USP Terre Haute: Death Row, Visiting, Mail and Programs

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

USP Terre Haute at a glance

USP Terre Haute is the high-security federal penitentiary for men at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, on Bureau Road South about four miles south of the city. Its Special Confinement Unit is the Bureau of Prisons’ death row, and every federal execution since 2001 has been carried out here.

Official name	United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute
BOP code	THP · complex THX
Security level	High; men
Population	1,151 (as of September 2026)
Visiting	Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and federal holidays, 8 a.m.–3 p.m. · Special Confinement Unit: weekdays, by appointment
Inmate mail	Inmate Name & Register Number · USP Terre Haute · U.S. Penitentiary · P.O. Box 33 · Terre Haute, IN 47808
Send money	Lockbox · Western Union (code city FBOP, DC) · MoneyGram (receive code 7932)
Phone	812-244-4400 · Fax 812-244-4791
Street address	4700 Bureau Road South, Terre Haute, IN 47802 · Vigo County
Judicial district	Southern District of Indiana
BOP region	North Central
Special Housing Unit	Yes
Medical care level	Level 3
Mental health care level	Level 3
RDAP	No · offered at FCI Terre Haute
UNICOR	Unclear · see the programs section
Camp	None · the complex’s camp belongs to FCI Terre Haute

The population was 1,151 as of September 2026, and the complex as a whole held 2,538. The penitentiary sits in Vigo County, in the Bureau’s North Central Region and the Southern District of Indiana, and it shares the complex with FCI Terre Haute and that institution’s minimum-security camp.

Which Terre Haute prison is this? Two institutions and a camp share one complex

USP Terre Haute is the high-security penitentiary, one of three federal facilities on a single reservation south of Terre Haute; the other two are the medium-security FCI Terre Haute and the FCI’s minimum-security camp.

Facility	Code and level	Address and switchboard	Locator shows
USP Terre Haute (this page)	THP — high security	4700 Bureau Road South, 812-244-4400	“Terre Haute USP”
FCI Terre Haute	THA — medium security	4200 Bureau Road North, 812-238-1531	“Terre Haute FCI”
Satellite Prison Camp	Part of THA — minimum security	2501 West Bureau Road, 812-238-1531	“Terre Haute FCI” (camp population is reported under the FCI)
FCC Terre Haute	THX — the complex code; no one is designated to it	—	—

USP Terre Haute has no camp of its own: the Bureau’s roster carries no camp on this code, its September 2026 population report counts the 285 men at the camp under the FCI, and the camp’s address is on West Bureau Road with the FCI’s telephone number. In August 2026 the Bureau’s page for the penitentiary described “an adjacent minimum security satellite camp”; by September 2026 it read simply “a high security U.S. penitentiary,” though it still prints a “Satellite Camp” mail block under the penitentiary’s name. If the person you are looking for is at the camp, see the FCI Terre Haute page, listed with the other federal prisons in Indiana.

The 1940 building belongs to the FCI, not to this prison: the medium-security FCI on Bureau Road North is the institution whose window frames the Inspector General described in October 2025 as “part of the original construction from 1940,” while the penitentiary was activated in 2005, according to the DC Corrections Information Council’s 2017 report. Both institutions share one post office box and one executive assistant’s email address, [email protected], so the locator’s display name is what tells you where he is.

What is the security level at USP Terre Haute?

USP Terre Haute is a high-security penitentiary: cell housing, a hardened perimeter, controlled movement between areas, and a staff-to-inmate ratio the DC Corrections Information Council recorded as one to four in 2016. A man is scored for security points at designation and at every program review, and a total of 24 or more places him at high security (the Bureau’s security designation rules, Program Statement 5100.08, chapter 5, table 5-2). Our guides to federal security levels and the intake process cover the scoring and the first days after arrival.

For many men here, sentence length matters more than points. The same program statement carries a Public Safety Factor for sentence length: a male inmate with more than 30 years remaining, including a non-parolable life sentence, “will be housed in a High security level institution unless the PSF has been waived,” and a death or life sentence is entered as 540 months, a figure that “is not figured into the security point total but impacts the Sentence Length Public Safety Factor.” That one factor is how a first-time offender with no history of violence can land in a penitentiary, and why his route to lower security runs through a waiver of it, not his conduct alone.

When the Council interviewed 46 of the 74 District of Columbia men held here in September 2016, the most common positive comment was “the low and continuously decreasing level of violence,” and the men called the penitentiary a “drop out yard” for those who had left gangs; that is a self-selected sample from 2016, not a Bureau designation. In 2016 the Council counted six general population units holding 768 cells, a Special Housing Unit, and the Special Confinement Unit. The December 2024 PREA audit counts, across the whole complex, 21 multiple-occupancy cell units, nine open-bay units, two single-cell units, and 346 segregation cells.

Does USP Terre Haute hold federal death row?

Yes. USP Terre Haute holds men under a federal sentence of death in its Special Confinement Unit, and the federal government’s executions are carried out at the complex.

