additions or deletions submitted no more than three times a month — the rule families trip over, because a number added late waits for the next window. It also records that people in segregation “may make a call every 30 days unless they have been restricted by discipline sanctions,” that an unmonitored attorney call is arranged through the Case Manager or Counselor rather than dialed, and that international collect calling requires an account opened first, normally two to four weeks. The national rules are in our guide to federal inmate phone calls.

Electronic messaging runs on TRULINCS; families use CorrLinks. Messages are text only, carry a per-minute charge paid from the trust account, and are monitored.

Email with a lawyer is not privileged. The Bureau permits attorneys on the messaging list and states in the same breath that those messages are subject to monitoring, so privileged written communication has to go by marked special mail. Our CorrLinks and TRULINCS guide covers the charges and the sign-up. TRULINCS is also how a report of sexual abuse reaches the Justice Department from inside: the complex posts the Department’s Sexual Abuse Reporting Mailbox alongside the Inspector General’s address and the telephone number of the Durham Crisis Response Center, the outside victim advocacy service under contract to FCC Butner.

What can people buy at the FCI Butner Medium II commissary?

The monthly commissary spending limit at FCI Butner Medium II is $460, and it rises by $50 during the November–December holiday period, for no more than one validation period. The limit is set nationally by the Bureau’s trust fund rules, Program Statement 4500.13, issued May 7, 2026, whose summary of changes records that it “increases spending limit from $360 to $460 per month.”

Listings that give $360 or $320 are out of date. The Bureau’s own page on sending money still links the superseded edition of the manual, so anyone following that link reads the old limit.

Some purchases do not count against the limit at all. The exclusions are postage stamps, nicotine replacement patches and lozenges, over-the-counter medications and supplements, kosher and halal shelf-stable entrees for people in refusal status under the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program, copy cards and paper, footwear including sneakers and safety shoes, mattresses, and a secured media device. The allowance revalidates once a month.

The institution’s own shopping list (2022) is the only itemized record of what is actually stocked here. It prices a Sangean radio with earbuds at $62.35, a Casio solar scientific calculator at $16.00, Koss headphones at $40.95, a Timex Ironman watch at $46.30, and a G-Shock at $99.95; a fifty-copy card at $6.50 and a book of Forever stamps at $12.00. Kosher, halal, unsalted, and dairy labeling runs down the whole food list. The form’s rules line sets out how one shopping day works: “Do not leave the Commissary once you have submitted your order form. No additions or substitutions will be made once you have submitted your order form… All sales are final.”

The 2008 handbook records a $290 limit, long since replaced, and a requirement that special-purchase items such as tennis shoes, gym clothes, and radios be requested on a form routed through the Unit Manager; that form requirement may still operate. Our federal prison commissary guide explains how the list and the limit work across the Bureau.

What programs are available at FCI Butner Medium II?

FCI Butner Medium II is approved for twenty-two evidence-based recidivism reduction programs, plus a long list of productive activities, in the Bureau’s August 2026 First Step Act Approved Programs Guide. The substantial ones are the Residential Drug Abuse Program, Federal Prison Industries, all four occupational education tracks, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Management of Compulsions and Cravings, Threshold, Anger Management, Criminal Thinking, and the Bureau Literacy Program. Several programs found elsewhere are not approved here: post-secondary education, Life Connections, the Skills Program, STAGES, Challenge, Resolve, and the Mental Health Step Down unit, which is at Medium I.

“Approved” means an institution may offer a program. Whether a class is running this month, and how long its waiting list is, changes constantly; that is a question for the unit team, and it decides whether First Step Act time credits are actually being earned.

RDAP and drug treatment

The Residential Drug Abuse Program runs here, one of only two at the complex; the other is at Medium I, and neither the low nor the medical center has one. The Bureau’s 2026–2027 psychology brochure describes it as 500 hours over nine months in a residential modified therapeutic community, with 200 RDAP beds across the two institutions. Completion can mean up to a year off a sentence under 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e) for people convicted of non-violent offenses, under the rules in the Bureau’s RDAP policy.

