FCI Oxford: Federal Prison in Wisconsin, Now Low Security

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

FCI Oxford at a glance

FCI Oxford is a low-security federal prison for men in Adams County, Wisconsin, and the only Bureau of Prisons institution in the state. It held 1,160 people as of September 2026. Its minimum-security satellite camp, still described as open on many websites, has held no one for more than two years.

Official name	Federal Correctional Institution, Oxford
BOP code	OXF
Security level	Low; men
Population	1,160 (as of September 2026)
Visiting	Saturday, Sunday and federal holidays 8:15 a.m.–3:00 p.m.; no weekday visiting · see visiting hours
Inmate mail	Inmate Name & Register Number · FCI Oxford · Federal Correctional Institution · P.O. Box 1000 · Oxford, WI 53952
Send money	Lockbox · Western Union (code city FBOP, DC) · MoneyGram (receive code 7932)
Phone	608-584-5511 · Fax 608-584-6314
Street address	350 Elk Avenue, at County Road G, Oxford, WI 53952 · Adams County
Judicial district	Western District of Wisconsin
BOP region	North Central
Designated capacity	840
Housing	Ten housing units, multiple-occupancy cells; no open dormitory
Special Housing Unit	Yes · 40 cells
Medical care level	1
Mental health care level	1
RDAP	See RDAP and drug treatment
UNICOR	See whether UNICOR operates
Camp	None operating · see the camp

The prison sits in open farm country about 60 miles north of Madison, among the federal prisons in Wisconsin and under the Bureau’s North Central Region. On June 21, 2023 the Bureau announced that it would convert it from medium to low security, citing the First Step Act and the need for low-security beds closer to people’s homes.

Wisconsin has one federal prison, and its camp is gone

FCI Oxford is the only Federal Bureau of Prisons institution in Wisconsin; the Bureau’s roster carries one entry for the state. Other Wisconsin prisons a search turns up are state institutions, and a person sentenced in a Wisconsin state court will not be found in the federal locator. The nearest federal alternatives for men are across the state lines: FCI Sandstone in Minnesota, FCI Milan in Michigan, and FCI Pekin, FCI Greenville and FCI Thomson in Illinois, all low- or medium-security institutions in the same North Central Region.

Settle the camp first, because the Bureau’s own website is in two minds about it. The roster record for OXF says the institution has no camp. The PREA auditor who walked the grounds on March 4–6, 2025 recorded a designated camp capacity of 208 and a camp population of zero, with an average daily camp population of zero over the preceding twelve months. The visiting supplement of October 2, 2025 lists “Removed FPC Visiting Procedures” among its changes. And on December 5, 2024 the Associated Press reported the Bureau’s announcement that it would suspend operations at three satellite camps, Oxford’s among them, adding on the agency’s word that the Oxford camp “was cleared out in June.” Wisconsin Public Radio put a year on that five days later: Russ Kaminsky, who leads AFGE Local 3495, told the station the camp was cleared out in June 2023; the station reported that about 85 men had been held there, and a Bureau spokesperson said the camp’s staff had moved to the main prison. The wire-service wording reads as June 2024; the union’s date is a year earlier, and the auditor’s twelve months of zeroes fit the earlier date. On the auditor’s figures, no one has been housed at the camp since at least March 2024.

Yet the Bureau’s page for FCI Oxford still shows a second mailing address “For inmates at the Camp” with its own post office box, and still links a camp commissary price list dated January 1, 2023. The address block is real data from the Bureau’s feed rather than the empty placeholder other facility pages carry, which is why it survives. Do not use it: a self-surrender letter that names the camp is describing a place that no longer takes people. A copy of the same page saved in June 2026 still described Oxford as a low-security institution “with adjacent minimum security satellite camp”; by September that clause was gone, with no notice on the facility page explaining any of this.

One more piece of geography matters for anyone filing papers. The prison sits in Adams County, which 28 U.S.C. § 130 places in the Western District of Wisconsin, with court at Madison. Its mailing address is the Oxford post office, and the village of Oxford is in Marquette County, which the same statute assigns to the Eastern District; the Bureau’s address feed records both counties. A habeas petition about custody here belongs in the Western District, which decided all but one of the cases discussed further down this page; the exception was filed in New Hampshire and transferred to Madison.

What is the security level at FCI Oxford?

Low. The Bureau announced on June 21, 2023 that “FCI Oxford will transition from a Medium security male institution to a Low security male institution,” the fourth mission change of that month after FCI Memphis, FCI Estill and the Estill camp, and gave its reason in the same notice: to house more people “within 500 miles of their release residence” and to “alleviate the Bureau’s growing need for low security beds.” The Justice Department’s Inspector General later put a number on it. In a footnote to an audit posted on September 25, 2025 (Report 25-083) it recorded the Bureau’s claim that lowering Oxford and Memphis from medium to low had “resulted in 1,070 inmates being placed within 500 miles of the release residence as of February 2025,” and it found that 41 percent of the people it evaluated were more than 500 driving miles from home on September 28, 2024, naming a lack of institutions in the north-central United States as a likely contributing factor.

For a family, the practical meaning of low security is who gets sent here. Under the Bureau’s designation manual, Program Statement 5100.08, a man scores 12 to 15 security points for a low-security institution, against 0 to 11 for a camp and 16 to 23 for a medium. The score is only half of it: a Public Safety Factor such as Deportable Alien, Juvenile Violence or Sentence Length (more than ten years remaining) places a man whose points would put him at a camp in a low-security institution instead, and a Management Variable can move him either way. The March 2025 PREA audit records the facility’s security and custody levels as “Low, In.” If the person you are helping expected a camp and was designated here instead, the Public Safety Factor is the first thing to ask the unit team to identify in writing. Our guides to the intake process and preparing for prison cover the first days after arrival.

