USP Pollock: Lockdowns, Visiting, Inmates, Oversight

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

USP Pollock at a glance

USP Pollock is a high-security federal penitentiary for men in Pollock, Louisiana, in Grant Parish off U.S. Highway 165. It shares an address, a handbook, and a commissary list with the medium-security FCI Pollock next door, and little else. As of September 2026 it held 926 people.

Official name	United States Penitentiary, Pollock
BOP code	POL · complex POX
Security level	High; men
Population	926 (as of September 2026)
Visiting	Saturday, Sunday, and approved federal holidays, 8:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m.
Inmate mail	Inmate Name & Register Number · USP Pollock · United States Penitentiary · P.O. Box 2099 · Pollock, LA 71467
Send money	Lockbox · Western Union (code city FBOP, DC) · MoneyGram (receive code 7932)
Phone	318-561-5300 · Fax 318-561-5391
Street address	1000 Airbase Road, Pollock, LA 71467 · Grant Parish
Judicial district	Western District of Louisiana, Alexandria Division
BOP region	South Central
Designated capacity	891
Housing	Three 512-bed housing units split into pods · two-man cells
Special Housing Unit	Yes · 70 segregation cells
Medical care level	1
RDAP	No · none anywhere at FCC Pollock
UNICOR	No · the factory is at FCI Pollock
Camp	None on the Bureau’s roster · see the two prisons at this address

It was activated in January 2001 and falls under the Bureau’s South Central Region; our page on federal prisons in Louisiana covers the state’s other institutions. A penitentiary is where the Bureau puts people whose security points or Public Safety Factors leave no lower option, and this one’s record is one of lockdowns, stabbings, deaths in custody, and repeated outside scrutiny, including an unannounced Inspector General inspection of the complex in June 2024.

Two federal prisons share this address. This is the penitentiary.

USP Pollock and FCI Pollock are separate prisons at the same street address, with separate wardens, mailing boxes, telephone numbers, and records. Get this right before you mail, send, or drive anything. The Bureau’s inmate locator tells them apart only by the type that follows the name: “Pollock USP” is the penitentiary on this page, “Pollock FCI” the medium, which stands about a quarter of a mile away on the Bureau’s own map coordinates. Web listings and some news reports have put people at one when they were at the other.

	USP Pollock (this page)	FCI Pollock
Code	POL	POM
Security level	High	Medium, with a minimum-security camp
Population, as of September 2026	926	1,450, plus 260 at the camp
Telephone	318-561-5300	318-765-4400
Inmate mail	P.O. Box 2099	P.O. Box 4050 (camp: Box 2099)
Activated	January 2001	April 2009

The penitentiary is the older institution, the complex’s own telephone number on the Bureau’s roster is the penitentiary’s, and its 2023 handbook makes the Complex Warden and Complex Captain available to prisoners “during the noon mainline meal” at the USP, while the FCI has a warden and deputy captain of its own. The same handbook describes “three (3) institutions” at Pollock and says the minimum-security camp “is under the authority of the USP.” The Bureau’s roster marks the camp as FCI Pollock’s, as of September 2026 the population report counts the camp’s 260 residents under the medium’s code, and the Bureau’s address record for the penitentiary still carries a “camp” mailing line. The Bureau has not publicly reconciled those records. If your relative is at the camp, our FCI Pollock page covers it.

What is the security level at USP Pollock, and who gets sent here?

USP Pollock is a high-security penitentiary, the highest general-population level in the federal system below the Florence supermax. Under the Bureau’s security designation rules, Program Statement 5100.08, a man scoring 24 or more security points is High, and three Public Safety Factors send him to a penitentiary whatever his points say: validated membership in a Disruptive Group, a prior Prison Disturbance, and a Sentence Length of more than 30 years remaining, which the manual says includes “non-parolable LIFE sentences.” That last one is why a first offender with no disciplinary history can arrive here on day one: a life sentence is, by itself, a high-security designation unless the Public Safety Factor is waived. Our guide to federal prison designation explains the scoring and the waiver.

The building is three housing units of 512 beds, each split into pods, and everyone is celled in pairs: the Inspector General recorded in November 2020 that “Pollock’s USP and FCI have two-man cells,” and the March 2026 PREA audit found no single-cell housing unit in the complex. The penitentiary has 70 segregation cells. Every cell has a duress button; in an emergency an automated voice orders “Halt! Get on the ground!” and movement resumes only when the Tower 8 officer gives the all clear.

Three capacity figures are in circulation: the 2023 handbook’s “1,536 bed” institution, the rated capacity of 1,300 the DC inspectors recorded at both visits, and the designated capacity of 891 in the 2026 PREA audit, which gives the penitentiary’s current population as 870 without dating that field. Against 891, the 926 men held as of September 2026 put the penitentiary at 104 percent. The population has moved a great deal:

Date	Men held at the USP	Record
December 14–15, 2017	907	DC Corrections Information Council inspection
September 28, 2022	1,180 (1,102 in general housing plus 78 in the Challenge unit)	DC Corrections Information Council inspection
June 4, 2024	985	OIG inspection, E&I Report 25-062
Spring 2026	870	PREA audit (final May 12, 2026), undated “current population” field
September 2026	926	Bureau population report

Turnover is high: the 2026 audit records 953 admissions to the penitentiary in the twelve months before the visit and an average stay of 636 days, more men admitted in a year than the 891 beds it is designated for.

How often is USP Pollock locked down?