One detail in the brochure matters for a referral. FCC Butner added a dual-diagnosis component in 2021 for people with a co-occurring mental illness, and the coordinator here is described as running “the blended (small portion of dual diagnosis) Residential Drug Abuse Program at the FCI-II”: dual-diagnosis participants inside an otherwise standard program rather than a separate one, which is consistent with the August 2026 guide not listing the standalone dual-diagnosis RDAP at either Butner FCI.

Beyond RDAP, the institution is approved for the non-residential drug program, Drug Education, Narcotics Anonymous, and Alcoholics Anonymous, and the complex’s Medication Assisted Treatment psychologist for opioid use disorder is posted here.

Education and vocational training

The education program offers GED and English-as-a-second-language instruction, adult continuing education, and the Bureau’s parenting program. Anyone testing below an eighth-grade level must enroll in the GED program for 120 days, and English-as-a-second-language classes are mandatory for non-English speakers until they pass the CASAS assessment. The handbook adds a consequence people do not expect: “All promotions in Federal Prison Industries and institution assignments beyond the entry level grade are contingent on successful completion of the literacy program.”

Vocational work here has been delivered through two named local colleges. The 2008 handbook records Vance-Granville Community College providing advanced occupational education in Office System Technology, Carpentry, Electrical, and Automotive Technology, with a one-year college certificate on completion, and continuing-education classes taught with Durham Technical College. The August 2026 guide confirms all four occupational education categories are still approved here — job certification, technical certificate or degree, apprenticeship, and marketable skills — though not which trades are running. Post-secondary education is not approved here. Our guides to prison education and vocational training explain how these work system-wide.

The Education Department runs a combined leisure and legal library six days a week. Reference and legal materials cannot be checked out and must be used in the law library itself, so plan library time before a filing deadline.

UNICOR and work assignments

The August 2026 First Step Act guide names this institution for Federal Prison Industries work; its location list for the program prints three Butner codes, BTF, BUF, and BUT, the last of them twice, and the guide’s programs-by-institution grid also marks FMC Butner. Butner is where UNICOR’s optics operation sits: it is the factory that makes prescription eyewear for the federal government and for the Bureau’s own population, and UNICOR’s published contact for it is a factory manager reached on the Medium I switchboard, extension 3200. UNICOR states that delivery of inmate eyeglasses takes about two weeks.

For a designation request, the First Step Act guide establishes only that Federal Prison Industries work is available at Medium II, not that the optics factory is inside this fence.

Faith-based and reentry programming

Religious Services runs Threshold, Faith-Based Conflict Management, Crossroads, and Embracing Interfaith, and chaplains administer the religious diet program. Life Connections, the residential faith-based program, is not approved here.

The reentry and health list approved here reflects a medium holding many older men. Alongside Preparing for Success After Prison, Money Smart, and the Inmate Companion Program, the guide approves A Matter of Balance, Healthy Steps for Older Adults, Getting to Know Your Aging Body, Brain Health As You Age, Living a Healthy Life with Chronic Conditions, and Managing Your Diabetes, plus two veterans’ programs, Soldier On and Redefining the Mission.

What is daily life like at FCI Butner Medium II?

Daily life at FCI Butner Medium II is lived in cells: every housing unit is made up of multiple-occupancy cells, all of the complex’s segregation cells are here, and the only published account of the daily routine is a 2008 handbook.

The shape of the day

The institution’s Admission and Orientation handbook (2008) sets out the routine; treat it as the shape of the day rather than a current timetable.