The building has not changed to match the label. The 2025 audit counts ten housing units, every one of them multiple-occupancy cells and none an open dormitory, and 40 segregation cells, across 42 buildings. The audit records a designated capacity of 840 at the main institution, a “current population” of 1,152 on its facility form and a first-day headcount of 1,160 (March 4, 2025), and confirms the facility “has been over capacity at any point in the past 12 months.” The population on the Bureau’s report dated September 10, 2026 is 1,160, which is 138 percent of that designated figure. Turnover is high: 1,010 people were admitted in the twelve months before the March 2025 audit and the average stay was 372 days.

Age is worth a sentence, because the record contradicts a piece of received wisdom. When former Illinois governor George Ryan was moved out of the Oxford camp in February 2008, a Bureau spokeswoman, Felicia Ponce, said in answer to a reporter’s question that the level of medical care at Oxford had been changed and that inmates older than 70 were no longer housed there, as the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported. Whatever was true then, the March 2025 audit records an age range of 20 to 84. The facility page on bop.gov gives no care level, but the Bureau’s own care-level chart of 2024, released under the Freedom of Information Act, lists Oxford at medical Care Level 1, which the Bureau’s patient-care policy, Program Statement 6031.06 (2026), describes as housing people who are “generally healthy but may have limited medical problems.” The undated mental-health chart in the same release also lists Oxford at Level 1, and the Bureau’s mental-health policy cites “the lack of resources to address such a relapse at a CARE1-MH facility” when it explains why people with a major mental illness or on antipsychotic medication are not ordinarily classified at that level.

Who are the notable inmates at FCI Oxford?

None of the men on the usual lists is still here. Oxford’s reputation as the destination for Chicago’s political class rests on two men who passed through in the 1990s and 2000s, and the St. Paul Pioneer Press called it in 2008 “the prison of choice for many of the city’s white-collar criminals, politicians and big-name mobsters.” Both men were held at the camp, which no longer takes anyone, at a time when the main institution was a medium. Each entry below carries the register number, so anyone can repeat the search in the Bureau’s inmate locator.

Name	Status	What the record shows
George H. Ryan (16627-424)	Former. Released July 3, 2013; died May 2, 2025, aged 91	Former governor of Illinois, convicted of racketeering and related offenses. Reported to the Oxford camp on November 7, 2007 and was moved to the Terre Haute camp on February 28, 2008, after less than four months; a Bureau spokeswoman said Oxford no longer housed inmates older than 70. His wife told the Chicago Sun-Times his job here was wiping down equipment in a workout room
Dan Rostenkowski (25338-016)	Former. Released October 15, 1997; died August 11, 2010, aged 82	Former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee; pleaded guilty in April 1996 to two counts of mail fraud and was sentenced to 17 months. He reported first to the federal medical center at Rochester, Minnesota, on July 22, 1996, finished his prison time at Oxford, and left for a Chicago halfway house on August 19, 1997
Michael Nunn (11772-030)	Former. Released August 22, 2019	Former world middleweight and super-middleweight boxing champion. A first-person account in Boxing News in May 2017, fourteen years into his sentence, was signed from “Oxford Federal Correctional Institution, Wisconsin, April 26 2017”

Three details are commonly reported wrong. Rostenkowski did not serve 17 months at Oxford; 17 months was the sentence, and from his surrender at Rochester to his release date is under fifteen. George Ryan is often listed as an Oxford inmate as though he served his sentence here; he was at the camp for under four months, and a Bureau spokeswoman’s comment when he left is the only public statement about an age ceiling at this institution. And Ed Burke, the Chicago alderman sentenced in 2024, never came here: his lawyers had asked for the Oxford camp, told the court in August 2024 that it was “closed,” and he reported to the federal prison at Thomson, Illinois; the locator shows him released on November 24, 2025.

How do I find someone at FCI Oxford?

Search the Bureau’s public Inmate Locator by name or, better, by the eight-digit register number, which does not change across institutions; for someone in custody the result gives the institution’s name and type and a projected release date. Two things trip families up at Oxford in particular. The locator shows “Oxford FCI” for everyone here, and an older letter that mentions “Satellite Camp” is out of date. And compound surnames are sometimes hyphenated, reversed or shortened in court records; if a search fails, try the variants with the first name, and use the register number if you have it, because a surname-only search can come back empty even when the record exists. No result can also mean the person is still in Marshals custody awaiting designation, or is in state custody, which the federal locator does not cover. Our explanation of register numbers covers what the digits mean.

How do I write to someone at FCI Oxford?

All mail goes to one post office box, and the register number has to be on it. The Bureau’s correspondence rules sit behind the local ones. Use the address exactly as the Bureau prints it:

Personal and legal mail

Books, magazines and newspapers

Inmate Name & Register Number FCI Oxford Federal Correctional Institution P.O. Box 1000 Oxford, WI 53952

Same address. Hardcover books and newspapers must be sent by the publisher, a book club or a bookstore; at a low-security institution softcover books and magazines may come from any source (28 C.F.R. § 540.71(a)(3)), although the 2022 handbook, written before Oxford became a low, still asks for all publications from those sources. The handbook caps what a person may keep at ten periodicals and five books, with more allowed for legal publications on request

Watch the ZIP code. The institution’s own visiting supplement, in the section that tells publishers where to send books, prints the address as “P.O. Box 1000, Oxford, Wisconsin 53752-1000.” That ZIP is wrong; the Bureau’s roster, its address feed and its facility page all give 53952, and the supplement’s own cover page says 53952. If a bookseller copies the supplement, the parcel is misaddressed before it leaves the warehouse.

Two local rules from the January 2022 handbook change how you write. Incoming general correspondence “will be photocopied in black and white,” and personal photographs “will be copied in color,” which means the person receives copies, not the originals, so do not send anything you want back, and do not expect a card to arrive as a card. And outgoing legal mail is not dropped in the unit mailbox with everything else: it is handed, sealed, to mail-room staff in the lobby of the Lieutenant’s Office at the 7:40 a.m. work call, with the inmate’s photo ID checked against the return address, and it leaves for the post office Monday to Friday. A deadline filing that misses the 7:40 window on a Friday waits until Monday. Certified mail is available through the institution library; express mail and private carriers are not.