USP Pollock is locked down often: the outside records show 16 lockdowns in one twelve-month period and a lockdown that ran from June 2022 until at least the DC inspectors’ visit that September. Visiting happens only when the institution is not locked down. The DC inspectors reported those 16 from the facility’s own records, for the twelve months from November 2016 to October 2017, and learned on their December 2017 visit that the penitentiary had been locked down for the previous two weeks. In November 2020 the Inspector General recorded that “in early March [2020] Pollock’s USP was on modified operations due to construction,” and that from the third week of March the complex ran “a 16-cell rotation, allowing 32 inmates at a time out of their cells for 2 hours,” cut to an eight-cell rotation by early April. In September 2022 the DC inspectors found that “USP Pollock has been on lockdown since June 2022,” that staff had called it “modified operations” since August, and that they “observed no distinguishable differences” between the two. Twenty-three of their 37 respondents said staff do not tell residents about major changes at the facility.

During a lockdown everyone goes to his cell on the words “Cell Up” or “Lock Down,” and the handbook adds that “you may be secured in your cells at any time for purposes other than to conduct an official count.” In September 2022 the phones in one unit were four handsets “provided to residents through the openings in their cells,” the law library could be reached only by written request, and education had become weekly packets. Visiting stops, and First Step Act programming shrinks to whatever fits through a cell door. See lockdowns and modified operations for what the Bureau must still provide while one lasts.

The Bureau will not publish a schedule. When the DC inspectors recommended in 2023 that USP Pollock “develop and communicate specific lockdown modifications to the public and residents in custody,” the reply was that the Bureau “does not disclose specific security operations and protocols.” What it does publish is a “Visiting Suspended” flag in the location record behind its facility pages while visiting is stopped. Check the Bureau’s USP Pollock page, or call 318-561-5300, before you travel.

Who are the notable inmates at USP Pollock?

USP Pollock’s notable inmates include four men serving life sentences: Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, Mohammed Khalifa, James Rosemond, and Félix Verdejo-Sánchez. John Fitzgerald Hanson and Richard Lee McNair were held here earlier.

Name	Status at USP Pollock	Case
Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari	Currently held here, register 42771-177; life sentence	Saudi student convicted in Lubbock, Texas, in 2012 of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction; life, Northern District of Texas, November 2012
Mohammed Khalifa	Currently held here, register 67830-509; life sentence	Saudi-born Canadian who narrated Islamic State propaganda videos and fought for the group; pleaded guilty in the Eastern District of Virginia to conspiring to provide material support to ISIS, resulting in death; life, July 2022
James Rosemond	Currently held here, register 17903-054; life sentence	Founder of Czar Entertainment; sentenced in the Southern District of New York in November 2018 to life plus 30 years for ordering the 2009 Bronx murder of Lowell Fletcher
Félix Verdejo-Sánchez	Currently held here, register 51145-069; life sentence	Convicted in the District of Puerto Rico of kidnapping resulting in death and of killing an unborn child, for the April 2021 murder of Keishla Rodríguez Ortiz and her unborn child; life, November 2023
John Fitzgerald Hanson	Former — transferred to Oklahoma in March 2025 and executed there on June 12, 2025	Serving a federal life sentence here, a federal court recorded in February 2025, when Oklahoma sought him for execution; see below
Richard Lee McNair	Former — escaped from here on April 5, 2006; now at USP McCreary, Kentucky, register 13829-045	Convicted of murder in North Dakota and held in federal custody; got out hidden in a pallet of mailbags and was caught in New Brunswick in October 2007

Hanson’s case shows what happens when a state asks for a federal lifer. Oklahoma asked the Bureau on January 23, 2025, to hand him over for execution under 18 U.S.C. § 3623, and he sued in the federal court in Alexandria to block the transfer. The court did not reach the merits. It dismissed the suit without prejudice as unripe, because the statute “clearly places the discretion as to whether a prisoner should be transferred to a state with the BOP Director” and nothing before it showed the Director had decided. Hanson v. Drummond, No. 1:25-cv-00102 (W.D. La. Feb. 27, 2025), ECF No. 20, at 1, 3–5. Federal officials moved him to Oklahoma in March 2025, and he was executed in McAlester on June 12, 2025.

Richard McNair is held at USP McCreary, not at the Florence supermax. Ricky Mungia is at USP Terre Haute and Chimene Onyeri at USP Lee; neither is at USP Pollock. Enrique Tarrio was held at the medium, not the penitentiary: the Bureau’s record gives his January 2025 release from FCI Pollock, code POM.

How do I find someone at USP Pollock?

Search the Bureau’s free Inmate Locator, by register number if you have it. The result shows a facility name and a projected release date, and at this complex the last word of the name is the part to read: “Pollock USP” is the penitentiary, “Pollock FCI” the medium. Our guide to register numbers explains the eight digits. A projected release of “LIFE” is common here and is not an error; four of the men named above show it.

How do I write to someone at USP Pollock?

Write to someone at USP Pollock at P.O. Box 2099, Pollock, LA 71467, with the committed name and register number on the first line, as the Bureau’s own record for the penitentiary gives the address.

For someone at USP Pollock
Inmate Name & Register Number USP Pollock United States Penitentiary P.O. Box 2099 Pollock, LA 71467

Do not use the FCI’s Box 4050 for someone at the penitentiary. The handbook adds the housing unit in parentheses after the box number and prints a ZIP+4 ending in 4050, the medium’s box number, on every block; the plain 71467 in the Bureau’s own address record is enough.

The mail room works weekdays only, 6:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and letters reach the units after the 4:15 p.m. count. General mail is opened, inspected, and may be read. Legal mail is opened unread in the recipient’s presence only if the envelope identifies an attorney and is marked “Special Mail — Open only in the presence of the inmate”; an unmarked legal letter “will be opened as general correspondence,” the handbook says. See the Bureau’s correspondence rules, attorney-client communication in the Bureau, and writing to a federal prisoner. One high-security rule catches families: paperback books, magazines, and clippings must come from a publisher, a book club, or a bookstore, a limit the handbook relaxes only at the camp. Money in an envelope is refused and returned.

How do I send money to someone at USP Pollock?