	Weekdays	Weekends and holidays
Wake-up	6:00 a.m.; units called to breakfast on a rotating schedule
Standing counts	4:00 p.m.	10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m.
Other official counts	Around midnight, 3:00 a.m., and 5:00 a.m.
Sick call	Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday	—
Laundry	Linen in Thursday, 6:30–7:30 a.m.	Personal items in the unit machines
Clothing exchange	Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6:30–7:30 a.m.	Closed on holidays
Program reviews	Every 180 days, then every 90 days inside a year to release; attendance mandatory

Unit officers inspect rooms daily and publish sanitation ratings, and a person can be held financially liable for damage to their own living area. Storage is one locker plus limited space under the bed. Recreation runs through the Education Department, from arts and crafts to intramural baseball, basketball, and volleyball.

Housing and the Special Housing Unit

The February 2026 audit recorded thirteen housing units across fourteen buildings, all multiple-occupancy cells, with no dormitories and no single cells. That layout is the reason this institution came through 2020 so differently from the rest of the campus.

The same audit recorded 96 segregation cells here and none at any other Butner institution. Every one of the complex’s segregation cells is at Medium II, which is why the psychologist posted here covers “the SHU and holdover units” as part of her assignment, along with screening new arrivals and training the suicide-watch companions. The complex supplement also describes Special Housing Unit visiting at the low-security institution, so procedures are written for both sites; the segregation capacity the Bureau counts is at this one.

The consequences of a placement there are immediate and often invisible from outside: visits move to Monday mornings, telephone access drops to roughly one call every thirty days, and property and programming stop. That is where an administrative remedy filing has to start, because every rung of that process runs on a clock.

Health care and sick call

This is a medical care level 3 institution, designed for people with chronic conditions needing regular clinical contact, not the acute and inpatient care that FMC Butner across the campus provides at level 4. Someone whose needs outgrow level 3 is redesignated, and at Butner that can mean a move of a few hundred yards and an entirely different mailing address.

The handbook sets sick call on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday: present at Health Services for screening, then report on the call-out during the next controlled move with the commissary card for identification. Medical staff are on site or on pager 24 hours. Every injury is written up on an Inmate Injury Report Form, and one sustained on a work detail must be reported to the detail supervisor immediately — the handbook warns that a person “may be disqualified from eligibility for lost wages or other compensation if he fails to promptly report such an injury.” Our guide to medical care in federal prison explains how sick call and outside referrals are supposed to work.

What do inspectors say about conditions at FCI Butner Medium II?

Inspectors’ findings on FCI Butner Medium II come from reviews of the whole complex: the Inspector General’s 2021 remote inspection recorded 11 COVID-19 cases between this institution and the medical center, where most people are held in locked cells, and the complex passed its January 2026 audit under the Prison Rape Elimination Act with 45 standards met and none unmet.

What the Inspector General has and has not done

The DOJ Office of the Inspector General has not conducted an on-site inspection of this facility. It has published a great deal about it, and one report is the most detailed independent account of this institution available.

On January 28, 2021, it published a Remote Inspection of Federal Correctional Complex Butner, Report 21-031, with fieldwork from May 6 to July 25, 2020. The 2020–21 remote inspections were telephone interviews, staff surveys, and document review, conducted without anyone setting foot inside. They are not inspections of conditions but a dated, sourced account of what the Bureau told the Inspector General.

Across the complex, 1,020 people had confirmed COVID-19 cases and 25 had died by July 25, 2020, 698 of those cases at the low-security institution alone. The Inspector General found that the open dormitory layouts and communal bathrooms at the low, at Medium I, and at the camp — which between them held 1,894 of the complex’s 4,168 people — “significantly inhibited Butner’s ability to socially distance inmates.” It added: “Conversely, at the FMC and FCI II, where there were 11 confirmed inmate COVID-19 cases as of July 25, most inmates are confined in locked cells with solid doors.”

That is 11 cases among some 2,400 people at the two cell-housed institutions, in a complex where 1,020 people had confirmed cases and 25 had died by the same date.

The report also records that this institution moved before the Bureau told it to: “in advance of the March 13 BOP guidance advising it to do so, on March 4 FCI II limited inmate movements and suspended visitation and all large group gatherings,” in response to 29 people here being isolated with an influenza-like illness. The rest of the complex followed on March 13, nine days later.

