USP Coleman I: Visiting, Mail, Programs and Oversight

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

USP Coleman I at a glance

USP Coleman I is a high-security United States Penitentiary for men in Sumterville, Florida, with no camp. It is one of four federal prisons at the Federal Correctional Complex in Coleman, and one of the two penitentiaries there. As of September 2026 it held 1,175 people.

Official name	United States Penitentiary, Coleman I
BOP code	COP · complex COX
Security level	High; men
Population	1,175 (as of September 2026)
Visiting	Saturday, Sunday and federal holidays, 8:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m. · no visiting Monday through Friday · see visiting hours
Inmate mail	Inmate Name & Register Number · USP Coleman I · U.S. Penitentiary · P.O. Box 1033 · Coleman, FL 33521
Send money	Lockbox · Western Union (code city FBOP, DC) · MoneyGram (receive code 7932)
Phone	352-689-6000 · Fax 352-689-6012
Street address	846 NE 54th Terrace, Sumterville, FL 33521 · Sumter County
Judicial district	Middle District of Florida
BOP region	Southeast
Housing	Two-person cells
Special Housing Unit	Yes · visits on Saturday, Sunday and holidays only
RDAP	No · offered at FCI Coleman Low and USP Coleman II
UNICOR	Yes
Camp	None

Coleman is the only complex in the country that runs two high-security penitentiaries side by side: this one and USP Coleman II, half a mile away.

Two federal penitentiaries share this address

USP Coleman I and USP Coleman II are different prisons. They stand on the same campus and share a street address, a set of coordinates and a complex warden, but they have different post office boxes, telephone numbers, visiting rooms, programs and men. Getting them the wrong way around is the most expensive mistake made about this place, and a common one, because most published lists keep a single entry called “USP Coleman.” The table below shows the whole campus as the Bureau’s location records give it.

Prison	Code	Security	Population (September 2026)	Inmate mail	Phone
USP Coleman I (this page)	COP	High	1,175	P.O. Box 1033	352-689-6000
USP Coleman II	CLP	High	1,025	P.O. Box 1034	352-689-7000
FCI Coleman Medium	COM	Medium	1,518	P.O. Box 1032	352-689-5000
FCI Coleman Low	COL	Low, with a camp	2,115	P.O. Box 1031; camp 1027	352-689-4000

Those four populations come to 5,833 people as of September 2026, which makes Coleman the largest federal prison complex in the country. The roster carries a fifth entry under code COX, but that is the complex rather than a prison, and the 2024 visiting supplement counts five facilities because it treats the camp as one. So Coleman has four prisons, one of them with a camp attached.

The Bureau operates sixteen United States Penitentiaries; fourteen are the only high-security prison at their address, and the two that are not are both at Coleman. The one other complex carrying two USPs on the roster is Florence, Colorado, where the second is the Administrative-maximum facility rather than a high-security penitentiary. So “USP Coleman” is ambiguous in a way “USP Lee” or “USP Canaan” never is — and it is resolved by the numeral, not the words: the Inmate Locator displays Coleman I USP for this prison and Coleman II USP for its neighbor, and the Bureau’s records code them COP and CLP. A letter addressed to Box 1033 reaches a man at COP; the same letter sent to Box 1034 reaches a different prison and is not walked across the campus. Our guides to the federal security-level system and federal prison transfers, and our overview of federal prisons in Florida, cover the rest of the system.

What is the security level at USP Coleman I?

USP Coleman I is a high-security penitentiary for men, with nothing lower attached. The Bureau’s roster records COP as a U.S. Penitentiary at High security. The District of Columbia’s inspectors, who toured the compound on October 12, 2023, wrote “Maximum” on their facility profile; that is the Council’s own label rather than a Bureau classification. There is no camp and no satellite low here, so a man designated to COP is designated to the penitentiary. Our guide to high-security federal prisons explains what the level means.

A penitentiary is the top of the Bureau’s ordinary custody ladder, above medium security and two steps above a low: reinforced perimeter, cells rather than dormitories, a compound that moves in ten-minute windows announced over a loudspeaker, and 362 segregation cells across the four prisons on the July 2026 audit’s count. Small things follow from the level rather than from anything the warden decided. Outgoing general correspondence is handed in unsealed — the 2012 handbook says in terms that “[i]nmates will not be permitted to seal outgoing correspondence” — and the same handbook lists a pillow case among the items every man is issued, then adds in a footnote to its own table that pillow cases are not issued at the penitentiaries.

How a man is designated here, and how he leaves

Designation is arithmetic done before he arrives, at the Designation and Sentence Computation Center in Grand Prairie, Texas, under the Bureau’s security designation rules, Program Statement 5100.08: twenty-four points is a penitentiary and sixteen to twenty-three a medium, so a single point separates this place from the prison half a mile away. A Public Safety Factor can override the total outright, and validation as a member of a disruptive group is the one families meet most — an intelligence judgment made after arrival, recorded on form BP-338 and contestable in writing.

Leaving runs through the same office on form 409, and the request should reach Texas within twenty-one calendar days of the scheduled custody review, a review families often do not hear about until it has passed. The override they ask about most is Release Residence, which carries the First Step Act’s rule that placement within 500 driving miles of the release area will be considered reasonable so far as practicable. For a family that lives far from Florida, that rule is the core of a transfer request, and the request is made at a program review rather than by letter to the warden. Our guide to designation explains the process.

Who are the notable inmates at USP Coleman I?

Bureau records place four widely reported prisoners at USP Coleman I: two from the terrorism prosecutions of the 1990s and two men who ran Mexican trafficking organizations.