Send money to someone at USP Pollock through the Bureau’s national lockbox, Western Union, or MoneyGram, never to the prison itself. Every route needs the committed name and register number as the locator shows them.

Route	Details
Postal money order	Federal Bureau of Prisons, [Committed Name], [Register Number], Post Office Box 474701, Des Moines, Iowa 50947-0001. Postal money orders and government checks post without a hold; non-government checks and other money orders wait 15 days, foreign instruments payable in U.S. dollars wait 45 days, and personal checks are refused (Trust Fund manual, 2026)
Western Union Quick Collect	Code city FBOP, DC
MoneyGram	Receive code 7932, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Washington, DC

The penitentiary’s handbook names only the lockbox and Western Union; MoneyGram is a national route under the Trust Fund manual and works here as everywhere. Before you send more than a month’s worth, know that commissary spending is capped at $460 a month under the Bureau’s trust fund rules, revised in May 2026, so money above that waits in the account, and that a man who has refused the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program is held to $25 a month, the handbook says. Our guide to sending money to a federal prisoner sets the fees side by side.

What are the visiting hours at USP Pollock?

Visiting at USP Pollock is on Saturdays, Sundays, and approved federal holidays, 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., with the last visitor “processed into the visitation room at 2:00 p.m.” That schedule comes from the complex handbook revised in January 2023. The Bureau publishes no visiting supplement for USP Pollock: its USP Pollock page links the English and Spanish handbooks, the commissary list, the complex PREA audit, and the national legal-activities policy, and nothing else.

Two things override the schedule. A lockdown suspends it, and the section above tells you how to check. And the Warden may “restrict or suspend an inmate’s regular visiting privileges temporarily” on reasonable suspicion of a threat to security, which after a fight or a contraband find can mean a restriction you learn about at the lobby; ask the institution before you book.

Who can visit, and how many

• No more than five visitors at one visit.
• Each visitor completes a Visitor Information Form that the person inside mails out, and the Unit Team runs a records check. A conviction or jail term in the past five years, supervision without the officer’s consent, or no relationship that predates the incarceration are listed reasons for refusal; a refused applicant may reapply after a year.
• When the room fills, the Operations Lieutenant first asks for volunteers and for visitors who traveled shorter distances to end their visits, then applies “first in, first out.”
• Special visits need the Warden’s approval. An attorney of record on the visiting list needs no prior approval on a visiting day, though the handbook asks for an appointment, and attorney visits are visually monitored.

What visitors can wear and bring

Nothing that resembles what the men wear, which at the penitentiary is a khaki jumpsuit, and no gray sweats; the judgment is the Operations Lieutenant’s on the day. Shorts, sleeveless tops, hats, open-toe shoes, sheer or tight clothing, and Capri pants are out, dresses stop at the knee, and undergarments are required. You may carry $20 in coins for the vending machines and, in a clear container, two diapers, a baby blanket, two containers of baby food, and two clear bottles. He may bring a wedding band, religious headwear, a religious medallion, and prescription glasses.

Identification and screening

Bring current state or federal government photo identification. Everyone clears a walk-through metal detector or does not enter. Randomly chosen visitors also go through the ION drug scanner, and failing it without being able to complete the follow-up processing is a listed ground for being turned away. The handbook rests that rule on Program Statement 5522.02, which no longer appears on the Bureau’s policy list; the Bureau’s current rules for searching visitors are in Program Statement 5510.16 (2026). See ion spectrometry screening, the Bureau’s visiting regulations, and our guide to federal prison visits.

Getting there

The complex is about three miles west of the town of Pollock, off U.S. Highway 165. Driving north on 165 from Alexandria, pass the town of Ball and watch for the FCC Pollock and airport signs, then turn left onto Airbase Road and follow it roughly two miles to the front entrance; from the north, pass Pollock and turn right at the same signs. There is no public transportation.

How do phone calls and email work at USP Pollock?

Phone calls at USP Pollock go one way: he calls you, from a list of up to 30 approved numbers, and you cannot call him; email runs through TRULINCS and CorrLinks as text-only messages. The national allowance is set by the Bureau’s telephone regulations, Program Statement 5264.09, issued September 3, 2026: 510 minutes per calendar month. A person eligible for First Step Act telephone incentives gets 300 of them free, and anyone who uses up those 300 minutes, eligible or not, may buy the other 210. A single call should generally not exceed 15 minutes, and at least 30 minutes must pass between calls. The old November and December bonus minutes belonged to the 2008 policy this one rescinded and are gone; unmonitored legal calls sit outside the 510.

The handbook sets the unit hours. It opens the phones on weekdays from 6:00 to 7:30 a.m., 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., and from the moment the 4:10 p.m. count clears until 9:30 p.m., with one phone per pod live during the day for men off work; weekends and holidays run 6:00 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Every phone goes off for the half-hour before each official count, and cell doors are secured at 8:45 p.m., so the evening is shorter in practice than the schedule reads. Men in the Special Housing Unit do not get the ordinary allowance: administrative detention and disciplinary segregation carry “15 minutes of telephone call every thirty days,” by written request to the SHU officer. An unmonitored call with a lawyer is approved only when “a documented and compelling legal need exists such as an imminent court deadline,” on a written request to the unit team that the Unit Manager signs off; counsel should put the deadline in the request. The handbook requires the request “24-hours prior to the call” and puts the cost on him: he calls collect or pays by a BP-199 withdrawal from his account. See federal inmate phone calls.

Electronic messaging runs on TRULINCS through the CorrLinks service, at five cents a minute in 15-minute sessions with a 35-minute gap between them, held two hours each way, text only, and capped at 13,000 characters. A man moved to the Special Housing Unit loses it: the handbook denies SHU inmates access to the public messaging system. Messages are purged after 20 days, so anything worth keeping has to be printed at 15 cents a page or copied out. Our page on CorrLinks and TRULINCS explains the account set-up.