Legal mail is opened in the person’s presence and not read only if the envelope both names the attorney with an indication that the sender is an attorney and carries the marking “Special Mail — Open only in the presence of the inmate.” The handbook’s example of a wrong envelope names the firm but not the lawyer, and is treated as general correspondence. Our guide to attorney-client communication in the Bureau covers the rest. For court hearings by phone or video, the handbook gives lawyers one channel: “Your attorney will need to contact the institution by emailing oxf-paralegal-s@bop.gov to facilitate all requests for in-person phone or video court hearings,” and unmonitored legal calls are set up through the unit team, not by calling the switchboard. Our page on writing to someone in federal prison explains what gets rejected.

How do I send money to someone at FCI Oxford?

Not to Oxford. Funds go to the Bureau’s national lockbox in Iowa or through Western Union or MoneyGram — our guide to sending money to a federal prisoner compares the routes — and all three routes need the committed name and the eight-digit register number. The visiting-room officers will not take money, and the supplement says so in capitals.

Route	Details	When it posts
Mail: 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 on arrival. U.S. postal money orders and government checks post without a hold; other instruments carry an automatic 15-day hold, foreign instruments 45 days
Western Union Quick Collect	Code city FBOP, DC; account is the register number followed by the last name with no spaces	Posted within two to four hours, the Bureau’s money page says (two hours in the manual), when the transfer is made between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. Eastern; later transfers post by 7:00 a.m. the next day
MoneyGram ExpressPayment	Receive code 7932, company Federal Bureau of Prisons, Washington, DC; up to $300 online	Same as Western Union

The Oxford handbook, dated January 2022, lists “personal checks” among the approved instruments. That is no longer right. The Bureau’s trust fund manual, Program Statement 4500.13, issued May 7, 2026, states that personal checks and cash “cannot be accepted,” and the Bureau’s own money page says the same. Anything enclosed with a money order, a note or a photograph, “will be discarded.” Sending more than the person can spend does no harm, but it does nothing either: commissary spending is capped at $460 a month under the same manual, so the rest sits in the account. Our full guide to sending money to a federal prisoner compares the fees.

What are the visiting hours at FCI Oxford?

Weekends and federal holidays only, 8:15 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. That is from Institution Supplement OXF 5267.09F, Visiting Regulations, signed by Warden E. Emmerich on October 2, 2025, which replaced the April 2023 version and lists “Updated Visiting Hours” among its changes. General-population visiting does not happen on weekdays. The January 2022 handbook, which the Bureau still links from the facility page, says the visiting room is open from 8:00 a.m. on Fridays as well; that is the old schedule, and anyone who plans a Friday around it will be turned away at the lobby.

The hours have a hole in the middle. Visitors “will not be processed into the visiting room from 9:15 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.,” anyone already in the lobby before 9:15 is processed, and processing “will cease” at 2:00 p.m. for the rest of the day; no one enters or leaves during the 10:00 a.m. count. So there are two arrival windows: be in the lobby before 9:15, or arrive between 11:00 and 2:00. Any deviation from the schedule is posted on the Bureau’s public website, and a caller on the day is told only whether visiting is “open or closed,” never why.

This is a seated, barrier visit, and the supplement is unusually explicit about it. Inmates “will sit against the walls of the visiting room,” visitors sit across from them “with a barrier in-between them,” and “the only exception” to the rule against contact “will be a hug and kiss at the beginning and the end of the visit.” Inmates may not go to the vending machines with their visitors. The visitor handout attached to the same document says both that hand-holding and embracing are permitted on arrival and departure and, a few lines later, that “all visits are non-contact”; read the body of the supplement as controlling. People in the Special Housing Unit visit by video from the visiting room’s video area, one hour, first come first served, on the same days.

Who can visit, and how many

• The approved list holds up to 15 immediate family members and other relatives, plus up to 10 friends and associates. Immediate family means mother, father, stepparents, foster parents, brothers, sisters, spouse and children as they appear in the presentence report.
• During the first three weeks after arrival, immediate family can be added from an A&O form without waiting for the background check; everyone else completes a Request for Visitation form, is cleared through NCIC or the presentence report, and must appear on the computerized list before admission. A friend must have known the person before confinement.
• Six visitors at a time, children counted. Anyone who leaves the visiting room may not come back the same day, so a large family cannot rotate through in shifts.
• Former staff, contractors and volunteers are barred for two years after leaving; former inmates and their relatives are “rarely” approved and only by the warden.
• When the room is overcrowded, visits end in a fixed order: those who agree to leave first, then special visits, then the most frequent visitors, then “visitors from the local area, within a 100-mile radius,” and only as a last resort first-in, first-out. No visit is cut short before two hours, and the rule is written in favor of whoever drove furthest.

What visitors can wear and bring

Khaki is the inmate uniform, so khaki-colored clothing on a visitor is refused at the door, and so is camouflage. Also barred: sleeveless, halter, tank and tube tops; plunging necklines; anything transparent, spandex or form-fitting; clothing with holes; hats, caps and hooded shirts; shorts of any kind; flip-flops, shower shoes, open-toe or open-heel shoes and heels over three inches; watches; and money. Skirts, dresses and capris must reach or pass the knee when seated. What may come in is short: jewelry normally worn, a sweater that stays on, heart medication and inhalers, feminine hygiene products, and for a baby dry formula, sealed baby food, diapers, two changes of clothes and a blanket no larger than 40 by 40 inches, all in a clear bag no bigger than ten inches by six.

The rule that catches people in a Wisconsin winter is this one: “Coats, jackets, gloves or scarves (any type of outdoor apparel)” are not permitted in the visiting room. There is a coat rack in the front lobby, and that is where they stay. Everything else, and the supplement names cell phones, handbags and pagers, “must be stored in the visitor’s vehicle. There are no storage areas available for visitor’s personal property.” A visitor who arrives by taxi from the Wisconsin Dells with a handbag has nowhere to put it.