Name	Register number	What the Bureau’s record says
Nidal Ayyad	16917-050	USP Coleman I (COP). Projected release June 22, 2067. Convicted for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing
Mohamed Saddiq Odeh	42375-054	USP Coleman I (COP). Release date LIFE. Convicted for the 1998 United States embassy bombings in East Africa
Jorge Costilla-Sánchez	59344-380	USP Coleman I (COP). Release date LIFE. Gulf Cartel leader, extradited from Mexico in 2015
Benjamin Arellano-Félix	00678-748	USP Coleman I (COP). Projected release April 28, 2032. Former head of the Tijuana Cartel

The name most often attached to this prison is no longer in a prison at all. Leonard Peltier, register number 89637-132, the American Indian Movement figure convicted in 1977 of murdering two FBI agents, was held here until February 18, 2025, when President Biden’s commutation of his life sentence to home confinement took effect. The Inmate Locator now shows him “Located at: Minneapolis RRM” — the Bureau’s Residential Reentry Management office there, code CMS in its record — against a release date of LIFE. He is not here, he has not been since February 2025, and his sentence has not ended.

Six other men are often listed at “USP Coleman” and are not here.

Name	Register number	Where Bureau records place him
Ahmad Ajaj	40637-053	USP Victorville (VIP), California. Projected release June 17, 2091
Amine El Khalifi	79748-083	FCI Memphis (MEM), Tennessee, not FCI Williamsburg. Projected release September 9, 2037
Hysen Sherifi	51768-056	USP Pollock (POL), Louisiana. Release date LIFE
Paul Ciancia	67089-112	USP Allenwood (ALP), Pennsylvania, not FCI Atlanta. Release date LIFE
Auburn Calloway	14601-076	USP Canaan (CAA), Pennsylvania. Release date LIFE
Luke Elliott Sommer	38474-086	FCI Fairton (FAI), New Jersey. Projected release June 9, 2034

Two older names also appear on such lists. James “Whitey” Bulger was held at USP Coleman II, not here; Stephen Caracappa (04597-748) died in custody at FMC Butner on April 8, 2017.

How do I find someone at USP Coleman I?

To find someone at USP Coleman I, search the Bureau’s free public Inmate Locator by the eight-digit register number wherever you have it, because it matches the committed name on the judgment rather than a nickname. For a man in custody it answers “Located at:” followed by the prison’s name and type. “Coleman I USP” is this penitentiary and nothing else — one letter away from Coleman II USP next door — and because there is no camp and no satellite low here, that answer settles the mailing address and the visiting rules in one step. That is not the case at the Low half a mile away, where the institution and its camp share the record code COL. If nothing comes back, the usual explanations are state custody, detention by the U.S. Marshals Service before designation, or a committed name that differs from the one the family uses. Our guides to the Inmate Locator and to how register numbers work explain both.

How do I write to someone at USP Coleman I?

Letters for someone at USP Coleman I go to P.O. Box 1033, Coleman, FL 33521, with the committed name and register number on the first line. The four prisons here run consecutive boxes, and the Bureau’s USP Coleman I page gives 1033 for inmate mail and 1023 for staff. Mail with no register number is returned.

Personal and legal mail	What goes on the envelope
Inmate Name & Register Number USP Coleman I U.S. Penitentiary P.O. Box 1033 Coleman, FL 33521	The handbook adds the housing unit to the first line. Note the city: mail goes to Coleman while the street address is in Sumterville. Both are in Sumter County and both are correct for their purpose

Under the Bureau’s correspondence rules, ordinary letters are opened, inspected and may be read; legal mail is opened only in front of the addressee and is not read, but only where the sender is identified as an attorney on the face of the envelope and it is marked “Special Mail — Open only in the presence of the inmate.” The handbook adds that mail from someone using the title Esquire as the only identification is not handled as special mail. Our pages on attorney-client communication in the Bureau of Prisons and on writing to someone in federal prison set out what gets rejected and why.

Two local mechanics matter before the first letter goes out. Outgoing mail must carry a pre-printed label generated on the prison’s own computer system, and anything posted without one comes back to the sender inside. And privileged mail cannot be posted from the unit at all: it goes to Receiving and Discharge during a scheduled open house, where staff inspect the contents and seal the envelope in front of the man who wrote it. A filing deadline that assumes a letter can be dropped in a box on a Sunday evening will be missed. What he may keep is capped too — five books, three magazines and one newspaper, hardcovers only from a publisher or bookstore — and money enclosed in a letter is returned.

How do I send money to someone at USP Coleman I?

Money for someone at USP Coleman I goes to the Bureau’s national lockbox in Des Moines or through one of two wire services, never to the prison. Each route needs the committed name with the eight-digit register number, on the instrument and on the envelope.

Route	Where it goes	When it posts
Postal money order or cashier’s check	Federal Bureau of Prisons Committed Name Eight-Digit Register Number Post Office Box 474701 Des Moines, Iowa 50947-0001	Processed on arrival, available the next day. A postal money order posts without a hold; most other instruments carry an automatic 15-day hold
Western Union Quick Collect	Code city FBOP, DC	The Bureau’s Send Money page says two to four hours for transfers sent between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. Eastern; its trust fund rules, Program Statement 4500.13, say ordinarily two. Later transfers post by 7:00 a.m. the next morning
MoneyGram	Receive code 7932, company name Federal Bureau of Prisons, Washington, DC	The same window as Western Union

No cash, no personal checks, and our comparison of sending money to a federal prisoner sets out the fees. Two things then decide what the money is for. The commissary ceiling is $460 a month, so anything above that sits in the account. And the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program takes a share toward restitution, fines and assessments. In its August 2024 audit the Inspector General sampled seventy-three men’s payment files at three institutions, FCC Coleman among them, and found 40 payment plans that departed from the Bureau’s own formula with no reason recorded. If the figure looks wrong, ask for the calculation in writing.

What are the visiting hours at USP Coleman I?