What can people buy at the USP Pollock commissary?

People at USP Pollock can spend up to $460 a month at the commissary under the Bureau’s trust fund rules. Program Statement 4500.13, issued May 7, 2026, raised the national limit from $360, and the limit rises by $50 during the November and December holiday period, for no more than one validation period. Pollock’s own 2024 order form still prints “$180.00 weekly (not to exceed $360.00 monthly validation),” and the January 2023 handbook prints $320 a month; the program statement supersedes both. What the local form adds that the national rule permits is weekly pacing: the manual revalidates the limit monthly “except where weekly or bi-weekly validation is used,” so expect the $460 to be metered across the weeks.

The program statement’s list of exclusions from the limit is closed: postage stamps, nicotine-replacement patches and lozenges, over-the-counter medications and vitamins, kosher and halal shelf-stable entrees for men in IFRP-refusal status, copy cards and copy paper, footwear, mattresses, and the secured media device. Telephone minutes are not on it. Phone credit comes out of the same account under the same cap, which is why a heavy month of calls can empty the food budget. The Pollock form’s own sentence says stamps, copy cards, and medicines are exempt from the limit “but are not exempt from your 360.00 total monthly limits,” a contradiction inside one line; rely on the national list.

The order slip is stamped in a machine that at the penitentiary stands “in the corridor outside Food Service” and deposited the day before the unit’s shopping day; nothing is added afterward, out-of-stock items are not substituted, and sales are final at the window. Stamps are one book of 20 a week, 60 in possession, and a man on stamp-and-hygiene restriction may spend $15 a month. High-dollar items are once every three months: a Score 7c tablet at $123.50, Adidas at $74.95, a Sangean wind-up radio at $65.20. Special-purpose orders are one a month and capped nationally at $600 a quarter, up from $300 under the previous manual. The list also carries a three-piece orange rainsuit at $26.65, because movement between buildings happens in Louisiana weather, and weight-lifting gloves at $27.95. The national rules behind this list are on our page about the federal prison commissary.

What programs are available at USP Pollock?

USP Pollock runs the Challenge Program, a residential treatment unit, but no RDAP; it also offers drug education, GED classes, Culinary Arts and Recycling vocational training, a law library, and immigration hearings under the Institution Hearing Program.

The Challenge Program

The one program whose own entry in the Bureau’s August 2026 First Step Act guide names this penitentiary is the Challenge Program, and USP Pollock is one of eleven institutions on that list: Atwater, Big Sandy, Lee, Canaan, Coleman I and II, Hazelton, Tucson, Terre Haute, McCreary, and Pollock. The guide describes “a cognitive behavioral, residential treatment program developed for male offenders in the United States Penitentiary (USP) settings,” run in a housing unit “separate from general population” and open to anyone with “at least 18-months remaining” who has a documented drug history or a diagnosed psychotic, mood, anxiety, or severe personality disorder.

Pollock’s handbook is more specific and slightly different. It asks for a twelve-month commitment, lists substance abuse as the entry criterion without mentioning mental illness, requires three to six months without a 100- or 200-level incident report and six hours of pre-programming before the move “onto unit A-1,” and is candid about the incentives: $60 at the end of each phase to a total of $180, a “safer unit to live in,” and “possible transfer to medium security facility or institution closer to home upon completion.” Applications go by written request to the Challenge Program Coordinator; the DC inspectors counted 78 men in the unit on September 28, 2022. For a man facing years at high security this is the most direct route out of general population the institution offers, and the incident-report requirement makes his first months here count.

Drug treatment without RDAP

There is no Residential Drug Abuse Program at the penitentiary, the medium, or the camp, and the RDAP list inside the August 2026 guide (updated June 2026) names no institution in Louisiana. The Bureau told the DC inspectors in 2023 that a person “cannot arbitrarily request a RDAP transfer”: he applies in writing, is screened under the Bureau’s drug treatment rules, Program Statement 5330.11, and if eligible is transferred to an institution that runs it at his security level, a short list for a high-security man. Drug Abuse Education and the non-residential program are delivered here; medication-assisted treatment existed in September 2022 with one participant and “several” waiting.

Education, work, and the law library

GED classes carry the Bureau’s 240-hour minimum, and the handbook says completing the GED, English as a second language, a vocational course, or an eligible First Step Act program may earn a $50 incentive award. Vocational training at the penitentiary is Culinary Arts and Recycling. The DC inspectors’ survey in September 2022 found 34 of 37 respondents in no vocational program and 28 in no educational one; the Bureau replied that Education had distributed weekly packets during modified operations and recorded 1,948 adult-continuing-education completions at the USP in fiscal 2022. There is no UNICOR factory: the handbook heads its UNICOR section “FCI ONLY,” the DC inspectors recorded that “UNICOR is offered at the FCI only, not the USP,” and the guide’s list of Federal Prison Industries sites omits this code even though its by-institution grid marks it. See prison education and the Bureau’s literacy and GED rules.

The penitentiary’s Education Department, which houses the leisure and law libraries, keeps its own hours: Monday to Thursday 8:15 to 11:30 a.m., 12:30 to 3:30 p.m., and 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.; Friday the two daytime blocks; Saturday 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.; Sunday closed. There are no electronic law library terminals in the housing units; the Bureau told the DC inspectors the workstations are in the law library and the SHU “due to the sensitivity of information and supervision within the area,” so a man in a locked-down unit reaches the law by written request. Twenty-eight of the 37 DC residents surveyed in September 2022 reported no access to legal materials.