Identification and screening

Every visitor aged 16 and over shows a valid state or federal photo ID and signs the Notification to Visitor form; children under 16 must be with an adult. The lobby officer asks each visitor whether they are carrying firearms, ammunition, weapons, narcotics, cell phones or other contraband, and a “yes” stops processing for everyone until the Operations Lieutenant has dealt with it. Visitors and their belongings clear a walk-through metal detector, and the supplement adds random pat searches, vehicle searches and ion-spectrometry screening for drug residue. Your ID does not come back to you at the desk: it goes with the escorting officer to an alphabetized box in the visiting room and is returned as you leave. Religious clothing does not exempt a visitor from search; searches follow the Bureau’s national visiting regulations. Our general guide to federal prison visitation and our page on searches and contraband cover the national rules these local procedures implement; the two most recent contraband prosecutions from this institution, both involving buprenorphine strips and one of them a visiting-room hand-off, are in the news section below.

Legal visits, and what happens in a lockdown

Attorney visits should be booked in advance and are visually but not audibly monitored; legal papers to be reviewed during a visit must be cleared through the Associate Warden (Programs) first, and nothing may be exchanged in the room, so documents go by mail. The October 2025 supplement added a subsection with a procedure for “essential legal visits” during a lockdown, meaning visits that are “legally urgent, time sensitive, or court mandated.” They are confirmed 24 hours ahead, scheduled on weekdays between 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m., and limited to five a day for the whole institution, with video conferencing “preferred.” If a client here has a filing due during a lockdown, ask early for one of the five daily slots the October 2025 supplement allows, and ask for video.

Getting there

The prison is at 350 Elk Avenue, at the corner of County Road G, which the supplement places “approximately 8 miles west of Westfield; 13 miles east of Adams.” From Interstate 39, take Exit 113 (County Highway E, Westfield), follow County E west to County G, turn left on G and right on Elk Avenue. From Interstate 90/94, take Exit 69 (Highway 82, Mauston), go east on 82, turn left onto County G northbound and follow it to Elk Avenue. Visitors park in the marked area on the east side of the main lot; the lobby officer will send you back out to move the car if you parked anywhere else. The 2022 handbook also gives a back route from the Wisconsin Dells by Highway 23 and County B; it runs on rural roads, so the interstate routes are the safer choice after dark or in snow.

Planning a visit from out of state

The supplement assumes many visitors will travel a long way. It names Dane County Regional Airport in Madison as “the nearest major airport,” with taxi and limousine service from the terminal; Wisconsin Watch put the distance from Madison at 60 miles in January 2025. It names Greyhound stops and Amtrak stations at Portage and at the Wisconsin Dells, with taxi service from both towns, and warns that “there is no commercial transportation available from either Westfield or Adams-Friendship.” Chicago is about three and a half hours by road on the Pioneer Press’s 2008 estimate; from there or from Minneapolis it is a long day with an early start, and the 2:00 p.m. cut-off means a late arrival gets nothing.

For an overnight, the supplement points to “over 70 motels in the Portage and Wisconsin Dells areas” and adds that summer is peak tourist season there, “so it is best to call in advance.” In winter, plan around the rules rather than the forecast: coats, gloves and scarves stay out of the visiting room, there is nowhere inside to keep a phone, and the supplement’s answer to a storm is to check the Bureau’s website or call 608-584-5511 that morning and be told “open” or “closed.” If you are flying in for a Saturday, arrive Friday.

Spanish-speaking families have one more trap. The Bureau links a Spanish edition of the current supplement, “Regulaciones de Visitas,” dated October 2, 2025 and matching the English one. But an older Spanish edition, number 5267.09D of October 1, 2020, was still served at an unlinked address on bop.gov as of September 2026. It describes the pandemic-era schedule, split sessions on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, Mondays and holidays, and it still describes camp visiting. A search engine will find it, and a family that follows it will arrive on a Monday to a closed room.

How do phone calls and email work at FCI Oxford?

The person inside places the call; no one can call in. The national allowance changed on September 3, 2026, when the Bureau’s telephone regulations, Program Statement 5264.09, rescinded the 2008 policy: everyone with a phone account may now use up to 510 minutes per calendar month, of which 300 come free to people eligible for First Step Act telephone incentives, and anyone who uses up the 300 may buy the remaining 210 whether or not they are FSA-eligible. A single call should generally not exceed 15 minutes, there must be at least 30 minutes between completed calls, and properly arranged unmonitored legal calls do not count against the 510. The Oxford handbook of January 2022 still describes the old scheme, 300 minutes a month with an extra 100 in November and December; the new program statement carries no holiday supplement, and it controls.

The local details are the useful part. Phones at Oxford are tied to the housing unit: “an inmate living in Wood House can only access the inmate telephone in Wood House,” and each unit’s officer runs the schedule, which on weekdays leaves the late morning and the evening as the times a call home can come (the blackout hours are in the daily-life table below). Calls are placed with a nine-digit access code that follows the person from institution to institution; a compromised code costs $5 to replace. Money moves from the commissary account to the phone account in whole dollars, twice a day, and cannot move back except on release or after a telephone restriction of more than ten days. A person in administrative detention gets one call every 30 days. All calls except approved legal calls are recorded, and there are no third-party or forwarded calls. The rest of the national rules are in our guide to federal inmate phone calls.

Email is TRULINCS, reached from outside through CorrLinks. At Oxford the handbook prices it at five cents a minute of terminal time and fifteen cents a printed page; messages are text only, 13,000 characters at most, purged after 60 days; and the contact list holds 100 active addresses. Every piece of outgoing paper mail needs a TRULINCS-printed mailing label, five labels a day, and the handbook advises keeping spares in the cell in case the printer fails over a weekend. No one in the Special Housing Unit has TRULINCS access, so the handbook tells people to keep a paper copy of their contact list. Email with a lawyer is not privileged. See our page on CorrLinks and TRULINCS.

What can people buy at the FCI Oxford commissary?