What the unit is

The Justice Department’s Inspector General described it after a 2015 site visit: a restrictive housing unit at USP Terre Haute, “known as the Special Confinement Unit, houses ‘death row’ inmates in single-cell confinement for an average of 23 hours a day”; one of the two men its inspectors interviewed there said he had been out of his cell for three hours a week (E&I Report 17-05, July 2017, at 16–17). A federal judge wrote in February 2026 that the men were “imprisoned on federal death row, in the Special Confinement Unit at United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.”

The Bureau’s local documents treat the unit as a separate world. The visiting supplement gives it its own visiting rules, set out below, the commissary publishes a distinct “Special Confinement Unit List,” and men in the unit reach the law library by written request to its officers. If your relative is in the SCU, the general visiting hours on this page do not apply to him.

Executions, and where things stand now

Federal regulations leave the place and date of execution to the Director of the Bureau of Prisons (28 C.F.R. § 26.3(a)). The Bureau’s own history page records that all sixteen federal executions since 2001 were carried out “by lethal injection at USP Terre Haute, IN”: Timothy McVeigh and Juan Raul Garza in June 2001, Louis Jones in March 2003, and then twelve men and one woman between July 14, 2020, and January 16, 2021.

The policy around the unit has swung twice in five years. A moratorium on federal executions was imposed on July 1, 2021. On December 23, 2024, the President commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 people then on federal death row to life. On January 20, 2025, Executive Order 14164 directed the Attorney General to “evaluate the places of imprisonment and conditions of confinement for each of the 37” and to ensure they are “imprisoned in conditions consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes” (90 Fed. Reg. 8463, 8464, § 3(e)), and on February 5, 2025, the Attorney General lifted the moratorium “effective immediately” and ordered a review of the Bureau’s execution protocol. As of September 2026, the Bureau’s federal-execution page says: “Currently, there are no federal executions scheduled.”

The commutations turned the unit’s population into a designation problem, and that problem is in court. Twenty-one of the 37 men sued in April 2025 to stop the Bureau moving them from the SCU to ADX Florence, the Bureau’s most restrictive prison. Judge Timothy J. Kelly first denied a preliminary injunction on May 27, 2025, because the men had not exhausted the Bureau’s administrative remedy for ADX designations. In a second suit, filed by seventeen of the men and joined by three more as plaintiff-intervenors, twenty in all, he found on February 11, 2026, that they were likely to succeed on a Fifth Amendment due-process claim that their redesignation hearings had been decided before they were held, and barred the government from transferring “any Plaintiff or Plaintiff-Intervenor to ADX Florence while this suit proceeds.” Taylor v. Trump, No. 1:25-cv-01161 (D.D.C. May 27, 2025); Taylor v. Trump, No. 1:25-cv-03742-TJK (D.D.C. Feb. 11, 2026), ECF Nos. 70, 71.

The case has moved since. Because the Prison Litigation Reform Act limits a preliminary injunction in a prison-conditions case to 90 days, the court issued an identical order on May 5, 2026, to run from May 12 to August 10 (ECF No. 86). On May 6 the Bureau amended Program Statement 5100.08 to recognize the Attorney General’s authority under 28 U.S.C. § 509 to designate a prisoner’s place of imprisonment; on May 8 it vacated the plaintiffs’ ADX designations, and the Acting Attorney General wrote to each man announcing a “presumptive, non-final determination” that he should go to ADX Florence and a “final individualized determination” to follow (ECF No. 87). On July 24 the court ordered, on the parties’ stipulation, that no plaintiff or intervenor be moved to ADX Florence until at least fourteen days after the Acting Attorney General decides all of their cases (ECF No. 114), and on July 31 the plaintiffs reported that Bureau staff had told several of them they would undergo psychological evaluations (ECF No. 115). As of September 2026, the docket showed no final redesignation decision.

The Bureau’s Inmate Locator shows the split the litigation produced. Dylann Roof (register number 28509-171) and Robert Bowers (39188-068) are listed at “Terre Haute USP” with a release date of “DEATH SENT”; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (95079-038) is at ADX Florence. Of the commutees, Rejon Taylor (41070-074), Brandon Basham (98940-071), Chadrick Fulks (16617-074), Jurijus Kadamovas (21050-112), and Norris Holder (26902-044) are still at Terre Haute serving life, while Shannon Agofsky (06267-045) and Carlos Caro (37786-079) are at ADX Florence.

Does USP Terre Haute have a Communications Management Unit?

No. The Terre Haute Communications Management Unit was at the FCI, not at USP Terre Haute, and it closed in 2025. In September 2025 a federal judge in the Southern District of Indiana recorded that “the BOP closed the CMU at FCI – Terre Haute (and another at FCI – Marion in Illinois), and a new, single CMU was established at FCI – Cumberland in Maryland,” and that government counsel “have represented to the Court that FCI – Cumberland is now the only BOP prison with a CMU.” Duka v. Rule, No. 2:25-cv-00224-JPH-MG (S.D. Ind. Sept. 9, 2025), ECF No. 15. No Bureau news release has announced the closure. The complex’s 2020 visiting supplement still carries a page of “Communication Management Unit (CMU) Visiting Procedures At The FCI,” which places the unit at the FCI. Our FCI Cumberland page explains the unit as it now operates. The Special Confinement Unit is a different thing: death row at the penitentiary, not a monitored general-population unit at the FCI.