Immigration hearings inside the prison

USP Pollock is an Institution Hearing Program site, which means a non-citizen serving a sentence here can be put through removal proceedings before an immigration judge without leaving the building, so that a deportation order is waiting when the sentence ends. The Bureau’s roster flags the penitentiary for the program, the handbook tells arrivals to expect notice of “IHP Hearings,” and the Inspector General’s September 2021 review of the program lists both Pollock institutions among the sites added in the expansion it examined. That review records that the first hearing at FCC Pollock was held in March 2018, that ICE “started attending IHRP hearings at the facility only in July 2018,” and that “cases at the facility were suspended for approximately 4 months because of the ICE field office’s failure to attend.” The first IHP notice is the start of an immigration case that needs its own lawyer; see our page on the Institution Hearing Program.

Faith and release preparation

Neither of the Bureau’s faith-based reentry programs, Life Connections and Threshold, is available at Pollock, the handbook says. Religious Services has a recruitment problem the Bureau has acknowledged: the DC inspectors found in 2022 that 21 of their 37 respondents were Muslim and every volunteer was Christian, and the Bureau replied that “due to USP Pollock’s geographic location, it is difficult to recruit qualified volunteers.” All of the inspectors’ respondents said they had taken no release-preparation class at Pollock.

What is daily life like at USP Pollock?

Daily life at USP Pollock is built around official counts and the controlled moves between them. The table gives the shape of a normal day from the 2023 handbook; a locked-down day has none of it.

Time	What happens at the penitentiary
12:00, 3:00, and 5:00 a.m.	Official counts; staff must see “human flesh” even if it means waking him
6:00 a.m.	Wake-up; phones on; breakfast by five-minute one-way move
6:30 to 7:30 a.m.	Sick-call triage sign-up; pill line through 7:30
7:30 a.m.	Work call in khaki jumpsuit; sanitation inspections; one phone per pod for men off work
Noon	Mainline; executive staff take questions in the dining room on weekdays
4:00 to 4:10 p.m.	Recall and the stand-up count; five-minute move to the evening meal once it clears
8:45 p.m.	Cell doors secured, followed by the 9:00 p.m. stand-up count
9:30 p.m.	Phones off
10:00 p.m.	Lights out and quiet hours until 6:00 a.m.

Movement is on a five-minute one-way move or a ten-minute move announced by the Control Center, with red lines on the unit floor where men wait and staff who will not unlock the door until everyone is behind them. A combination lock fastened to anything but a locker handle, which the handbook says “will be viewed as a weapon,” any heating device, another man’s legal work in the cell, or a chair left outside it can all bring discipline, and under the Bureau’s work-pay policy a 100- or 200-level drug or alcohol finding ordinarily cuts a paid worker to maintenance pay for a year.

The Special Housing Unit has its own regime in the handbook: restraints behind the back for a move to a new cell, every man in a cell restrained before its door opens, a cell change at least every 21 days, no property except legal material and what the SHU lieutenant approves, “no magazines or newspapers,” a weekly Unit Team visit, and one 15-minute call a month. The DC inspectors found the same unit “extremely cold” in December 2017, with some men “shackled while standing for several hours,” and listed “excessive use of chemicals during use of force” among their concerns for the whole prison; in September 2022 they found 13 men in the SHU, ten of them from DC, and a full-time SHU psychologist making two rounds a week. Our guide to Special Housing Units covers the review clock on every placement, and the Bureau’s own SHU rules are summarized on our policy page.

Medical care is Care Level 1, the lowest of the Bureau’s four, so the penitentiary is staffed for generally healthy men and sends anything complicated out. The DC inspectors were told in 2022 that hospitals lie within a 20-mile radius and that outside treatment waits on regional approval, a process staff said can “take months”; 24 of their 37 respondents were dissatisfied with medical care and 22 said sick call was not answered within 48 hours, though their report on the 2017 visit had credited the same department with “exceptional care.” Sick call carries a $2 co-pay, waived when medical staff initiate the visit or the man is indigent. During modified operations recreation shrinks to “in cell programming,” which in 2022 meant crochet, drawing, and guitar.

What do inspectors say about conditions at USP Pollock?

The Inspector General found FCC Pollock’s food areas clean but the penitentiary’s kitchen at 86 degrees with the air conditioning out and 9 of its 15 cell-feeding carts with broken heaters, and the District of Columbia’s inspectors reported long lockdowns, discolored water, delayed mail, and residents uncomfortable reporting violence. Three kinds of outside reviewer have examined this penitentiary, each for its own purpose. The Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General inspected FCC Pollock on site and unannounced in June 2024, and on its own count in May 2026 (Report 26-055) the complex is one of 14 Bureau institutions it has inspected that way since 2023; it also reviewed the complex remotely during the pandemic and traced a nationwide equipment purchase to an incident here. The District of Columbia’s Corrections Information Council has inspected the penitentiary twice, and both reports concern this building. Independent PREA auditors have reviewed the complex twice. Each has limits: the Inspector General’s visit examined food service, and the DC reports rest on a few dozen volunteers from one small group of prisoners.

The Inspector General’s unannounced inspection, June 2024

Between June 4 and 6, 2024, the OIG inspected food service at six institutions at once, one per region, chosen “based on their relative scores from the OIG’s prison inspection risk assessment tool, as well as the volume and nature of complaints submitted to the OIG regarding institution operations.” FCC Pollock was the South Central Region’s, and the penitentiary held 985 men on June 4, 2024. E&I Report 25-062, published June 17, 2025, opens its Pollock section with the finding a family would want: “we found food areas under control of the Food Service Department to be clean and did not identify any obvious indications that the food served to inmates was unsafe.”

Then it lists what was wrong, and it places several of the problems in the penitentiary itself. Food Service was “staffed at 96 percent (27 of 28 authorized positions filled); however, 3 employees were on limited duty,” and the report continues: “Food Service Department employees told us that they would feel safer if there were more employees available to supervise high-security inmates when they communally eat in the USP cafeteria.” On weapons, “multiple keys had been issued for secure knife cages,” against Bureau policy, a lapse the inspectors said “increased the likelihood that inmates could misuse them as contraband weapons”; the Bureau’s response says the complex answered “by designating a single key set for Food Service access and replacing all knives with safer dough cutters.”