The spending limit is $460 a month, set by Program Statement 4500.13 (2026), plus $50 for the November and December holiday period, for no more than one validation period. The January 2022 Oxford handbook says $360 a month and $300 a quarter for special purpose orders; both figures are obsolete, the manual raised them to $460 and $600, and one special purpose order a month is the rule unless the warden approves more. The handbook also says the limit “does not include telephone credits, stamps or over the counter medications.” Telephone credits are not on the current exclusion list. The manual’s list is exhaustive, “the only items excluded,” and it runs: postage stamps, nicotine replacement patches and lozenges, over-the-counter medications and vitamins, kosher and halal shelf-stable meals for people refusing the financial responsibility program, copy cards and paper, footwear including sneakers and safety shoes, mattresses and the secured media device. On the manual’s wording, money moved to the phone account counts against the $460.

The institution’s own order form, priced January 1, 2023 and signed by a previous warden, R. D. Keyes, is the most recent price list the Bureau publishes for Oxford, and it agrees with the manual on what is excluded: “OTC, stamps, copy cards do not count against spending limit.” Stamps are capped at $12 a purchase, copy cards, wash cards and photo tickets at five each, twelve-packs of soda at two, and each over-the-counter medicine at two. There are no add-ons or substitutions at the window, and all food items are non-transferable, which the form prints in capitals. For orientation only, that form priced ramen at 50 cents, tuna at $3.20 and Folgers at $8.35. The Bureau still links a second form for the camp, also dated January 1, 2023; it describes a commissary for a population of zero. For the rules that apply at every institution, see our federal prison commissary page.

What programs are available at FCI Oxford?

RDAP and drug treatment

Listings that give FCI Oxford a Residential Drug Abuse Program are out of step with the Bureau’s own lists. The disagreement matters because the § 3621(e) sentence reduction of up to a year depends on completing the residential program. The list of RDAP locations printed inside the Bureau’s August 2026 First Step Act Approved Programs Guide, headed “57 RDAPS at 50 Locations” and marked “Updated 6/4/2026,” gives eleven North Central Region sites, Englewood, the two Florence institutions, the Leavenworth camp, Marion, Milan, Sandstone, Springfield, Terre Haute, Waseca and Yankton, and Oxford is not among them. The Bureau’s stand-alone list of January 2025, which counts 65 programs at 53 locations, does not have it either, while its list of November 2016, still served on bop.gov, did carry “FCI Oxford (WI).” Somewhere between those lists the program left, and the Bureau announced no change.

The January 2022 handbook, which the Bureau still links, describes a residential program run out of Columbia Unit, with Dane Cottage as the follow-on unit for graduates and the waiting list; the current lists disagree with the handbook, and the lists are the later document. What the guide’s by-institution grid does mark for Oxford is the non-residential drug treatment program and drug education, both of which the handbook describes. If someone was designated to Oxford expecting to complete RDAP, that expectation needs checking with the Drug Abuse Program Coordinator in writing before anything is planned around it, and a transfer to an RDAP institution may be the real question. Our page on the Residential Drug Abuse Program and the Bureau’s psychology treatment program rules explain how the referral and the interview window work.

Education and vocational training

The program most specific to this institution is the Food Service Training Center. The handbook describes a full-time work-study course in food preparation and management accredited by Fox Valley Technical College in Appleton, which awards credit toward an Associate of Science degree; students earn institution pay while they study, work toward a Department of Labor apprenticeship in hotel and restaurant cooking, and may sit for American Culinary Federation certification. One class of about nine is admitted every nine months; applicants need a diploma or GED, food-service experience and two to six years left on the sentence, and graduates are expected to work in Food Service afterward.

The rest is the standard federal menu, with local numbers. Literacy, pre-GED and GED classes carry the 240-hour mandatory minimum for anyone without a diploma, with a $25 award on passing; English as a second language runs until a person tests at the eighth-grade level; adult continuing education classes run in the evenings for eight to twelve weeks. Apprenticeships are Department of Labor registered and run 6,000 to 8,000 hours, four to five years, in the facilities trades from machinist and welder to electrician and plumber. The Bureau’s program guide names sixteen institutions where post-secondary education is funded by Pell grants, and Oxford is not one of them. The electronic law library, with typewriters for legal work, is open weekdays 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. and 12:30 to 3:30 p.m., Monday to Thursday evenings 5:30 to 7:30, and Saturdays 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. One line in the handbook matters for anyone with a Wisconsin state matter: a “legal advisory service” for state-law questions is available through the University of Wisconsin Law School’s intern program, requested through the unit team. Our guides to prison education, vocational training and the law library cover how these work system-wide.

Psychology, faith-based and reentry programming

Two programs are named for Oxford in the controlling half of the Bureau’s August 2026 guide, the narrative cell that lists where each program runs. The RESOLVE Program, an 80-hour evidence-based recidivism reduction program for trauma-related mental health needs, is listed at 31 institutions and Oxford is one of them; the guide’s by-institution grid agrees, and the 2022 handbook confirms it in a sentence of its own, describing a Trauma in Life workshop and counseling groups for people with trauma and an associated mental health diagnosis, entered by cop-out to Psychology Services. The other is Hydroponics and Gardening, a 35-hour productive activity run by Recreation, which the guide names at six locations including Oxford. The 2022 handbook gives Psychology Services four psychologists and a visiting or tele-psychiatrist, and lists its standing First Step Act groups as Criminal Thinking, Anger Management, Illness Management and Recovery, Basic Cognitive Skills and Emotional Self-Regulation.

Federal Prison Industries is the program to be careful about. The guide’s narrative cell for Federal Prison Industries names 54 institutions where UNICOR operates, and Oxford is not on that list; the guide’s grid, one page over, marks Oxford as though it were. The two halves of the same document disagree, the named list is the one that controls, and the institution’s own 2022 handbook never mentions a factory, so treat UNICOR at Oxford as doubtful until the unit team answers the question in writing. The same grid marks 54 programs for Oxford whose narrative cells say only that they “may be offered at all BOP institutions,” among them Threshold, the Family Programming Series, Money Smart and Victim Impact; for those the grid is the only per-institution record there is, and a mark on a grid is permission, not a class with a start date. Religious Services runs a quarterly schedule posted on TRULINCS, approves all religious property and administers the religious diet; a minister of record can be added to the visiting list without counting against it. Our pages on religious programs and UNICOR give the national picture.