Who are the notable inmates at USP Terre Haute?

The best-known men at USP Terre Haute are on death row: Dylann Roof and Robert Bowers are held here under sentence of death. The death-row population has been executed, commuted, transferred, and litigated over within five years, so older lists of notable prisoners are often out of date; each living person below is listed with his register number so you can check the Inmate Locator yourself.

Name	Status and register number	Why he is on lists about this prison
Dylann Roof	Held here under sentence of death; 28509-171, “Terre Haute USP,” “DEATH SENT”	Sentenced to death in the District of South Carolina in January 2017 for the murder of nine worshippers at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston in 2015
Robert Bowers	Held here under sentence of death; 39188-068, “Terre Haute USP,” “DEATH SENT”	Sentenced to death in the Western District of Pennsylvania in August 2023 for the murder of eleven worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev	Not here. ADX Florence, Colorado; 95079-038, “DEATH SENT”	The Boston Marathon bomber, whose death sentence the Supreme Court reinstated in 2022; often listed at Terre Haute, where federal executions are carried out
Rejon Taylor	Held here serving life; 41070-074	Lead plaintiff in Taylor v. Trump; one of the 37 men whose death sentences were commuted on December 23, 2024
Jurijus Kadamovas	Held here serving life; 21050-112	Commuted in December 2024; a Taylor plaintiff with his own conditions suit pending in the Southern District of Indiana since 2023
Joseph Edward Duncan	Died in custody on March 28, 2021; 12561-023, “DECEASED”	Sentenced to death in the District of Idaho in 2008 for the kidnapping and murder of a child; still listed as a current death-row inmate on several sites
Kirksey McCord Nix	Not here. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners, Springfield, Missouri, serving life at 83; 20921-077	A Dixie Mafia figure listed at Terre Haute on older pages
Timothy McVeigh	Executed here on June 11, 2001 (Bureau of Prisons execution record)	The Oklahoma City bombing. Juan Raul Garza (June 19, 2001), Louis Jones (March 18, 2003), and the thirteen people executed between July 2020 and January 2021, among them Lisa Montgomery, followed

How do I find someone at USP Terre Haute?

To find someone at USP Terre Haute, search the Bureau’s free Inmate Locator by name or, better, by the eight-digit register number, which is unique where names are not. The result gives the facility’s display name, the age, and either a projected release date or a status such as “LIFE,” “DEATH SENT,” “DECEASED,” or “NOT IN BOP CUSTODY”; our explainer on how register numbers work shows how to read the suffix. In September 2026 the locator asked for a “not a robot” verification before searching.

A man listed at “Terre Haute FCI” may be in the medium-security prison or in its camp; the locator does not distinguish them. If it finds no one, the usual reasons are a state rather than federal conviction, pretrial custody with the U.S. Marshals, or a different spelling on the judgment.

How do I write to someone at USP Terre Haute?

Letters to a man at USP Terre Haute go to P.O. Box 33, the post office box the complex shares, with his committed name and register number on the first line and the institution named so the mailroom sorts it to the right prison.

General and legal mail	Freight and non-USPS parcels
Inmate Name & Register Number USP Terre Haute U.S. Penitentiary P.O. Box 33 Terre Haute, IN 47808	Staff Name USP Terre Haute U.S. Penitentiary Attn: Warehouse 4700 Bureau Road South Terre Haute, IN 47802

The complex’s 2021 handbook adds rules that get letters rejected. Every incoming envelope must be white, with no labels or stickers on it. Do not enclose stamps or cash. No package over one pound is accepted without an approved BP-A0331 authorization unless it is legal material or a book, and at this security level softcover books, like hardcovers, must come from a publisher, book club, or bookstore. After a transfer the mailroom forwards mail for 30 days. Our guide to writing to someone in federal prison covers photographs, publications, and rejections.

A lawyer’s letter is protected only if the envelope is marked as the Bureau’s special-mail rules require, including “Special Mail – open only in the presence of the inmate” on the front; anything less is opened, read, and inspected as ordinary correspondence, and the handbook puts the duty of telling the lawyer on the prisoner. See attorney-client communication in the Bureau of Prisons for what else the privilege does and does not cover.

How do I send money to someone at USP Terre Haute?

Money for someone at USP Terre Haute goes to the Bureau, not to the prison: deposits go to the national lockbox in Des Moines or through Western Union or MoneyGram, and the visiting supplement is explicit that no visitor may leave money for an inmate at the institution. The routes below follow the complex’s 2021 handbook and the Bureau’s current money-sending instructions.

Route	Details	Posting
Postal money order or government check by mail	Federal Bureau of Prisons Inmate’s Committed Name / Register Number Post Office Box 474701 Des Moines, Iowa 50947-0001. Name and number on the instrument and the envelope; sender’s address top left. No personal checks, no cash; a 15-day hold applies to money orders that are not postal and to checks that are not government-issued	On receipt, subject to the hold
Western Union Quick Collect	Register number (no spaces) followed by last name; committed name on the attention line; code city FBOP, DC. Agent location, telephone with a card, or online	Posts within two to four hours when sent between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern; later transfers post by 7 a.m. the next day
MoneyGram ExpressPayment	Company name Federal Bureau of Prisons, Washington, DC; receive code 7932; committed name on the beneficiary line. Online payments up to $300 by Visa or MasterCard	Same two-to-four-hour window

The handbook warns that a transfer sent to the wrong register number and accepted “may not be returned,” and Trust Fund staff at the prison cannot trace a lockbox deposit or fix a Western Union problem for you. Commissary spending is capped at $460 a month, so larger deposits accumulate. Fees are compared in our guide to sending money to a federal prisoner.