On the building, the report says which kitchen: “we identified additional food service equipment functionality issues, infrastructure deficiencies, and workplace safety concerns in the USP kitchen and food service areas. First, the air-conditioning system was inoperable, contributing to a temperature of 86 degrees F in the food preparation area.” An employee said “that the kitchen was ‘extremely hot’ and that the inmates were ‘working in brutal heat.'” Second, “many damaged and missing floor tiles in the dishwasher area and around large cook kettles in the USP kitchen,” where staff “have sustained slip-and-fall injuries.” Third, uncovered electrical boxes with exposed wires “in the Secure Cafeteria Serving Area.” The Bureau reported the air conditioning repaired on July 26, 2024, and by April 2025 had shown the inspectors photographs of the patched floor and the covered boxes. The report’s last finding for the penitentiary was that “the heating components for 9 of 15 mobile carts, used to deliver food to inmates who are fed in their cell or housing unit, were broken,” and the Bureau later gave the inspectors evidence of new heating components. At a penitentiary the DC inspectors found locked down from June to September 2022, those carts are how dinner arrives.

The 2020 remote review and the 2014 x-ray audit

The Inspector General’s Pandemic Response Report 21-003, published November 17, 2020, was a remote review of FCC Oakdale and FCC Pollock built on telephone interviews, documents, and a staff survey, and it assesses the pandemic response rather than conditions. Its account is that the complex did comparatively well: by November 8, 2020, “no Pollock staff or inmates died due to COVID-19,” against eight inmate deaths at Oakdale, 53 miles away. The report tied part of the difference to layout, noting the two-man cells at Pollock’s USP and FCI. The Warden told the reviewers that on May 13, 2020, the complex had 39 correctional officer positions vacant.

Six years earlier the Inspector General had audited a $4 million purchase that began here. Audit Report 14-27 (June 2014) traces it to a contraband shipment intercepted at the penitentiary on August 9, 2010, and a Bureau review finding “that USP Pollock staff were not following institution screening protocol”; the Bureau then bought 65 pallet-sized x-ray machines for $3,955,382, and the audit found them “not effective for screening certain commodities.”

The DC inspections of 2017 and 2022

The Corrections Information Council inspects federal prisons because the District of Columbia has none of its own, and its two reports on USP Pollock are devoted to the penitentiary alone. In December 2017 the Council surveyed 14 of the 48 DC residents in a population of 907, and in September 2022 37 of 54 in a population of 1,180, all volunteers from one small group of DC Code offenders, and conditions belong to the visit date rather than the publication date.

The 2017 visit, reported in July 2019, was contentious before it began: at 6:00 a.m. on the first day “the executive assistant required SHU staff to have DC inmates in the SHU put into indoor cages, standing with their hands and feet shackled for over six hours while waiting to be interviewed by CIC staff.” Its major findings were water that “turned the color of both a Q-tip and an inmate’s toilet bowl to blue and green,” mail delayed “up to four months,” and little programming beyond the GED. It also recorded that a DC man had been “stabbed several times on the outdoor compound, taken to the hospital in a medevac, and pronounced dead” in May 2017, and that the warden, two weeks into the job, “was unaware of the situation.” It praised the Challenge Program and the GED classes taught inside the SHU.

The 2022 visit was reported in February 2023, and the Council wrote that “the June and July 2022 deaths of two D.C. residents” made safety its priority; the Bureau’s inmate locator dates both deaths to July 2022, on the 12th and the 30th. Of its 37 respondents, 27 “did not feel comfortable reporting incidents of violence to staff”; asked how Pollock compared with other prisons they had known, 17 said the same, 16 worse, and three better. All 13 men in the SHU that day had come from A block, “where the deaths of the two D.C. residents occurred.” Residents in A block reported no hot water and in C block water that was “green and unusable”; the Bureau answered that “all housing units have useable hot water.” When the inspectors asked follow-up questions about data, alleged transfers, and the modified-operations schedule, executive staff told them to wait for day two, and on day two to follow up by email.

Those two deaths had consequences beyond the report. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton asked the Bureau in August and September 2022 to move every DC resident out, and after meeting the new Director on October 4, 2022 said she was “pleased that BOP is transferring some D.C. residents from Pollock” but “disappointed to hear that BOP is not transferring all D.C. residents from Pollock.” A proposed class action brought by the DC Public Defender Service over the classification of DC Code offenders, whose lead plaintiff was held here when it was filed, was dismissed without prejudice for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction on August 28, 2024. Blades v. Garland, No. 1:22-cv-00279 (D.D.C.), ECF No. 74.

The PREA audits and the report the Bureau links

The PREA report on the Bureau’s USP Pollock page is not a penitentiary audit. The link, labeled “USP Pollock PREA Report,” serves one 189-page audit of the whole complex, and the same file appears on the Bureau’s FCI Pollock page as “FCI Pollock PREA Report.” Inside, the institution is “Federal Correctional Complex (FCC) Pollock,” the audit was conducted by an independent auditor, Lynni O’Haver of Corrections Consulting Services, who was on site from March 31 to April 2, 2026, and the final report of May 12, 2026, records 45 standards met, none exceeded, none unmet. An older address for this penitentiary’s audit still serves the superseded 2023 audit by Marc Coudriet, an independent auditor subcontracted by PREA Auditors of America, on site from May 2 to 4, 2023.

The 2026 audit’s penitentiary-specific fields are the reason to read it: Complex and USP Warden Kris Goldey; 891 designated beds; a “current population” of 870; 953 admissions in twelve months; an average stay of 636 days; 70 segregation cells. The complex-wide allegation counts are on our FCI Pollock page. For the penitentiary alone, the Government Accountability Office’s May 2026 report tabulates 21 reported sexual-abuse allegations against other prisoners at USP Pollock for 2020 through 2024 and 14 against staff, in two tables from different Bureau systems that must not be added together. Those are allegations, not findings; most allegations nationally from 2014 through 2022 were closed as unsubstantiated, which means unproven rather than false, and GAO does not adjust for population. See violence and sexual assault in prison and the Bureau’s PREA rules.