Visiting at USP Coleman I is on Saturdays, Sundays and federal holidays, 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. There is no visiting Monday through Friday — not for general population and not for the Special Housing Unit — except a special visit arranged in advance through the Warden’s Office. The rules are in institution supplement COC 5267.09E, “Visiting Regulations,” dated October 1, 2024, signed by the complex warden, which rescinded the 2018 supplement and governs all four prisons on this campus. The Bureau’s visiting regulations set the national rules. Telephone 352-689-6000 before you travel.

Day	USP Coleman I
Saturday	8:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Sunday	8:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Federal holidays	8:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Monday – Friday	No visiting. Special visits only, by appointment approved through the Warden’s Office

The Monday row is where this penitentiary parts company with the rest of the campus: the Low and the Medium run Special Housing Unit visits on Mondays, and the supplement’s handout gives that to those two institutions only. Three further rules matter on the day. No one is admitted after 2:00 p.m., whatever the closing time says; processing stops at 9:30 a.m. for the official count; and a visitor who steps out ends the visit: “Once a visitor enters the Visiting Room, they will not be allowed to leave for any reason. If they leave the visit is terminated.” Arriving early does not help either: no one is let into the lobby before hours begin.

A superseded Spanish edition of the supplement, COC 5267.09 of 2016, is still on the Bureau’s server in this facility’s directory, though not linked from the facility page. Its schedule prints one combined table for USP-1 and USP-2 showing lunes, Monday, 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., as a general visiting day. The 2024 supplement controls, and a family that plans a Monday visit from the Spanish edition will be turned away at the lobby.

On the morning you leave, check the Bureau’s facility page for a notice that visiting has been suspended, and telephone as well: two of the 58 men the District of Columbia surveyed here said their families were turned away at the scheduled visiting time because the prison was locked down and no one had told them.

The point system, and who may be on the list

Visits are rationed by points across the whole complex: six points a calendar month, two points a visit, which works out at three visits. Any portion of a visit is charged as a whole one, points do not carry into the next month, and a visit counts as complete when the visitors have left the property and the man has gone back to his unit. A yearly visiting calendar is posted on each housing-unit bulletin board.

The list should not run beyond twenty people, no more than ten of them friends rather than family, and a friend must have had an established relationship before the sentence began — though the warden may waive that “particularly for inmates without other visitors,” a clause to quote in writing for a man with no family left. Five may come at once, not counting children under two, and no one joins a permanent list before an NCIC check clears. An immediate family member who turns up unlisted gets a central-file check only in the man’s first four weeks here; after that the visit is refused and logged.

If the room goes over its rated capacity — 192 people here, against 275 at each of the two FCIs — the officer asks for volunteers to leave, and if there are none, “visitors who have traveled less than 300 miles are considered local visitors and will be terminated in the order in which they arrived.” Distance traveled is a protection, but only past 300 miles.

Special Housing Unit visits at the penitentiaries

Paragraph 7.j of the supplement sets a separate regime for the two penitentiaries, and it governs any visit to a man in segregation: Saturdays, Sundays and approved holidays only, no processing after 11:00 a.m., two hours, two visitors, and the man secured in the non-contact room throughout, brought there “in hand restraints, leg restraints and martin chain” with the main corridor cleared for the move in each direction.

The same document contains a conflict. Paragraph 7.j says all Special Housing Unit prisoners at the USPs get non-contact visits; paragraph 18.a, fourteen pages later, says the rule applies to those “with security concerns.” The supplement does not say which controls, so ask the unit lieutenant before you drive. Protective custody and separation cases are scheduled by the captain case by case, in the non-contact rooms, and the Bureau’s Special Housing Unit rules and our guide to Special Housing Units explain how a placement is reviewed.

Dress, searches and what you may carry in

Color is the rule that most often sends visitors home: no khaki, no green, no camouflage, because those are the institution’s own uniform colors. The supplement also bars see-through fabric, sleeveless or tight clothing, plunging necklines, open-toed shoes, wrap-around skirts, spandex, hats, swimwear and any logo that might read as gang affiliation, and requires clothing to reach the knee while standing. It adds its own warning: “Women should avoid wearing underwire bras since they may not clear the metal detector.”

A visitor may carry in a clear change purse no larger than six by six by three inches, up to $20 with no note larger than $5, baby necessities in clear containers, and life-maintenance medication such as heart or epilepsy medicine — from which diabetic insulin and syringes are expressly excluded. Watches are barred in capitals on both sides of the room, and the man may wear only a wedding band and an approved religious medallion.

One more difference belongs to the penitentiary rather than the complex. At the two FCIs a man wears his issued green clothing into the visiting room. Here, the supplement provides that “General Population USP inmates will wear jumpsuits with bus shoes into the Visiting Room.”

Screening is not sampled at this security level: “all visitors are required to clear a metal detector before entering. Alternate random selection methods are not used for this search requirement.” Belongings are searched visually, pat searches are applied by a daily random method, and declining a visual search or breathalyzer “would then be grounds for removing the visitor from the visiting list.” The handout also warns: “An electronic drug detection system is in use, anyone testing positive for illegal substances will be denied entry into the facility.” Ion scanners read trace quantities and alarm on innocent transfer from banknotes or a borrowed car, and the supplement provides no appeal.

Photo identification is required for everyone aged sixteen and over — a driver’s license, a state or government card, or a passport — and “[b]irth certificates are not acceptable forms of identification.” Our pages on searching and detaining visitors and federal prison visitation cover the rules that apply system-wide.