What are the visiting hours at USP Terre Haute?

Visiting at USP Terre Haute is on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and federal holidays, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., with no one admitted after 2 p.m. That is the penitentiary’s rule under Institution Supplement THX-5267.09D, “Visiting,” the complex’s supplement to the Bureau’s visiting rules, dated November 20, 2020, and signed by the complex warden, and the 2021 handbook repeats it. Monday is easy to miss. Friday is not a penitentiary visiting day, and listings that include it are out of date; the 2021 handbook gives the camp alone extra hours on Fridays from 2 to 8 p.m., but the supplement lists the camp for weekends and holidays only, so a camp family should call before planning on a Friday.

Plan around the count. On weekends and holidays no one enters or leaves the visiting room from 9:30 a.m. until the 10 a.m. count clears, and processing at the front entrance stops at 9 a.m. and resumes after the count. Visitors may not drive onto the reservation before 7:50 a.m. or bring a pet onto the grounds, even one left in the car. Each man is allowed seven visits a calendar month, with any part of a visit on a given day counted as one and no carry-over; Terre Haute has no points system.

The supplement dates from 2020, and the Bureau may be working from a newer version it has not posted. Call 812-244-4400 before a long trip.

Who can visit, and how many

• No more than five visitors at one time; a larger group needs the unit manager’s prior approval, with notice to the complex captain.
• The visiting list holds immediate family plus up to ten friends and associates; at this complex step-siblings raised with the man count as family, and a common-law spouse counts only if the relationship was formed in a state that recognizes it.
• Friends must have known the man before he was locked up, and it is his job to have them mail proof of that to the unit team.
• Every proposed visitor returns a BP-S629 form consenting to an NCIC background check.
• Children under 16 must be with a responsible adult who is also an approved visitor; at 16 a child must be on the list in his own right and carry photo ID.
• The list may be changed once every 30 days.
• Attorneys are added to the list, may visit as often as necessary, and are not charged against the seven monthly visits. A minister of record may make one visit a month that does not count either; any other clergy visit does.

What visitors can wear and bring

Terre Haute’s dress rules are longer than most and are enforced at the front entrance by the operations lieutenant, who has the last word. Jewelry is limited to stud earrings and a wedding band, and a dermal piercing that will not clear the metal detector keeps you out. Banned: hooded tops, cargo pockets, jerseys, sweatpants, jogging suits, medical scrubs, yoga pants, anything sleeveless, low-cut, see-through, or tight, a bare midriff, any garment shorter than the knee, open-toed or open-backed footwear, hats and bandanas other than religious headwear, and bejeweled decorations that trip the scanner. Only children of 12 and under may wear shorts above the knee.

Color matters here, and it differs between the two institutions. Visitors to the penitentiary may not wear orange, camouflage, khaki, or maroon, because maroon is what the man you are visiting will be wearing: every USP inmate changes into a maroon top and pants issued at the visiting room. Visitors to the FCI may not wear orange, camouflage, khaki, or yellow, for the same reason. Watches, wallets, purses, sunglasses, and any electronic device not medically prescribed stay in your car or a locker. What you may carry in is a clear plastic bag no bigger than a large wallet, with up to $20 in ones, fives, or coins for the vending machines, which take nothing larger than a five; medication for the visit is held by the officer. No food, drink, or gum, and nothing to give or show the man.

Identification, screening, and the strip search

Everyone 16 and over shows a driver’s license or state photo ID, which at the penitentiary the control room officer keeps until you leave. Each visitor signs a Notification to Visitor form every time. Entry to the penitentiary requires clearing both a millimeter-wave body scanner and a walk-through metal detector, where the FCI uses the metal detector alone. Visitors are randomly screened for drug residue with an ion spectrometry device, and a positive reading can end the visit before it starts; the DC Corrections Information Council heard in 2016 that false positives were turning families away. How far these searches can go is set out in our page on searches, shakedowns, and contraband and in the Bureau’s visitor-search rules.

Two more supplement rules shape the visit itself. Every penitentiary inmate is strip searched before he enters the visiting room and again when he leaves, so a visit begins and ends with a wait. And before the greeting kiss the supplement permits, both visitor and inmate step up to the officer’s station so the officer can inspect the mouths of both with a flashlight. Kissing and embracing are allowed only at the beginning and end.