Other Inspector General work reaches this institution as part of a wider sample rather than as its subject: FCC Butner was one of five sites whose as-served menus were tested in the February 2026 audit of national menu compliance, and a 2013 follow-up audit of the complex’s medical services contract identified $140,819 paid for service hours whose billing accuracy could not be determined.

The District of Columbia’s Corrections Information Council, which inspects the federal prisons where D.C. residents are held, has never inspected any Butner institution. Its only contact with this one is a mail survey: of 30 surveys sent to D.C.-sentenced people here in June 2020, 20 came back. Those are response counts, not findings.

The 2026 PREA audit

FCC Butner was audited under the Prison Rape Elimination Act on January 13–15, 2026, by an independent auditor, Brian Sutherland of Corrections Consulting Services; the final report is dated February 26, 2026. The complex passed: 45 standards met, none exceeded, none unmet, and no corrective action required.

The audit is done at complex level, so its allegation data covers all four prisons and the camp together. In the preceding twelve months the complex recorded 13 allegations of sexual abuse — ten inmate-on-inmate, three staff-on-inmate. None was substantiated; nine were unsubstantiated and four, including all three staff allegations, were found unfounded. There were 46 allegations of sexual harassment, two of them substantiated. Neither kind went to a criminal investigation. On the first day of the audit, 504 people across the complex had disclosed prior sexual victimization during risk screening.

The audit form does break out capacity, population, and housing by institution. For Medium II:

Designated capacity	960
Population on day one of the audit, January 13, 2026	1,543 — 161 percent of capacity
Average daily population, prior 12 months	1,563
Admissions in 12 months	2,038, of whom 1,697 stayed 30 days or more
Average length of stay	507 days
Buildings / housing units	14 / 13, all multiple-occupancy cells
Segregation cells	96 — the whole complex’s total
Age range	18 to 90
Limited English proficient	45
Accreditation (complex)	American Correctional Association, within three years

Designated capacity is 960. The institution held 1,543 people on the day the auditor arrived and averaged 1,563 over the preceding year; the population has since fallen to 1,304 as of September 2026, still 136 percent of capacity. The Inspector General recorded the same pattern across the campus in 2021: “the inmate population at each FCC Butner institution exceeds the institution’s rated inmate capacity.”

Sexual assault forensic examinations are carried out at a local hospital rather than on site.

The Special Housing Unit prosecution

On December 8, 2021, a lieutenant supervising the Special Housing Unit here ordered an officer to assault a prisoner in his care, and he was convicted of it.

The facts come from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina. A female officer reported to Lieutenant Daniel Mitchell that a man housed in the Special Housing Unit, identified in court only as K.G., had exposed himself to her. “The BOP disciplinary policy for such behavior is a formal write-up of the misconduct. Instead, Mitchell directed another officer to take inmate K.G. to a holding cell and teach him a lesson by ‘tuning him up.’ There, the inmate was physically assaulted by the officer. In later interviews, Mitchell and the officer both admitted to meeting in Mitchell’s office where they agreed that the officer would assault K.G. as punishment.” Mitchell pleaded guilty on December 23, 2024, and was sentenced on April 11, 2025, by Judge Terrence W. Boyle to two years of probation. The Inspector General investigated.

It is one prosecution, not a description of the unit today. It is specific and proven, it happened in the unit that holds all of the complex’s segregation cells, and it turned on a supervisor choosing force over the incident report the rules required. Where an incident report is the lawful route, its absence is a fact a lawyer can use.

Two nearby cases belong to other institutions: the three lieutenants and former investigative technician indicted in September 2025 for civil rights offenses were assigned to FCI Butner Low, where our FCI Butner Low page follows the case, and the 2020 indictment of two men for inciting a riot arose at FCI Butner I (FCI Butner Medium I).