Attorney visits and legal materials

Attorney visits are held in private rooms during the regular hours, and the supplement states the privilege without qualification: “Staff may not subject visits between an attorney and an inmate to auditory supervision.” An attorney not on the visiting list needs the warden’s written approval at least twenty-four hours ahead, with a bar card and a Notification to Visitor form. Documents cause the most trouble: legal papers “must occur through the U.S. Mail rather than through visitation,” though counsel may bring a reasonable quantity in for review, and the client may bring materials from his unit only in an amount the unit team has approved in writing — arranged before the trip, not on the morning of it. Two documents cannot travel at all. The handbook records that men here may not possess presentence reports or statements of reasons, and that anyone arriving with copies “will be required to mail them home”; the disclosable copy stays in the central file, and form BP-S757.013 is the route for putting a presentence report before a court in live litigation.

Getting there

The complex sits in rural Sumter County off State Road 470, between Interstate 75 and U.S. 301. These are the Bureau’s own directions, from Attachment A to the visiting supplement. Park only in the visitor lot for the prison you are visiting — each of the four has its own, and parking along any Bureau road is prohibited.

• From I-75 either way: Exit 321 onto Highway 470 east — right if northbound, left if southbound — to Highway 301, where a Cumberland Farms store faces you; left, north on 301, then right at the light back onto 470 east for about three miles.
• From Orlando International: north on Airport Boulevard to SR-528, Florida’s Turnpike at Exit 259 toward Ocala, north to Exit 296 for Highway 470, left off the ramp, three to four miles to the complex entrance on the right.

How do phone calls and email work at USP Coleman I?

At USP Coleman I, calls go one way: a man calls out on a monitored line, paying from his own account, and no one outside can telephone him. Program Statement 5264.09, the Bureau’s telephone regulations, issued September 3, 2026, rescinded the 2008 policy and sets 510 minutes per calendar month. People eligible for First Step Act telephone incentives get the first 300 free, and anyone who uses up those 300, eligible or not, may buy the other 210. A single call should generally not exceed 15 minutes, with at least thirty minutes between calls, and a properly arranged unmonitored legal call does not count toward the total.

The institution’s 2012 handbook, written under the old policy, gives 300 minutes a month plus “an addition 100 minutes of telephone calls during November and December.” The program statement controls: the November and December extra minutes did not survive the rescission, and the monthly ceiling is now far higher.

The local mechanics are durable. Up to thirty numbers go on the approved list, and every man is issued a Phone Access Code he cannot use until he has registered his voice by dialing 111 and entering it — the usual reason a family hears nothing in the first days after a transfer, and the fix is a note to the unit counselor rather than waiting. A negligently compromised code costs $5 to replace and a written statement of charges $3. Third-party billing and call forwarding are disciplinary offenses. Our guide to inmate phone calls explains the national system.

Messaging is monitored text on the Bureau’s own terminals, reached from outside through CorrLinks, and a contact has to accept an invitation before anything passes. The local numbers: 100 contacts, of which thirty may be telephone numbers and thirty email addresses, at five cents a minute to write and fifteen cents a page to print. Those same terminals carry the electronic law library and print the mailing labels without which outgoing mail is returned — one machine doing three jobs in a unit of 128 men. See TRULINCS and inmate email.

What can people buy at the USP Coleman I commissary?

The USP Coleman I commissary sells food, over-the-counter medication, typewriter supplies, watches and religious items from an order form printed for this penitentiary alone, within a national spending ceiling of $460 a month. Program Statement 4500.13, the Bureau’s trust fund rules, issued May 7, 2026, raised the ceiling from $360. The institution’s 2012 handbook still gives “$320 per month and $25 per month for Financial Responsibility (FRP) Refusal.” The $460 ceiling controls.

The 2021 order form, headed “USP1 COLEMAN COMMISSARY LIST,” is more useful than most: unlike the shared Low and Medium sheet, whose rules sit on a reverse side the Bureau does not publish, this one prints its nine numbered rules. Two matter. If a man does not reach the sales window after his name is called three times, the order goes back to stock and he cannot shop until his next scheduled day. And everything counts against the limit “with the exception of stamps, copy cards and over-the-counter medications,” which is why aspirin at $1.45 and ibuprofen at $2.65 are the cheapest things on the sheet in the sense that matters.

Sales run on fingerprints — “FCC Coleman uses fingerprint identification for Commissary sales” — with the identification card as the fallback for anyone whose prints will not register. The monthly limit resets not on the first but on the fifth digit of the register number multiplied by three plus one, so a man numbered 12345-678 revalidates on the sixteenth. The 2012 handbook caps Special Purpose Orders for items off the list at $300 a quarter and one a month; Program Statement 4500.13 has since raised the quarterly ceiling to $600, markup and shipping included, and lets the Warden allow more than one a month in writing.

Three entries say something no policy document does. Typewriter supplies are stocked in quantity — correction ribbon at $0.80, typing ribbon at $3.85, paper at $2.80 — which tells you how legal work is done here. Watches are sold, an Ironman digital at $46.80, in a prison whose visiting supplement bars watches on both sides of the room in capitals. And the religious-items section runs to two lines, a black kufi and a white kufi at $4.99, at an institution whose chaplains told inspectors that more than 300 Sunni Muslims attend Friday prayer.

One difference sets this sheet apart from every other Coleman sheet. Eleven items here carry a kosher or halal marking — grits, rolled oats, Spanish rice, refried beans, tortillas, pink salmon, sardines, peanut butter and black beans among them — while the USP Coleman II sheet and the shared Low and Medium sheet, both dated the same month, mark none. The form does not show whether that reflects different stock or different typesetting, but a man keeping a religious diet here can read his options off the form and a man next door cannot. See the federal prison commissary.

What programs are available at USP Coleman I?

USP Coleman I runs the Challenge Program and Federal Prison Industries work alongside education and religious programs. The Bureau’s August 2026 First Step Act Approved Programs Guide names this institution by code in three of its program descriptions — the Challenge Program, Federal Prison Industries and the Resolve Program — and those named lists are the guide’s own statement of where a program runs. For the residential drug abuse program it names neither this penitentiary nor the Medium, and the institution’s own handbook agrees.