Can someone with an immigration detainer at FCI Oxford use First Step Act credits?

This question matters at Oxford because of who is held here. As of January 25, 2025, 59 percent of the people at Oxford were United States citizens, against 85 percent Bureau-wide; Wisconsin Watch reported that figure from the Bureau while checking, and rejecting, a congressman’s claim that more than half the prison was “illegal aliens.” The PREA auditor counted 335 people with limited English proficiency among 1,160 on March 4, 2025. For a non-citizen here, the difference between an immigration detainer and a final order of removal can be worth a year of a sentence.

The statute is 18 U.S.C. § 3632(d)(4)(E)(i): a prisoner who is the subject of a final order of removal is ineligible to have earned time credits applied toward supervised release or prerelease custody, and 28 C.F.R. § 523.44(a)(2) says the same. A detainer alone is not a final order, and the Bureau’s earlier practice of refusing credits to anyone with a detainer was withdrawn in February 2023, as Judge Peterson noted in Casseus v. Emmerich, No. 24-cv-776-jdp (W.D. Wis. Nov. 15, 2024). The hard cases are the ones where an immigration officer issued an expedited removal order years earlier. In Barajas-Barragan v. Emmerich, No. 24-cv-420-wmc (W.D. Wis. June 9, 2025), Judge Conley held that a supervisor-approved expedited removal order under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(1) is a final order, so the Bureau could not apply the petitioner’s credits even though he had been earning them since December 2018; a pending asylum claim did not change the answer, and any attack on the removal order itself belongs in the court of appeals under 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(5).

Two procedural points dispose of most of these petitions before anyone reaches the merits. A § 2241 petition must be filed in the district of confinement, the Western District of Wisconsin; one mailed from Oxford to a federal court in New Hampshire in 2026 was simply transferred to Madison. And the court expects the Bureau’s administrative remedy program to be exhausted first: Casseus was dismissed on that ground alone, the court adding that a credit calculation “requires a detailed analysis” the Bureau is charged with doing in the first instance. At least fifteen decisions from Oxford petitioners on this issue were handed down between September 2024 and May 2026, and the two summarized here are typical. The useful work is done before filing: getting the ICE paperwork, establishing whether a removal order exists and is final, and running the BP-8 through BP-11 chain against a calendar. Our guide to First Step Act time credits and our page on the administrative remedy program set out the mechanics.

What is daily life like at FCI Oxford?

The Bureau still links the January 2022 Admission and Orientation Handbook from the facility page, and it is the only public account of how a day here is arranged. Its weekday runs like this:

	Weekdays	Weekends and holidays
Wake-up	6:00 a.m. (5:30 a.m. for facilities workers)	—
Breakfast	6:30 a.m.	7:30 a.m.
Work call	7:35 a.m.; legal mail collected in the units at 7:40	—
Controlled movement	7:40 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., ten-minute moves on the half hour from 8:30	Not in effect
Midday meal	11:00 a.m. mainline, half an hour per work detail	Brunch at 11:00 a.m.
Uniform required	7:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.: khaki pants and a buttoned, tucked shirt with the institution belt	—
Recall	Recreation at 3:30 p.m., units at 3:45 p.m.	—
Evening moves	About 5:30, 6:30, 7:30 and 8:30 p.m., the last one final recall
Counts	Midnight, 3:00 a.m., 5:30 a.m., 4:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m.; the last two standing	The same, plus 10:00 a.m.
Pill line	6:15 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.
Telephones off limits	7:30 to 10:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. until the 4:00 p.m. count clears; one phone per unit stays on for shift workers	—

Source: FCI Oxford Admission and Orientation Handbook, January 2022. Written before the mission change; expect the times to have moved and the structure to have held.

The units carry Wisconsin county names: five “houses” on the east side (Portage, Sauk, Waupaca, Waushara and Wood) and five “cottages” on the west (Adams, Juneau, Marquette, Columbia and Dane). The handbook set Columbia aside as the drug-treatment unit and Dane as its transitional unit, an arrangement that presupposes the program discussed above. Beds are made by 7:30, a job is held ninety days before a change can be requested, the 2022 handbook puts about 150 men in Food Service, and the facilities shops train machinists, welders, electricians, plumbers, masons, carpenters and painters. Sick call is a triage line on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, with Wednesdays reserved for physicals and a two-dollar co-payment for any visit the inmate requests; a clinician is on duty from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., appointments for people in the Special Housing Unit are set within two weeks under normal circumstances, and a second pair of eyeglasses is bought at the inmate’s own expense.

Recreation is a gymnasium with courts, weights and billiards, an outside yard with a softball diamond, a running track, tennis, bocce, horseshoes and shuffleboard, a hobby-craft center for ceramics, slip and leather, an art program and a band room. The handbook also explains the siren: the yard tower carries an emergency annunciator, and when it sounds everyone on the yard or in the gym lies face down where they stand.

What do inspectors say about conditions at FCI Oxford?

The DOJ Office of the Inspector General has not conducted an on-site inspection of this facility. Oxford appears in Inspector General reports and press releases going back to 1999, but every one is a criminal case, a Bureau-wide review that listed the institution in a table, or a mention in passing. On the Inspector General’s own count in May 2026 (Report 26-055) it had conducted inspections at fourteen Bureau institutions since 2023, and Oxford was not one of them; its list of work under way as of September 2026 showed inspections at FCI Berlin and FCI El Reno and nothing specific to Wisconsin. The closest the office has come is the footnote in its September 2025 audit of the 500-mile rule discussed above. The District of Columbia’s Corrections Information Council, which inspects facilities holding people sentenced under the D.C. Code, has published no inspection report on Oxford.