Visiting the Special Housing Unit and the Special Confinement Unit

A man in the penitentiary’s Special Housing Unit visits on weekends and holidays only, in the non-contact room of the visiting building, in handcuffs and leg irons. SHU visitors are not processed after 1 p.m., a visit is limited to two hours and two visitors, and a man gets four hours of such visiting a month; if the non-contact area fills, the men who have used the most visits are ended first, though the officer also weighs how far the visitor has come. Our page on Special Housing Units explains the categories of segregation and the reviews that are supposed to follow placement. For the Special Confinement Unit the rules are stricter and the days are reversed: visits are non-contact inside the unit, normally Monday to Friday, always pre-approved and scheduled by the unit’s staff, with exceptions only by the SCU unit manager and the complex captain together. A family that turns up on a Saturday to see a man on death row will not be admitted.

Getting there

The penitentiary is at 4700 Bureau Road South, on the west side of Highway 63 about four miles south of Terre Haute by the Bureau’s own directions; the FCI and the camp are on the same reservation on Bureau Road North and West Bureau Road. Use the main entrance and follow the signs to the penitentiary’s visitor lot. There is no bus service between downtown Terre Haute and the institution; the supplement says taxis run from the bus station and from Hulman Regional Airport. Our guide to federal prison visitation covers the rules common to every institution.

How do phone calls and email work at USP Terre Haute?

Men at USP Terre Haute place outgoing calls to an approved list of up to 30 numbers and send text-only email through TRULINCS; no one can call in. A single call should generally not exceed 15 minutes, and unit-phone calls are recorded. Under the Bureau’s telephone regulations, Program Statement 5264.09, issued September 3, 2026, the monthly allowance is 510 minutes: 300 of them free for men eligible for First Step Act telephone incentives, and 210 more that any prisoner who uses up the 300 may buy, with at least 30 minutes between calls. The 2021 handbook’s 300-minute cap is superseded. Properly arranged unmonitored calls to a lawyer do not count against the 510. Costs are covered in our page on federal inmate phone calls.

Locally, the 2021 handbook says the unit phones are on from 6 a.m. until the 9:15 p.m. lockdown, and money for calls moves from the commissary account after 4 p.m. on weekdays and all day on weekends, no more than twice a day. An unmonitored call to a lawyer requires the unit team to be satisfied of a need, such as an imminent court deadline, and the man pays for it.

Email runs through TRULINCS, reached from outside through CorrLinks, and every message is screened before it goes through; attorneys may be on the list, but their messages are not privileged. Our page on CorrLinks and TRULINCS explains how contact is set up.

What can people buy at the USP Terre Haute commissary?

The commissary spending limit at USP Terre Haute is $460 a month. The Bureau’s trust fund rules, Program Statement 4500.13, issued May 7, 2026, raised the national limit from $360 and list the only items that do not count against it: postage stamps, nicotine replacement patches and lozenges, over-the-counter medications and supplements, kosher and halal entrees for men on IFRP refusal status, copy cards and paper, footwear including sneakers and safety shoes, mattresses, and the secured media device. Telephone credit is not on that list and does count. The limit rises by $50 during the November–December holiday period, for no more than one validation period, and Special Purpose Orders for approved items from outside the commissary are capped at $600 a quarter.

Every Terre Haute document still says less. The 2021 handbook allows “$180.00 every two weeks” up to “the National Spending Limit of $360.00 per month,” and both 2022 commissary forms print “FCI/FPC/USP $180/BI-WEEKLY.” Those figures are obsolete. The local mechanism is less clear than the forms suggest: the same handbook says spending is revalidated monthly, on a day set by the fifth digit of the register number times three, plus one, while the forms still print a two-week figure, so how the $460 is now spread across the month is a question for the commissary.

Shopping is once a week, on the housing unit’s day, with the rotation posted on the TRULINCS bulletin board; there are no refunds or exchanges. The general population list and the separate “Special Confinement Unit List” appear to carry the same rules and limits, among them $11.60 in stamps, one MP3 player, one radio, 25 cans of tuna, and one pair of shoes. A Swintec typewriter ribbon at $7.85 is on the list, a sign that typewriters are still in use here. For the rules that apply everywhere, see our page on the federal prison commissary.

What programs are available at USP Terre Haute?

USP Terre Haute offers the Challenge Program, Life Connections, and the Resolve trauma program, but not RDAP; the Bureau’s August 2026 First Step Act Approved Programs Guide names the penitentiary for those three and marks it for 65 programs in all.

Drug treatment: no RDAP, but the Challenge Program

The Residential Drug Abuse Program does not run at the penitentiary. The complex’s 2021 handbook heads its RDAP section “FCI only,” and the residential-program list inside the Bureau’s August 2026 First Step Act Approved Programs Guide names FCI Terre Haute and not the USP. A man here who wants the year off that RDAP can bring under 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e) needs a transfer to the medium first.

What the penitentiary has instead is the Challenge Program, the Bureau’s residential treatment program for high-security men with substance-use problems, serious mental illness, or both, run as a modified therapeutic community in its own housing unit. The August 2026 guide names USP Terre Haute as one of the eleven penitentiaries offering it, credits it at 500 hours, and requires at least 18 months left to serve and either a documented drug history or a current diagnosis of a psychotic, mood, anxiety, or severe personality disorder. The handbook describes it as typically nine months, entered by a request to Psychology Services; it earns First Step Act time credits but not the RDAP sentence reduction. The Resolve Program, a non-residential trauma program that begins with the “Traumatic Stress and Resilience” workshop, is also named for USP Terre Haute in the guide, at 80 hours.