The Challenge Program

Challenge is the Bureau’s residential psychology treatment program for men in penitentiaries with substance use problems, serious mental illness, or both, run as a modified therapeutic community away from general population. Both halves of the August 2026 guide name the same eleven institutions for it, two of them the Coleman penitentiaries. It carries 500 earned-time hours and needs at least eighteen months left to serve.

In October 2023 the Corrections Information Council found a unit with a capacity of 128 holding 67 men, run by four treatment specialists doing both the treatment and the case management, programming five days a week and GED classes in the unit’s three activity rooms. Two of its findings matter to anyone deciding whether to apply. Staff said that when all four specialists are absent and no one can run a group, the men “just won’t get the hours.” And the men, while satisfied with the program itself, said the lockdowns make it impossible to finish on time: “Many of the residents have been in the program for three years” against a course the Council puts at two.

Why there is no residential drug program here

There is none here, and for an eligible man that is the most consequential program fact about this prison. The Bureau’s own list of residential drug program locations, printed inside the August 2026 guide, records 57 programs at 50 locations, and its two Coleman entries are the Low and USP Coleman II. The handbook agrees from the other direction: psychology here offers drug abuse education, the non-residential program, Challenge, “and referrals to the Residential Drug Abuse program.” Referrals are not the program. Completing it can take up to twelve months off a sentence for a non-violent offense under 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e), so for a man who screens in, a designation here is a transfer request waiting to be written. Our guide to the residential drug abuse program and our RDAP page set out who qualifies.

One entry in the guide conflicts with another. Its narrative description of the Resolve Program — cognitive behavioral treatment for trauma-related needs, worth 80 credit hours — names this institution; its by-institution grid at the back of the same document does not. Because the two halves of the document disagree, ask the psychology department in writing whether Resolve runs here.

Education, work and the law library

Education runs literacy and GED on 240 mandatory hours, English as a second language, adult continuing education in business, Spanish, commercial driving and public speaking, parenting, and pre-release work on employment and personal finance. In October 2023 inspectors found 75 District residents enrolled in GED classes but only 14 of their 58 respondents in any educational programming at all, and 51 of 58 in no vocational training. The men said the lockdowns were why.

Federal Prison Industries operates here, and both halves of the guide name this institution for it. UNICOR work carries 500 First Step Act credit hours and is the best-paid work in a penitentiary — and refusing the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program bars a man from it outright, one more reason to query a payment amount rather than stop paying.

The law and leisure library keeps long hours — Monday through Thursday from 7:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. around the recall periods, closed Sundays — with typewriters and photocopiers in the department and an explicit priority: “inmates with legal work will have priority.” Terminals are the real constraint: the Council counted four law library computers in education, one of them broken, plus one law library terminal in each housing unit shared by up to 128 men. For a man working to a filing deadline, that ratio is the limit on what he can do. The Bureau’s legal activities rules and our guide to the prison law library cover the national rules.

Religious services and reentry

The chaplaincy here serves a larger Muslim congregation than almost any federal prison publishes a figure for: chaplains told the inspectors in October 2023 that more than 300 Sunni Muslims attend Jumah on Fridays, with 10 to 15 at Nation of Islam services and up to 50 at the Moorish Science Temple of America. Religious Services also runs the Threshold reentry course, Faith-Based Conflict Management, Houses of Healing and Embracing Interfaith Cooperation. Thirty-six of the 58 men surveyed still said the institution holds no services specific to their faith, and blamed the lockdowns. Our guide to religious programs in prison and the Bureau’s religious beliefs and practices policy cover the national rules.

One finding calls for action. The Council recorded that men in the Special Housing Unit “must write down their requests for the chaplain because staff often forgets to take religious texts to the SHU,” and the Bureau’s answer did not deny it: requests go in writing and “Chaplains make weekly SHU rounds.” A family that wants a Qur’an, a Bible or a prayer rug to reach a man in segregation should ask for that request to be logged. Community placement follows the man, not the prison: it goes through the Residential Reentry Management office for the judicial district he is releasing to — for Florida’s Northern District that is RRM Orlando, while the Bureau’s office pages list the Middle District under both Orlando and RRM Miami — and the unit team’s placement review is the point at which halfway house and First Step Act credit arguments have to be on paper, under the Bureau’s halfway house placement rules.

What is daily life like at USP Coleman I?

Daily life at USP Coleman I is a cell day built around five counts and ten-minute controlled moves. The schedule below comes from the institution’s 2012 handbook. Meal times may have shifted since, so read it as the shape of a day rather than a timetable; it is the only published description of the day here, and inspectors found the same structure in 2023.

	Weekdays	Weekends and holidays
Official counts	12:01 a.m., 3:00 a.m., 5:00 a.m., 4:00 p.m. standing, 10:00 p.m.	The same, plus a 10:00 a.m. standing count
Wake-up	6:00 a.m., units called to breakfast on a rotating schedule
Breakfast	5:45 a.m. food service workers; 6:15–7:00 a.m. general population	Coffee hour 7:00–8:00 a.m.
Lunch	10:00 a.m. food service workers; 10:30 a.m.–12:00 p.m. general population	Brunch 10:30 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
Dinner	3:30 p.m. food service workers; general population after the 4:00 p.m. count clears
Controlled movement	Ten minutes, generally beginning on the half hour	—
Recreation yard	6:15–10:30 a.m., 11:00 a.m.–12:30 p.m., 1:30–3:30 p.m., 4:30 p.m. to dusk	7:00–9:30 a.m., 11:00 a.m.–3:30 p.m., 4:30 p.m. to dusk
Showers	Closed 8:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m. except two on each side of the unit	—
End of day	10:00 p.m. lock-down; no television after 10:00 p.m. without the Warden’s approval

Housing is twelve units lettered A to F and H to M, with no G. The lettering comes from the laundry schedule the Bureau set out in its November 2024 letter to the District of Columbia’s inspectors, which groups the units by wash day during modified operations — A to D on Monday, E, F, H and I on Tuesday, J to M on Wednesday, all units for sheets only on Thursday. The Bureau set it out because 23 of the 58 men surveyed said they had no access to clean clothing and 28 said none to clean sheets and towels.