Staffing and the 2018 letter

On June 8, 2018, Louisiana’s two senators, Bill Cassidy and John Kennedy, and Representatives Ralph Abraham and Mike Johnson wrote to the Bureau’s acting director and the Attorney General about staffing. Their letter, which Senator Cassidy’s office published in full, said “USP Pollock is a High Security Facility housing the worst of the worst offenders, but BOP has eliminated 90 staffing positions there,” called it “one of the most dangerous facilities in the nation,” and said of the complex as a whole that “staff have been stabbed, beaten, and bitten. Some staff suffered brain damage, and some required reconstructive surgery from fractured facial bones and stab wounds.” Staffing is why a call-out is canceled, why a unit eats from a cart, and why an officer opening a cell door is sometimes alone.

USP Pollock in the news

Recent news about USP Pollock centers on three deaths in custody between February 2025 and August 2026 and a March 2024 sentence for stabbing two officers; older items concern the October 2022 transfer of DC residents and the sentences for a 2014 killing and a 2017 attack on staff. Events at the penitentiary, newest first; events at the medium are on the FCI Pollock page:

• August 2026 — death in custody. The Bureau’s news release reported that Daniel Paul Blanks, 48, “was found unresponsive” at about 1:00 p.m. on August 2, 2026, that responding employees “initiated life-saving measures,” and that he was taken to a local hospital and “pronounced deceased by hospital personnel” the next day. The FBI was notified. He was serving a life sentence from the Western District of Arkansas for aiding and abetting kidnapping resulting in death and had been in custody at USP Pollock since May 22, 2025.
• April 2025 — death after a fight. At about 11:30 a.m. on April 24, 2025, staff “responded to multiple incarcerated individuals fighting at the United States Penitentiary (USP) Pollock”; Ramadhan Jaabir Justice, 30, was pronounced dead at a local hospital. He was serving 130 months from the Eastern District of North Carolina and had been here since March 4, 2022. The Bureau’s notice, as reproduced by KLAX-TV, places the fight at the penitentiary, not at FCI Pollock, and its inmate locator’s record of his death carries code POL, register 66820-056.
• February 2025 — death after a fight. James E. Horne Jr., 36, was found unresponsive at about 12:40 p.m. on February 6, 2025, after an altercation with other prisoners and died at a local hospital, according to the Bureau’s notice as reproduced by KLAX-TV; he had arrived on April 16, 2024.
• March 2024 — 220 months for stabbing two officers. Demetri Goldsmith, 25, was sentenced to 18 years and four months, an upward departure, for lunging at officers with a shank when they opened his cell door on April 19, 2019. The U.S. Attorney: “Some of the most dangerous individuals in this nation, prosecuted federally, are housed at USP Pollock.”
• October 2022 — DC residents moved out. After two DC men, Mark Harris and Lionel Stoddard, died at the penitentiary in July 2022, Delegate Norton asked the Bureau to remove every DC resident; the Bureau transferred some.
• November 2021 and September 2020 — 360 and 350 months for a first-day killing. Cellmates Jesus Sanchez and David Cortez stabbed a newly arrived prisoner 19 times on the recreation yard on June 18, 2014, and he died in hospital.
• July 2018 — 240 months for attempting to kill two staff. Charles Lee White, already serving life, stabbed both of the staff members searching a cell on January 13, 2017, while another prisoner fought one of them. The Justice Department’s release records that both “were transported to the emergency room at a local hospital to assess and treat their injuries and survived.”

The three most recent deaths were each announced in the Bureau’s standard notice: a few lines, the FBI notified, no cause of death published. A Freedom of Information Act request for the Bureau’s records, a request to the parish coroner for any autopsy report, and preservation of a wrongful-death claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which must be presented to the agency within two years, are the three things a family can do in the first months.

Frequently asked questions about USP Pollock

Problems at USP Pollock: where we can help

The problems that recur at this penitentiary are the ones its own record describes: violence and the segregation, transfers, and restrictions that follow it; months of modified operations that stop the programming a sentence depends on; and an immigration docket that runs inside the walls. Each has a paper route with a deadline on it.