Education, vocational training, and UNICOR

GED and English-as-a-second-language classes are mandatory for those who need them, with the standard 240-hour literacy requirement tied to good-conduct time, and Adult Continuing Education classes run in the evenings and on weekends. The 2016 inspection describes the vocational side: eight certified apprenticeships, including baking, barbering, tutoring, and a small-appliance-repair program certified through Ivy Tech Community College, a 360-hour Diesel Technology and Building Trades course, and a 120-hour Computer Applications course, all requiring a GED or diploma. Our guides to prison education and vocational training cover the national picture.

The Bureau’s own current guide gives two answers on prison industries. The Council reported in 2016 that “USP Terre Haute employs 195 inmates in the UNICOR factory,” a textile plant sewing military shirts, but the Bureau’s current records leave unclear whether it still operates at the penitentiary. In the August 2026 First Step Act guide the by-institution matrix marks the penitentiary for Federal Prison Industries, while the program’s own location cell names FCI Terre Haute among 54 institutions and omits the USP. Ask the unit team in writing whether UNICOR is hiring at the penitentiary, and keep the answer.

Faith-based and reentry programming

USP Terre Haute is one of only five institutions the August 2026 guide names for the Life Connections Program, the Bureau’s 18-month residential faith-based reentry program, open to men of any faith or none and credited at 500 hours. The Council’s 2016 report describes it in detail: cohorts of 36, fifteen hours of programming a week and, by staff’s account, 360 graduates. Under the 2021 handbook a man asks the chaplain’s office in writing to attend the next orientation, and the Central Office’s program coordinator, not the institution, decides who is admitted; staff told the Council that men serving life are eligible.

For everything else, the guide’s by-institution matrix marks USP Terre Haute for 65 programs, including Threshold, the non-residential drug program, anger management, and parenting, and a mark in it is permission to offer a class, not proof that one is running or that there is no waiting list. That is a question for the unit team at every program review.

What is daily life like at USP Terre Haute?

Daily life at USP Terre Haute is built around five official counts and a 9:15 p.m. lockdown, as the complex’s 2021 handbook sets it out; the meal times below come from the Council’s 2016 report.

Time	What happens
Midnight, 3 a.m., 5 a.m.	Official counts; every man must be seen, even if he has to be woken
5:30 a.m.	Wake-up; units unlock. Pill line, then breakfast; sick-call sign-up runs for about ten minutes after the last unit is called on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday (Wednesdays are for blood-sugar and blood-pressure checks; none on federal holidays)
6 a.m.	Unit telephones switch on; breakfast was served at 6:30 in 2016
Working hours	Job assignments in the duty uniform of brown T-shirt and khaki pants; ten-minute controlled moves before the hour
10 a.m. (weekends and holidays)	Stand-up count; the visiting room is sealed from 9:30 until it clears
4 p.m.	Stand-up count; the first evening move begins when it clears; telephone-account transfers open
5 p.m.	Dinner (2016); men may move to recreation, education, or the chapel during the meal
9:15 p.m.	Lockdown announced; phones off. Stand-up count at 9:30; units stay locked until 5:30 a.m.

A member of unit staff is ordinarily on the compound until 7 p.m. A cell may hold three magazines, five books, a week of newspapers, and 25 letters, and one painting up to 24 by 30 inches while it is being worked on. Tobacco of any kind is contraband, and the handbook holds each man financially responsible for damage to his own cell.

Medical care at the penitentiary is delivered from the Health Services department in the Green Corridor. Routine care is by sick-call triage on four mornings a week, each requested visit costing a $2 co-payment unless it falls within the exemptions for chronic care, emergencies, and mental health. Routine physicals “are no longer required,” the handbook says; there is a chronic-care clinic instead. In 2016 the Council recorded that Health Services for the complex had 55 of 63 positions filled, with vacancies for two physicians. See medical care in federal prison and the Bureau’s patient care rules for how to escalate a problem that is not being treated.

Recreation, per the Council, means a yard with softball, soccer, handball, a track and basketball, a gymnasium, hobby-craft rooms, and a music room. Meals are the national menu with heart-healthy, no-flesh, kosher, and halal options; in 2016 the most common complaint the Council heard was that portions were small and food arrived cold or undercooked.

What do inspectors say about conditions at USP Terre Haute?

The DOJ Office of the Inspector General has not conducted an on-site inspection of this facility. Its staff have been on the complex at least three times: in July 2025 at the medium-security FCI, for a Bureau-wide evaluation of lockdowns that produced a memorandum about heat, pests, and broken windows there whose $108 million repair estimate, it says, “does not include” other parts of the complex; between June 2017 and February 2018, for an audit of how the Bureau monitors inmate communications published in March 2020; and in the summer of 2015 for the restrictive-housing review quoted above. None of those was an inspection of the penitentiary, and on the Inspector General’s own count in May 2026 it had inspected 14 institutions since 2023, none of them here. The only published inspection of the penitentiary itself is the District of Columbia Corrections Information Council’s, from 2016.