The handbook’s staff list assumes six unit managers covering two units each; the inspectors found the manager of the unit they toured covering four, in units of 128 men at two to a cell. Cells carry a duress button, and pressing one without an emergency is charged under the Bureau’s discipline rules as tampering with a security device. The institution is tobacco-free.

Recreation is substantial on paper: six basketball courts, six handball and racquetball courts, two bocce courts, a softball field doubling as jogging track and soccer field, a leisure center with leather, art and wellness rooms, a music center with three band rooms, and leagues in three divisions, one for men over forty. Yet not one of the 58 men surveyed in October 2023 was enrolled in any class, and staff said the most popular one had no one in it because of the lockdowns. A “quiet arts” scheme lets approved men take card-making and knitting materials back to the unit — this institution’s own answer to a compound that closes often. The Bureau’s recreation rules set the national framework.

What do inspectors say about conditions at USP Coleman I?

Inspectors who visited USP Coleman I in October 2023 recorded reports of frequent lockdowns, missing clean clothing and linen, long medical waits and no programming in the Special Housing Unit. Four bodies have written about this penitentiary since 2019, and only one, the District of Columbia’s Corrections Information Council, looked at it as an institution.

The 2024 District of Columbia inspection

The Council inspects federal prisons because District of Columbia residents serve federal sentences in them. It toured this complex on October 11 and 12, 2023, completing all interviews on the second day, and published its report on June 27, 2024. The Council also inspected USP Coleman I in March 2015, according to its list of inspected facilities, and its 2019 annual report records that it decided not to publish its 2015 FCC Coleman report. In 2023, 82 District residents were held here and 58 answered the survey, the largest sample the Council took anywhere at Coleman. The interviews were constrained: “The Warden at FCC Coleman did not permit the CIC to interview residents in legal visit rooms despite multiple requests from the CIC,” so the interviews went through telephone booths, and “residents expressed distrust regarding their confidentiality, possibly limiting the information that residents were willing to disclose.” Rated capacity that day was 953 against a population of 1,453 — 152 percent — and the population of 1,175 as of September 2026 is still above the rated figure.

• Lockdowns. Fifty of the 58 said their unit is locked down several times a month, “from half a day to several weeks.” Two said their families arrived for a scheduled visit and were turned away because of a lockdown no one had told them about.
• Clean clothing and linen. Twenty-three of the 58 had no access to clean clothing; 28 none to clean sheets and towels. Twenty-five said staff had made racist remarks to them.
• Medical. Thirty-eight of the 58 were dissatisfied with medical care because of the waiting times, and men said they had not received a physical on arrival. The medical unit had 18 staff and reported itself fully staffed. 932 men were on the chronic care caseload, seen at least once a year by a physician and struggling to be seen in between; the medical director put the dental waiting list at 727. Psychology carried vacancies for a psychiatrist, a Special Housing Unit psychologist unfilled for six months, and a medication-assisted treatment coordinator.
• Special Housing Unit. Staff put the population at “approximately 200.” Twenty-eight of the 58 had been in it; 17 had no law library access there; 18 got one hour of recreation a day; and the men said there is no programming in the SHU at all.
• Reporting. The units carried English and Spanish signs about reporting sexual abuse “however, there is no phone number on the sign.”

One figure in the report is inconsistent. The dental waiting list and the Challenge Program waiting list are both given as “727 total residents. This includes 44 D.C. residents,” two pages apart, in identical words. One is likely a transcription error, and the report does not show which. If a waiting-list length matters to a decision, ask the department in writing.

What the Bureau said in reply

The Council publishes that report marked “(No BOP Response)” and posts the Bureau’s answer separately: a six-page memorandum of November 7, 2024, from the Correctional Programs Division in Washington. On medicine the Bureau conceded the point and gave a number: “recently, an additional physician has been assigned to USP-1, increasing the number of physicians to two,” with contract staff “bringing the total number of APPs at USP-1 to four.” Two physicians and four mid-level providers, for a population of which 932 men are on chronic care. Both vacant psychology posts were filled on December 18, 2023. On the reporting signs the answer is national rather than local: “The current PREA signage issued by the BOP does not list a toll-free number for reporting.”

The Bureau’s answer on visits during a lockdown matters most to families. Asked to devise a way of warning relatives before they arrive, the Bureau answered that “FCC Coleman updates its public website to notify visitors when visitation has been canceled due to modified operations,” and that “when modified operations are in effect, a banner is displayed at the top of the webpage stating: ‘All visiting at this facility has been suspended until further notice.'” Check the facility page, and telephone as well, on the morning you leave.

The 2026 PREA audit of the complex

FCC Coleman passed its most recent Prison Rape Elimination Act audit with four standards exceeded, 41 met and none unmet. The auditor was Cynthia Swier of Corrections Consulting Services, the on-site visit ran July 14–16, 2026, and the final report is dated August 20, 2026. The Bureau serves the new audit only from the FCI Coleman Low directory; this penitentiary’s own directory still serves the superseded audit of August 13, 2023.