The roof, and what the union says about it

On April 14, 2024, air ducts in a housing unit here fell out of the ceiling while staff and prisoners were inside it, landing on computers, charging stations, and the floor. The account is the union’s: AFGE Local 408 said in a press release of April 30, 2024, that “the roof of the same building has been compromised for years, yet the prison has been delaying making the necessary repairs,” and that the union had “been sounding the alarm about the hazardous and even deadly conditions inside FCC Butner for over a decade.” It asked the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for a special inspection of the roof structure and an air-quality test for mold from the continuing leaks. No published record shows what OSHA did.

That is a union’s characterization of its employer and should be read as one. It is also the only public, dated account of the physical condition of a building here, and it sits beside the Bureau’s own audit language on staffing: the complex “reported all post assignments are filled with overtime usage,” most often to cover family and medical leave, sick leave, and training. For a family, staffing is why a callout is canceled, a program has a waiting list, an appointment slips, or a visit is cut short.

FCI Butner Medium II in the news

Recent news about FCI Butner Medium II centers on the 2025 sentencing of a Special Housing Unit lieutenant, the air ducts that fell from a housing unit ceiling in 2024, and a death in February 2024; older items concern the death of a Cali cartel co-founder, the Bureau’s 2021 death releases, the Inspector General’s remote inspection, and the institution’s March 2020 restrictions. Newest first:

• April 2025 — a lieutenant who had supervised the Special Housing Unit here was sentenced to two years of probation for conspiring to violate a prisoner’s civil rights, after directing an officer to assault a man in the unit rather than write him up.
• April 2024 — air ducts fell from a housing unit ceiling with staff and prisoners inside. The staff union called for an OSHA inspection of the roof and an air-quality test for mold.
• February 2024 — CBS 17 reported that Glenn McDougald, 57, was found unresponsive after what the institution described as a perceived altercation and was pronounced dead. He had arrived at Butner ten weeks earlier; the FBI was notified.
• May 2022 — Gilberto Rodríguez-Orejuela, co-founder of the Cali cartel, died in Bureau custody. Bureau records carry him at this institution.
• January to December 2021 — the Bureau posted four news releases reporting the deaths of people held at this institution, which the releases call FCI Butner II and FCI Butner Medium II; the Bureau’s releases are listed on its press release page.
• January 2021 — the Inspector General’s remote inspection of the complex recorded 1,020 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 25 deaths as of July 2020, and that this institution and the medical center, where people are housed in locked cells, had 11 cases between them.
• March 2020 — nine days before the Bureau told institutions to do so, this institution restricted movement and suspended visiting after 29 people here were isolated with an influenza-like illness.

Frequently asked questions about FCI Butner Medium II

Problems at FCI Butner Medium II: where we can help

The problems that recur at FCI Butner Medium II follow from its record: cell housing in a prison running well over its designated capacity, all of the complex’s segregation cells, a medical care level built for chronic illness in a population that runs to age 90, and no sex offender programming in a complex known for it.

• Special Housing Unit placements. Every segregation cell at FCC Butner is here, and a placement that outlasts its justification costs visits, telephone access, and programming at once. The route out runs through the administrative remedy process, and each rung has a deadline; our guide explains how to file a BP-9. See solitary confinement and protective custody.
• Disciplinary proceedings that threaten good conduct time. A federal court has now heard that a supervisor at this institution bypassed the incident-report process here in favor of force. Where the paperwork that should exist does not, that is evidence.
• Designation and transfer. Sex offender treatment cannot be had at Butner; it takes a referral to one of the ten institutions that run a program, through the Designation and Sentence Computation Center. So does a Correctional Management Plan. Both are transfer questions, not unit-team questions. See federal prison transfers.
• Medical care at a level 3 institution. When a condition outgrows level 3, the answer is a care-level redesignation, argued from the medical records and the Bureau’s own classification criteria. Where negligence has caused injury, Federal Tort Claims Act claims are a separate track with their own deadline.
• RDAP eligibility and the reduction of up to a year under § 3621(e), at one of only two programs on this campus. See our early release page.
• First Step Act time credits — whether they are being earned, calculated, and applied, and whether the programs the guide says are approved here are actually running.
• Halfway house and home confinement placement, which is handled under the Bureau’s placement procedures by the reentry management office for the district of release; RRM Raleigh, whose listed districts are the three in North Carolina and the two in Virginia, covers releases to those districts; bop.gov lists Eastern Virginia under RRM Baltimore as well, so a release there may run through either office.
• Compassionate release and sentence computation errors, which is where a medium holding men in their eighties and nineties concentrates. See the Bureau’s compassionate release policy and its 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 across the system. Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, the firm’s Managing Director, writes the federal prison policy material on this site; he is not counsel of record, and legal representation is provided by Elizabeth Franklin-Best. Call (843) 620-1100 or contact us to talk through a specific situation.