The 2016 inspection

The Council inspected USP Terre Haute on September 15, 2016, and published its report on June 15, 2017, with the Bureau’s response attached. It interviewed 46 of the 74 District of Columbia men held here that September, 5 percent of a population of 1,481 that stood at 131.53 percent of the rated capacity of 1,126. Every percentage below is of that self-selected sample, and the conditions belong to 2016.

• Segregation was the dominant finding. Of the 26 respondents who had been in the SHU, 77 percent had spent more than 30 days there at a stretch, and 20 DC men were in the unit on the day of the visit, 18 of them on disciplinary segregation.
• Grievances were not being filed for fear of staff: 17 of the 46 gave retaliation as their reason for not using the remedy process, and 27 reported being harassed, threatened, or abused by staff. From February 2015 to January 2016 the penitentiary’s 142 staff-conduct grievances produced no grant.
• There had been 18 suicide attempts the Bureau classed as serious in the year to July 2016, and inspectors saw cracked windows in two suicide-observation rooms. Of 32 respondents who needed mental health services, 13 felt they had adequate access.
• Programming was the bright spot: men named the Challenge and Life Connections programs as the institution’s best feature, and the Council’s criticism was that a UNICOR job, with five DC men among 195 workers, was “very difficult to obtain.”

The 2024 PREA audit, and the old one still online

The complex was audited under the Prison Rape Elimination Act on December 10–12, 2024, by Lynni O’Haver of Corrections Consulting Services, whose final report is dated December 24, 2024. It covers all three institutions as one facility and found all 45 standards met, none exceeded, and none unmet. In the twelve months before the visit the complex reported 17 allegations of sexual abuse and 10 of sexual harassment; of the abuse investigations, three were unfounded, fourteen unsubstantiated, and none substantiated, and no staff-on-inmate abuse allegation was recorded at all. Unsubstantiated means the evidence did not settle the question either way.

The superseded 2022 audit report is still online at the Bureau’s old address for the penitentiary’s PREA report: Jennifer L. Feicht, an independent auditor working under subcontract to PREA Auditors of America, conducted that audit on site on December 7–9, 2021, and finalized it on April 4, 2022. The 2024 audit’s population figures are for the complex: 2,751 men on December 10, 2024, against a designated capacity of 2,110. Separately, the Government Accountability Office’s May 2026 report on sexual abuse in federal prisons tabulates, for USP Terre Haute alone, 70 reported allegations with an incarcerated perpetrator for incidents in 2020 through 2024 and eight with a Bureau employee as the alleged perpetrator reported in the same years. Those are allegations, not findings, drawn from two Bureau systems that cannot be added together.

What the Inspector General’s other work records

Three other federal records name the penitentiary. The Inspector General’s February 2024 evaluation of inmate deaths counted 344 deaths by suicide, homicide, accident, or unknown cause across the Bureau in fiscal years 2014 through 2021 and listed USP Terre Haute, with 14, behind only USP Atlanta’s 17 and level with USP Hazelton, against a 2018 population of 1,372 (E&I Report 24-041, Table 3). Its September 2022 memorandum on medical contracting repeated a 2021 finding that the penitentiary “paid on average more than $40,000 each for three air ambulance claims” and could have saved more than $110,000 by applying pricing it had negotiated for other services (MAM 22-113). And in June 2021 the contractor NaphCare paid $694,593 to settle False Claims Act allegations that between January 2014 and June 2020 it billed the Bureau for higher-level physician services than were documented on visit sheets at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute; the Justice Department said no determination of liability was made.

Staff and contraband prosecutions

The complex’s prosecutions run to a pattern of tobacco and phones brought in by staff. In 2015 a correctional officer who had supervised the penitentiary’s kitchen for six months, Edward Tunwar, was sentenced to 52 months for supplying an inmate with cellphones and 130 packs of tobacco and, in December 2013, smuggling an ounce of heroin into the penitentiary that was seized inside. In October 2023 a correctional treatment specialist at the complex was sentenced to a year and a day for $9,800 in tobacco bribes, and in March 2024 an officer received eight months for supplying cigarettes at $400 a carton.

USP Terre Haute in the news

Recent news about USP Terre Haute centers on the litigation over the commuted death-row men, two deaths at the penitentiary, and the Inspector General’s work at the complex; older items concern two in-custody killings, the lifting of the execution moratorium, the NaphCare settlement, and the 2001 execution of Timothy McVeigh.