The audit covers the campus and makes no finding about USP Coleman I alone, but two of its numbers matter to a man designated here: 1,191 staff who may have contact with incarcerated people, down from 1,232 at the 2023 audit, and no single-cell housing unit anywhere on the complex. Its capacity line carries two figures in one field — designated capacity 5,099 against a current population of “5,957 (PAQ) and 5,099 (Day 1 of on-site audit)”, with an average daily population of 5,979 across the year. The complex ran over its designed capacity for the year and was exactly at it on the morning the auditor arrived.

Sexual-abuse allegation counts

Two sources count allegations here and neither counts findings. The 2026 audit records, complex-wide for the twelve months to July 2026, 32 allegations of sexual abuse and 17 of sexual harassment; of 31 completed abuse investigations one was unfounded, thirty unsubstantiated and none substantiated. Only the Government Accountability Office, on May 5, 2026, gives a figure for this penitentiary rather than the campus: 36 allegations across 2020 to 2024 naming another incarcerated person, 22 naming a member of staff. Those two come from different Bureau systems, extracted five months apart and counted on different bases — the first by the year of the incident, the second by the year of the report — so they cannot be added together. The Accountability Office attaches three cautions of its own: these are allegations, not findings, and nationally, from 2014 through 2022, most closed unsubstantiated, which means the evidence settled neither that it happened nor that it did not rather than that the complaint was false; the report adjusts for population nowhere, so nothing in it supports a ranking; and a low count can as easily mean no one reports. The Bureau’s sexual abuse prevention policy and our guide to violence and sexual assault in prison cover the national rules.

The Inspector General’s record on this prison

The DOJ Office of the Inspector General has not conducted an on-site inspection of this facility. On the Inspector General’s own count, published in May 2026 in its inspection report on USP Canaan, it had inspected 14 federal prison institutions since 2023 — seven individual inspections, six in its concurrent food-service review and an ongoing effort at FCI Berlin. None of the four prisons here is on that list, or on the list of inspections currently open.

That is a statement about inspections, not about visits. Inspector General staff have been on this campus twice on the public record: in 2019, for a Bureau-wide evaluation of sexual harassment of staff by prisoners, which records that “we conducted site visits to Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Jesup, Federal Correctional Complex Coleman, and FCI Miami, where we spoke with BOP staff in various positions and a few inmates”; and again for the 2024 audit of the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program, which names FCC Coleman among three institutions selected for site visits. Neither was an inspection of conditions and neither produced a finding about this penitentiary, but both put federal auditors inside the fence.

The sexual harassment evaluation also records that in 2016 the Bureau settled, for $20 million, a class action alleging that it “created a hostile work environment at FCC Coleman when it failed to correct known egregious sexual harassment perpetrated by inmates” — its first and largest settlement of the kind, covering every woman who had worked at this complex since February 6, 2011, with nine areas of corrective action and 35 associated actions. The Inspector General was still tracking those actions in its February 2024 list of recommendations not closed.

The rest of the record concerns the medical contract and the pandemic. In September 2019 the office audited the Bureau’s comprehensive medical services contract for this complex and found that the Bureau “did not always properly approve contract prices, did not provide adequate oversight of contractor performance and billings, and did not comply with the reporting requirements of the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System.” Recommendations from that audit were still listed open in July 2021, and the office cited the Coleman contract again in a 2022 advisory about repeated contract-oversight failures. Medical care here is bought under a contract whose oversight the Department’s own auditors found inadequate, and the 2023 findings above describe the care men receive. The 2021 pandemic report on FCC Coleman was a remote review — telephone, documents and hotline complaints, with no one on the compound — and found the complex “operated with only 80 percent of its authorized medical staff at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

USP Coleman I in the news

Recent news about USP Coleman I centers on a January 2026 death and Leonard Peltier’s February 2025 departure; older items concern prosecutions from the Coleman complex and a 2005 killing for which a former officer was sentenced to life.

• January 2026 — the Bureau reported that on Saturday, January 10, 2026, at approximately 12:30 p.m., Reginald Smith was found unresponsive at USP Coleman I. Responding employees initiated life-saving measures, emergency medical services took him to a local hospital, and he was pronounced deceased by hospital personnel. The Federal Bureau of Investigation was notified. He was 34 and had been held at USP Coleman I since December 11, 2025, serving an aggregate 243 months imposed in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and the District of Arizona for sex trafficking of a minor by force and indecent exposure.
• February 2025 — Leonard Peltier left this penitentiary on February 18, four weeks after President Biden commuted his life sentence to home confinement. The Bureau’s own spokesman had confirmed to reporters in January that he “remained incarcerated” at USP Coleman.
• July 2024 — the United States Attorney for the Middle District of Florida published an account of the prosecutions brought out of FCC Coleman since 2021: first and second degree murder, assault with intent to commit murder, forcible assault on staff, drug distribution, sexual assault of an inmate by staff, contraband, bribery and deprivation of civil rights. A March 2024 operation recovered cellphones, homemade weapons and controlled substances.
• January 2023 — John Jones, already serving life for two first-degree murders, was sentenced to 20 years for assaulting a federal correctional officer with a deadly weapon and possessing contraband “in a federal penitentiary” at Coleman, having stabbed his cellmate with a six-and-a-half-inch blade.
• March 2022 — the Bureau posted one news release reporting the death of a person held at USP Coleman I; the Bureau’s releases are listed on its press release page.
• October 2009 — Erin Sharma, a former correctional officer, was sentenced to life imprisonment on two federal civil-rights counts. A jury found that in February 2005 she and a co-conspirator agreed to move inmate Richard Delano into the cell of a man they knew was likely to attack him, in retaliation for an earlier altercation with her, and that she encouraged the assault; Delano was moved on March 1, assaulted on March 4 and died on March 17, 2005. The Justice Department’s announcement places the killing at “the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex” and names no institution.

Frequently asked questions about USP Coleman I

Problems at USP Coleman I: where we can help

The problems that recur at USP Coleman I are the ones its own inspection record documents. Our page on problems in federal prison explains how we approach them.