Sources and currency

Bureau of Prisons documents

• FCI Butner Medium II, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026.
• Complex Supplement BUX 5267.09A, Visiting Regulations, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Federal Correctional Complex Butner, 2026. Replaced Complex Supplement BUX 5267.09 (2025).
• FCC Butner Psychology Doctoral Internship 2026–2027, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Federal Correctional Complex Butner, 2025. Describes the Commitment and Treatment Program and the drug programs at Butner.
• FCI Butner Medium II Commissary Shopping List, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2022.
• Institution Supplement BTF 5267.09.04A, Visiting Regulations, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCI Butner Medium II, 2017. Its schedule is superseded by the 2026 complex supplement.
• Inmate Handbook, Federal Correctional Institution II, Butner, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2008. The institution’s admission and orientation handbook.
• Trust Fund/Deposit Fund Manual, Program Statement 4500.13, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Replaced Program Statement 4500.12 (2025).
• Inmate Telephone Regulations, Program Statement 5264.09, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Replaced Program Statement 5264.08 (2008).
• Sex Offender Programs, Program Statement 5324.10, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2025.
• First Step Act Approved Programs Guide, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Reentry Services Division, 2026.
• Institution Care Levels for Medical Assignment and Institutional Mental Health Care Levels, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2024. Released under Freedom of Information Act request 2024-03455 and published by the Washington Lawyers’ Committee.
• About Federal Inmate Records, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. What the location and release entries on a prisoner’s record mean.
• Community Ties, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The Bureau’s mail, email, and money instructions.
• Press Releases, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2021. The Bureau’s index of its news releases.
• RRM Raleigh, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The judicial districts the Raleigh reentry office serves.
• RRM Baltimore, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The judicial districts the Baltimore reentry office serves.

Audits and inspections

• PREA Audit Report: Federal Correctional Complex Butner, Corrections Consulting Services, 2026.
• Audit of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Documentation of its Compliance with Select National Menu Requirements, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2026. Report 26-021.
• Remote Inspection of Federal Correctional Complex Butner, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2021. Pandemic Response Report 21-031.
• COVID-19 Survey Preliminary Results, District of Columbia Corrections Information Council, 2020. Published as an appendix to the Council’s 2021 performance oversight responses.
• Follow-up Audit of Medical Development International’s Performance Under the Federal Correctional Complex Butner Medical Services Contract, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2013. Audit Report 14-02.

Court records

• Former Bureau of Prisons Officer Sentenced for Violating Inmate’s Civil Rights, U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina, 2025. Daniel Mitchell’s sentence.
• United States v. Mitchell, No. 5:24-cr-00332-BO, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, 2024–2025.
• United States v. Comstock, 560 U.S. 126 (2010), Supreme Court of the United States, 2010.

News and other sources

• UNICOR Eyewear and Optics, UNICOR (Federal Prison Industries), 2026.
• AFGE Calls for Immediate Action to Address Health and Safety Concerns at FCC Butner, American Federation of Government Employees, 2024.
• Man dies following altercation at the Federal Correction Institution in Butner, the institution says, CBS 17, 2024.
• 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e), Imprisonment of a convicted person, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).
• 18 U.S.C. § 4248, Civil commitment of a sexually dangerous person, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).

Sources reviewed September 2026.

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