• Designation and the Public Safety Factor. A high-security placement driven by sentence length or a gang validation can be challenged with a waiver request and documents, and a nearer-home or lower-security transfer, or one to reach RDAP, is a written case, not a hope.
• Safety, separation, and protective custody. Where a man has been threatened or assaulted, the request for separatee status or a protective transfer goes in writing to the unit team and, if refused, up the administrative remedy ladder, which allows 20 days at each of the first two steps and 30 at the last.
• Special Housing Unit placements that outlast their justification, and disciplinary hearings whose findings cost good conduct time and Challenge Program eligibility. The Western District of Louisiana’s U.S. Attorney prosecutes assaults at Pollock, and the releases above record added sentences of 18 years and more, so an incident report here can become an indictment.
• First Step Act time credits lost to lockdowns, and PATTERN scores that are wrong; see First Step Act time credits, the PATTERN risk score, our First Step Act credit services, and our early-release work.
• Immigration. An Institution Hearing Program notice starts a removal case on the immigration court’s clock while the sentence runs on the Bureau’s, and the two need coordinating.
• Medical care sent “to the region” for approval. When an outside consultation is months overdue, the route is a written request, then the remedy process, and where harm has been done a Federal Tort Claims Act claim on Standard Form 95 to the South Central Regional Office in Grand Prairie, Texas.
• Sentence computation and good time, which for someone held here are litigated in the Western District of Louisiana, and compassionate release, which is filed in the court that imposed the sentence; the Bureau’s side of the process is on our reduction-in-sentence policy page.
• 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 Pollock, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026.
• Death at USP Pollock, Federal Bureau of Prisons, USP Pollock, 2026. News release on the death of Daniel Paul Blanks.
• F.C.C. Pollock Commissary List, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCC Pollock, 2024.
• FCC Pollock Inmate Admission & Orientation Handbook, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCC Pollock, 2023.
• FCC Pollock Inmate Admission & Orientation Handbook, Spanish edition, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCC Pollock, 2023.
• Administrative Remedy Program, Program Statement 1330.18, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2014. Filing deadlines at each step.
• Trust Fund/Deposit Fund Manual, Program Statement 4500.13, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Commissary spending limit, exclusions, special purpose orders, and deposit holds.
• Inmate Security Designation and Custody Classification, Program Statement 5100.08, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026.
• Inmate Work and Performance Pay, Program Statement 5251.06, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2008. Pay consequences of drug and alcohol findings.
• Inmate Telephone Regulations, Program Statement 5264.09, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Monthly minute allowance and call rules; replaced Program Statement 5264.08 (2008).
• Psychology Treatment Programs, Program Statement 5330.11, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2016. RDAP screening and transfer.
• Searching, Detaining, or Arresting Visitors to Bureau Grounds and Facilities, Program Statement 5510.16, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026.
• First Step Act Approved Programs Guide, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Reentry Services Division, 2026. Programs by institution, including the Challenge Program and the RDAP list.

Audits and inspections

• PREA Audit Report: Federal Correctional Complex (FCC) Pollock, Corrections Consulting Services, LLC, 2026. Auditor Lynni O’Haver; the complex-wide audit the Bureau’s USP Pollock page links.
• 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.
• Concurrent Inspections of BOP Food Service Operations (Report 25-062), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2025. Includes the June 2024 inspection at FCC Pollock.
• PREA Facility Audit Report: Final, FCC Pollock, PREA Auditors of America, LLC, 2023. Auditor Marc L. Coudriet; superseded by the 2026 audit.
• USP Pollock: Report on Findings and Recommendations, District of Columbia Corrections Information Council, 2023. Inspection of September 28–29, 2022, with the Bureau’s responses.
• Review of the Institutional Hearing and Removal Program Expansion for Federal Inmates (Report 21-123), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2021.
• Remote Inspection of Federal Correctional Complexes Oakdale and Pollock (Pandemic Response Report 21-003), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2020.
• USP Pollock Inspection Report, District of Columbia Corrections Information Council, 2019. Inspection of December 14–15, 2017.
• Audit of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ September 2011 Procurement of X-Ray Equipment (Audit Report 14-27), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2014.

Court records

• Hanson v. Drummond, No. 1:25-cv-00102-DDD-JPM, ECF No. 20 (judgment), U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, 2025. Dismissal of John Fitzgerald Hanson’s suit against his transfer to Oklahoma.
• Blades v. Garland, No. 1:22-cv-00279, ECF No. 74 (order), U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, 2024. Dismissal of the proposed class action over the classification of DC Code offenders.
• Federal Inmate Sentenced to Additional 18+ Years for Assaulting Federal Officers, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Louisiana, 2024. Demetri Goldsmith’s sentence.
• Félix Verdejo-Sánchez Sentenced to Life in Prison for Kidnapping Resulting in Death, and Intentionally Killing an Unborn Child, U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Puerto Rico, 2023. Félix Verdejo-Sánchez’s life sentence.
• Leading ISIS Media Figure and Foreign Fighter Sentenced to Life Imprisonment, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, 2022. Mohammed Khalifa’s life sentence.
• Federal Penitentiary Prisoner Sentenced for Killing Fellow Inmate, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Louisiana, 2021. Jesus Sanchez’s sentence for the June 2014 killing.
• Pollock Prisoner Sentenced to 29 Years for Killing Fellow Inmate, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Louisiana, 2020. David Cortez’s 350-month sentence for the same killing.
• Czar Entertainment Founder James Rosemond Sentenced To Life In Prison For Ordering The Murder Of Lowell Fletcher, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York, 2018. James Rosemond’s life sentence.
• Pollock prisoner from California sentenced to 20 years for attempt to kill prison staff, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Louisiana, 2018. Charles Lee White’s sentence.
• Saudi Student Sentenced to Life in Prison for Attempted Use of Weapon of Mass Destruction, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, 2012. Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari’s life sentence.

News and other sources

• Oklahoma Executes a Man Who Was Transferred from Federal Custody by Trump Official, NBC News (Associated Press), 2025. John Fitzgerald Hanson’s transfer and execution.
• Death at USP Pollock, KLAX-TV, 2025. Reproduces the Bureau’s notice of the April 24, 2025, death of Ramadhan Jaabir Justice.
• Inmate Death Reported at FCI Pollock, KALB, 2025. Reports the same death; the Bureau’s notice places it at USP Pollock.
• Death at USP Pollock, KLAX-TV, 2025. Reproduces the Bureau’s notice of the February 6, 2025, death of James E. Horne Jr.
• After Killings, Violence, Bureau Of Prisons Will Move D.C. Men From Louisiana Prison, DCist (WAMU), 2022.
• Norton Meets with New Federal Bureau of Prisons Director to Discuss Treatment of D.C. Residents, Office of Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, 2022.
• Cassidy, Kennedy, Abraham, Johnson Urge Trump Administration to Increase Staff at Federal Prison Facilities in Louisiana, Office of Senator Bill Cassidy, 2018.
• New Brunswick RCMP Capture Fugitive on U.S. Marshals 15 Most Wanted List, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 2007. Richard Lee McNair’s capture.
• 18 U.S.C. § 3623, Transfer of a prisoner to State authority, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).

Sources reviewed September 2026.

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