• Medical care that does not arrive. Two physicians and four mid-level providers for a population of which 932 men are on chronic care, a dental list in the hundreds, and a medical services contract whose oversight the Department’s own auditors found inadequate. Put the request to Health Services in writing, then run the administrative remedy process, which carries a deadline on every rung (our guide explains how to file a BP-9). See medical care in federal prison, the Bureau’s patient care policy, and Federal Tort Claims Act claims under its tort claims rules where injury has already happened.
• Lockdowns that erase programming. Fifty of 58 men described several a month, and each one costs class hours, religious services, telephone time and visits. Where the Challenge Program pays 500 earned-time hours on completion, a lost hour is a lost credit.
• Designation and transfer. Points, Public Safety Factors and Management Variables all decide whether a man stays in a penitentiary, and all three are arguable on paper — but the Management Variable request has to reach Grand Prairie within twenty-one days of the custody review. See our guides to designation and federal prison transfers.
• RDAP. The program that can take a year off a sentence under 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e) is not delivered here, so the work is a referral and a transfer, timed against the release date.
• Special Housing Unit placements — around 200 men were in segregation on the day of the 2023 inspection, reporting no programming and no law library access — and the disciplinary proceedings that threaten good conduct time, a UNICOR job or a place in the Challenge unit. See Special Housing Units and protective custody.
• Inmate Financial Responsibility Program payment amounts. The Inspector General sampled files at this complex and two others in 2024 and found 40 payment plans that departed from the Bureau’s own formula with no recorded reason; ask for the calculation in writing.
• First Step Act time credits, religious accommodation in segregation, community placement through the reentry office for the district of release (RRM Orlando covers Florida’s Northern District and shares the Middle District with RRM Miami), compassionate release under the Bureau’s reduction-in-sentence rules, and sentence computation errors under its sentence computation rules. See our pages on early release from federal prison, halfway houses and home confinement.
• 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

• USP Coleman I, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Address, contact details, mailing addresses and posted documents.
• Visiting Regulations, Institution Supplement COC 5267.09E, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCC Coleman, 2024. Visiting days and hours, points, Special Housing Unit visits, dress, permitted items, searches, attorney visits and directions; replaced COC 5267.09B (2018).
• BOP Response, USP Coleman I, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Correctional Programs Division, 2024. Memorandum to Donald Isaac, the Council’s executive director, answering the Corrections Information Council’s report; posted by the Council.
• USP1 Coleman Commissary List, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2021. Item prices and commissary rules.
• Reglamentos de Visita, Complex Supplement COC 5267.09, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCC Coleman, 2016. Superseded Spanish edition of the visiting rules, not linked from the facility page.
• USP Coleman I Admission and Orientation Handbook, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2012. Daily schedule, mail, telephone, commissary, education and recreation.
• Trust Fund/Deposit Fund Manual, Program Statement 4500.13, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Commissary spending limit and its exclusions, Special Purpose Orders and wire posting times.
• Inmate Security Designation and Custody Classification, Program Statement 5100.08, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2006. Security points, Public Safety Factors and Management Variables.
• Inmate Telephone Regulations, Program Statement 5264.09, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Monthly minute allowance and call rules; replaced Program Statement 5264.08 (2008).
• First Step Act Approved Programs Guide, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Reentry Services Division, 2026. Programs by institution, including the RDAP locations list.
• Community Ties: Sending Money, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Deposit routes and wire posting times.
• RRM Orlando, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The judicial districts the office serves.
• RRM Miami, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The judicial districts the office serves.
• Death at USP Coleman I, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026.
• Press Releases, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2022. Includes the March 2022 release reporting a death at USP Coleman I.

Audits and inspections

• PREA Audit Report: FCC Coleman, Cynthia Swier, Corrections Consulting Services, 2026.
• Inspection of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ U.S. Penitentiary Canaan (Report 26-055), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2026. Includes the Inspector General’s count of institutions inspected since 2023.
• Federal Prisons: Improvements Needed to Prevent, Detect, and Address Sexual Abuse (GAO-26-107343), U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2026. Per-institution allegation counts.
• Inspected Facilities, District of Columbia Corrections Information Council, 2026. Lists the March 2015 inspection of USP Coleman I.
• Audit of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Inmate Financial Responsibility Program (Report 24-089), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2024. Payment files sampled at three institutions, including FCC Coleman.
• USP Coleman I: Report on Findings and Recommendations, District of Columbia Corrections Information Council, 2024. The October 2023 inspection.
• PREA Facility Audit Report: FCC Coleman, Marc Coudriet, PREA Auditors of America, 2023. Superseded by the 2026 audit.
• Evaluation of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Efforts to Address Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault Committed by Inmates Toward Staff (Report 23-034), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2023. The 2019 site visit to FCC Coleman and the 2016 settlement.
• Remote Inspection of Federal Correctional Complex Coleman (Pandemic Response Report 21-026), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2021.
• Annual Report 2019, District of Columbia Corrections Information Council, 2019. Records the decision not to publish the 2015 FCC Coleman report.
• Audit of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Contract Awarded to Correct Care Solutions, LLC for the Federal Correctional Complex in Coleman, Florida (Audit Report 19-37), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2019.

Court records

• U.S. Attorney Highlights Federal Prosecution of Cases from Coleman Federal Correctional Complex, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Middle District of Florida, 2024. Prosecutions from FCC Coleman since 2021, including John Jones’s 20-year sentence.
• Former Federal Corrections Officer Sentenced to Life in Prison on Civil Rights Charges Related to Fatal Assault, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, 2009. Erin Sharma’s life sentence.

News and other sources

• 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e), Imprisonment of a convicted person, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).

Sources reviewed September 2026.

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