The one outside inspection with a report is the Prison Rape Elimination Act audit, conducted on March 4–6, 2025 by Lynni O’Haver of Corrections Consulting Services and issued as a final report on March 29, 2025. See the Bureau’s sexual-abuse prevention policy. It found forty-four standards met, none unmet and one exceeded, standard 115.33 on inmate education, on the strength of Language Line interviews and multilingual postings for a population of which 335 people had limited English on March 4, 2025. The same form records 242 staff, four contractors and eleven volunteers against a headcount of 1,160 on the audit’s first day, and American Correctional Association accreditation. In the twelve months before the visit the institution logged five allegations of sexual abuse, four by other inmates and one against a staff member, and two of sexual harassment, all handled as administrative rather than criminal investigations. Of the four inmate-on-inmate abuse allegations, one was substantiated, one unsubstantiated, one unfounded and one still open; the allegation against staff was unsubstantiated. Unsubstantiated means the investigator could not find enough evidence either way, not that the complaint was false. The audit notes forensic examinations at a local hospital and Hope House of South Central Wisconsin in Baraboo as the outside advocate available to victims.

The Government Accountability Office’s May 2026 report on sexual abuse allegations across the Bureau (GAO-26-107343) gives Oxford two figures that must not be added together, because they come from different systems on different dates. Its Table 7 counts allegations against other incarcerated people by the year of the incident: none in 2020, one in 2021, four in 2022, one in 2023 and one in 2024, seven in all. Its Table 8 counts allegations against Bureau staff by the year reported: one, one, none, three and three across the same years, eight in all. These are allegations, not findings, and GAO does not adjust them for population.

FCI Oxford in the news

• September 2025 — assault on an officer. Demetrius Brown, an Oxford inmate, was sentenced to 33 months, consecutive, for attacking a correctional officer on August 24, 2024 after the officer found contraband in his cell.
• August 2024 — the visiting-room strips. James Mallett received two years, consecutive, after staff saw his mother pass him contraband in the visiting room in August 2023, later found to be sixty strips of buprenorphine and some synthetic marijuana; she received three years’ probation. The locator placed him at FCI Manchester on September 15, 2026.
• February 2024 — the roofing contractor. Brazos Urethane, Inc. entered a deferred prosecution agreement over a 2014 contract worth nearly $4 million to replace roofs at FCI Oxford: rather than pay for asbestos disposal, the company dumped roofing waste on land it bought near the prison, the state-ordered cleanup in 2022 cost $480,000, and the company agreed to a $300,000 penalty, the amount prosecutors said it had tried to save.
• May 2023 — the camp escape. Glynn Ford was found missing from the satellite camp at a count on April 23, 2022, was arrested in Chula Vista, California, that October, and drew 30 months, consecutive. He is now at FCI Marion with a projected release date of October 12, 2027.
• December 2022 — Matthew Kirst, found on September 28, 2021 with 175 strips of buprenorphine and synthetic marijuana, was sentenced to nine months, consecutive, on his second contraband conviction.
• 2017 — three former employees sentenced in one year: Anthony Blevins, a former officer who took $1,000 to bring in tobacco and $1,800 for pornographic magazines, two years’ probation; Amy Ziemann, a year and a day for false statements and soliciting false grand-jury testimony after an investigation into sexual acts with an inmate and contraband; Stacy Lenorud, a former Special Investigative Services technician, two years’ probation for introducing marijuana.
• January 29, 1984 — Officer Boyd H. Spikerman was killed by an inmate in the Juneau unit. He is on the Bureau’s roll of fallen staff.

Frequently asked questions about FCI Oxford

Problems at FCI Oxford: where we can help

The problems at Oxford have a local shape, and most of them run on deadlines the Bureau does not advertise:

• Immigration detainers and First Step Act credits. Whether an old removal order is final decides whether earned credits can ever be applied, and the Western District of Wisconsin will not reach the question until the BP-8 to BP-11 chain is complete. We help families obtain the ICE paperwork, establish what the order is, and build the record before a § 2241 petition is filed.
• The RDAP that is not on the list. A person sentenced with a § 3621(e) reduction in mind may arrive to find the Bureau’s own lists do not name Oxford; the remedy is an interview request in writing and, if necessary, a transfer to an institution the June 2026 list does name — see RDAP and early release — on a timetable that leaves the program time to finish.
• Designation and the 500-mile rule. Oxford was converted to low security to hold people nearer home in a region short of federal beds, and the Inspector General’s 2025 audit found the Bureau measuring that distance in straight lines. Security points, Public Safety Factors and Management Variables under Program Statement 5100.08 are all arguable on paper.
• Contraband cases and discipline. Three of the prosecutions in the news list above began with contraband found in a cell, on a prisoner or passed in the visiting room, and a finding by the Discipline Hearing Officer can cost good conduct time and First Step Act credits. Disciplinary proceedings and Special Housing Unit placements both run on appeal clocks.
• Medical care on a four-day sick-call week: the 2022 handbook has no sick call on Wednesdays, weekends or holidays. Where care stalls, the route is a written request, then the administrative remedy program, then, where injury has resulted, a tort claim. See medical care in federal prison.
• Sentence computation, halfway-house dates and compassionate release under the Bureau’s reduction-in-sentence rules, each of which turns on a calculation the Bureau makes and the family rarely sees.
• 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 Oxford, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The Bureau’s facility page, with the mailing address, contact details, region and population.
• Mission Change for FCI Oxford Announced, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2023. The June 21, 2023 announcement of the change from medium to low security.
• Institution Supplement OXF 5267.09F, Visiting Regulations, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCI Oxford, 2025. Visiting days and hours, visitor lists, dress, screening, legal visits and directions; rescinded OXF 5267.09E (2023).
• Institution Supplement OXF 5267.09F, Visiting Regulations (Spanish edition), Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCI Oxford, 2025.
• Institution Supplement OXF 5267.09D, Visiting Regulations (Spanish edition), Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCI Oxford, 2020. Superseded; still served on bop.gov at an address the facility page no longer links.
• FCI Oxford Commissary Order Form and Price List, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCI Oxford, 2023. Items, prices and purchase limits; the spending limit it prints has been superseded.
• SCP Oxford Commissary Order Form and Price List, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCI Oxford, 2023. The satellite camp’s form, still published for a camp holding no one.
• FCI Oxford Inmate Admission and Orientation Handbook, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCI Oxford, 2022. Mail, telephone, commissary, work, programs, health services and the daily schedule; written before the mission change.
• Trust Fund/Deposit Fund Manual, Program Statement 4500.13, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Sets the $460 commissary spending limit and the exhaustive list of exclusions.
• Inmate Security Designation and Custody Classification, Program Statement 5100.08, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2006. As amended in 2026; security point ranges, Public Safety Factors and Management Variables.
• Inmate Telephone Regulations, Program Statement 5264.09, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Replaced Program Statement 5264.08 (2008).
• Treatment and Care of Inmates with Mental Illness, Program Statement 5310.16, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2014. As amended in 2025; the mental health care levels.
• Patient Care, Program Statement 6031.06, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Defines the medical care levels.
• First Step Act Approved Programs Guide, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Reentry Services Division, 2026. Program availability by institution, the RDAP locations list and the Federal Prison Industries entry.
• 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.
• Fallen Heroes: Boyd H. Spikerman, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The Bureau’s record of the officer killed at Oxford in 1984.

Audits and inspections

• Inspection of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ U.S. Penitentiary Canaan, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2026. Report 26-055; counts the institutions the unannounced-inspection program has reached.
• Ongoing Work, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2026. The Inspector General’s list of engagements under way.
• Federal Prisons: Improvements Needed to Prevent, Detect, and Address Sexual Abuse, U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2026. Report GAO-26-107343, with per-institution allegation counts for 2020–2024.
• Audit of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Efforts to Place Inmates Close to Home, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2025. Audit Report 25-083; the 500-mile finding and the footnote on the Oxford and Memphis mission changes.
• PREA Audit Report: Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Oxford, Corrections Consulting Services, 2025. Final report of March 29, 2025; on-site audit of March 4–6, 2025, by Lynni O’Haver.

Court records

• Brockman v. Bureau of Prisons, No. 26-cv-351-JL-TSM (D.N.H.), U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire, 2026. Docket; the petition was transferred to the Western District of Wisconsin.
• Federal Inmate Sentenced to Nearly 3 Years for Assaulting Prison Guard, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Wisconsin, 2025. Demetrius Brown’s sentence.
• Barajas-Barragan v. Emmerich, No. 24-cv-420-wmc (W.D. Wis.), U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, 2025. Docket; the June 9, 2025 decision on expedited removal orders and First Step Act credits.
• Texas Roofing Company Charged With Fraud Related to Asbestos Removal at Federal Prison in Wisconsin, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Wisconsin, 2024. Brazos Urethane, Inc.’s deferred prosecution agreement.
• Casseus v. Emmerich, No. 24-cv-776-jdp (W.D. Wis.), U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, 2024. Docket; the November 15, 2024 decision on exhaustion.
• Thirty-Month Sentence for Escapee, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Wisconsin, 2023. Glynn Ford’s sentence for the camp escape.
• Federal Inmate Receives 9-Month Consecutive Prison Term for Possession of Contraband, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Wisconsin, 2022. Matthew Kirst’s sentence.
• Former Federal Corrections Officer Sentenced for Bribery of a Public Official, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2017. Anthony Blevins’s sentence.
• Former Federal Prison Employee Sentenced to One Year in Prison for Public Corruption, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2017. Amy Ziemann’s sentence.
• Former Federal Prison Employee Sentenced for Providing Contraband To Inmates, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2017. Stacy Lenorud’s sentence.

News and other sources

• Did Most Federal Prison Inmates in Wisconsin and the U.S. Enter the Country Illegally?, Wisconsin Watch, 2025. By Tom Kertscher.
• Satellite Camp at Oxford Prison on List of Federal Facilities Marked for Closure, Wisconsin Public Radio, 2024. By Sarah Lehr.
• The U.S. Government Is Closing a Women’s Prison and Other Facilities After Years of Abuse and Decay, The Associated Press, 2024. By Michael R. Sisak and Michael Balsamo.
• MN Man Sentenced to Two Years for Using His Mother to Smuggle Drugs into Federal Prison, WMTV 15 News, 2024. James Mallett’s sentence.
• Inmate at FCI Oxford Sentenced After Mother Smuggled Drugs into Prison, Channel 3000, 2024.
• Chicago’s Longest-Serving Alderman Ed Burke Prepares for Prison Following Corruption Conviction, Fox 32 Chicago, 2024. By Dane Placko.
• Talent, Titles and Torment, Boxing News, 2017. By Ben Dirs; Michael Nunn’s account from Oxford.
• Ryan Leaves Federal Prison at Oxford, Moves to Terre Haute, St. Paul Pioneer Press, 2008.
• Rostenkowski Leaves Prison for Halfway House, The Associated Press, 1997. Published by The Washington Post.
• Congressman Lives in Barless Ill. Prison Cell, The Virginian-Pilot, 1997.
• Rostenkowski on FMC’s List of Famous, Post-Bulletin, 1996.
• 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(1), Inspection by immigration officers; expedited removal of inadmissible arriving aliens, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).
• 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(5), Judicial review of orders of removal, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).
• 18 U.S.C. § 3632(d)(4)(E)(i), Development of risk and needs assessment system, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).
• 28 U.S.C. § 130, Wisconsin, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).
• 28 C.F.R. § 523.44(a)(2), Application of FSA Time Credits, Code of Federal Regulations (Legal Information Institute).
• 28 C.F.R. § 540.71(a)(3), Procedures, Code of Federal Regulations (Legal Information Institute).

Sources reviewed September 2026.

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