• July 2026 — the Inspector General announced the indictment of a Bureau cook foreman supervisor assigned to FCI Terre Haute on one count of deprivation of rights under color of law, for an alleged assault on an inmate in February 2025.
• February–July 2026 — a federal judge in Washington barred the transfer to ADX Florence of the commuted men from the Special Confinement Unit who had sued (February 11, renewed May 5); in May the Acting Attorney General began a new redesignation process, and in July the court ordered that none be moved until at least fourteen days after his final decisions (Taylor v. Trump, D.D.C.).
• June 2026 — the Bureau announced the death of Rodney Belvado, 41, who was found unresponsive at the penitentiary on June 1 and pronounced deceased by EMS personnel; he was serving a life sentence from the District of Arizona for first-degree murder, had been held here since September 2017, and the FBI was notified.
• January 2026 — the Bureau announced the death of Gary Ray Crowell, 66, who was found unresponsive at the penitentiary on January 23, taken by EMS to a local hospital, and pronounced deceased by hospital personnel; he was serving a life sentence from the District of New Mexico for kidnapping and had been held here since August 2018.
• October 2025 — the Inspector General published a management advisory on FCI Terre Haute after a July 2025 visit recorded cell temperatures of up to 89 degrees, pests in dry-food storage, and windows patched with cardboard; its $108 million repair estimate covers the FCI only.
• June 2025 — Otha Don Watkins III was sentenced to an additional five years for involuntary manslaughter after the fatal stabbing of Carlos Shelton on a tier of Unit D-2 of the penitentiary on April 14, 2023.
• February 2025 — the Attorney General lifted the 2021 moratorium on federal executions; in the same month Lawrence Taylor was sentenced to life for killing his cellmate, Jan Stevens, in the complex’s Special Housing Unit in January 2019.
• January 2025 — Executive Order 14164 directed the Attorney General to review “the places of imprisonment and conditions of confinement” of the 37 men whose death sentences had been commuted on December 23, 2024.
• June 2021 — NaphCare paid $694,593 to settle False Claims Act allegations over physician billing at the penitentiary, with no determination of liability; on July 1 the Attorney General’s execution moratorium followed the thirteen executions carried out here between July 2020 and January 2021.
• May–September 2020 — the Bureau posted two news releases reporting the deaths of people held at USP Terre Haute; the Bureau’s releases are listed on its press release page.
• June 2001 — Timothy McVeigh became the first person executed at the complex.

Frequently asked questions about USP Terre Haute

Problems at USP Terre Haute: where we can help

This penitentiary’s own inspections, audits, and litigation point to a specific set of recurring problems, each of them on a deadline.

• Long stays in the Special Housing Unit. More than three-quarters of the DC men who had been in the SHU here told inspectors in 2016 they had spent over 30 days there at a stretch. Bureau policy requires regular reviews of placement, and a stay that outlasts its stated reason can be challenged through the remedy process; see the Bureau’s Special Housing Unit policy.
• Grievances that are never filed. The most common reason DC men gave in 2016 for not using the administrative remedy program was fear of retaliation, and a complaint not filed within 20 days, or not carried through the regional and central office appeals, will usually be dismissed by a court for that reason alone. The 20 days can be extended, though: 28 C.F.R. § 542.14(b) lets the Bureau allow more time where the person filing shows a valid reason for the delay, such as a long spell in transit without the papers needed to file. Retaliation for filing is itself a grievance.
• Designation and transfer. Whether a man belongs at high security turns on the sentence-length Public Safety Factor and whether it can be waived; whether he is moved to ADX turns on a referral process that a federal court found in 2026 the commuted men were likely to show had been decided before their hearings. See federal prison transfers and our federal prison consulting services.
• Medical and mental health care. The 2016 inspection recorded staffing gaps, long waits, and 18 serious suicide attempts in a year, and the Inspector General’s death evaluation counted 14 deaths here in its four categories over eight years, behind only USP Atlanta. Sick-call requests in writing, then remedies, then, where injury has resulted, a Federal Tort Claims Act claim to the North Central Regional Office in Kansas City.
• Getting into the programs that exist. Challenge and Life Connections have waiting lists, RDAP is at the FCI, and First Step Act time credits depend on being placed in something; see early release from federal prison.
• Death-row matters: clemency, Special Confinement Unit conditions, and redesignation after a commutation, each with its own rules.
• Disciplinary proceedings that cost good-conduct time, protective custody requests, compassionate release (see the Bureau’s reduction-in-sentence rules), and sentence computation errors.
• 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 Terre Haute, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The Bureau’s page for the institution, with its address, phone numbers, and posted documents.
• General Population List and Special Confinement Unit List, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Federal Correctional Complex Terre Haute, 2022. The commissary order forms.
• Admission and Orientation Handbook, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Federal Correctional Complex Terre Haute, 2021.
• Visiting, Institution Supplement THX-5267.09D, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Federal Correctional Complex Terre Haute, 2020.
• Trust Fund/Deposit Fund Manual, Program Statement 4500.13, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Sets the commissary spending limit.
• Inmate Security Designation and Custody Classification, Program Statement 5100.08, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2006. Amended in 2026.
• Inmate Telephone Regulations, Program Statement 5264.09, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026.
• Death at USP Terre Haute, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. News release of June 2026.
• Death at USP Terre Haute, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. News release of January 2026.
• Press Releases, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2020.
• First Step Act Approved Programs Guide, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Reentry Services Division, 2026. Includes the Bureau’s residential drug program list.
• Sending Money, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The Bureau’s instructions for the lockbox, Western Union, and MoneyGram.
• Federal Executions, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026.
• Federal Execution Information, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026.
• Institution Care Levels for Medical Assignment and Institutional Mental Health Care Levels, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2024. Released under Freedom of Information Act request 2024-03455 and published by the Washington Lawyers’ Committee.

Audits and inspections

• Federal Prisons: Improvements Needed to Prevent, Detect, and Address Sexual Abuse, U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2026. Report GAO-26-107343.
• Notification of Concerns Regarding Conditions at Federal Correctional Institution Terre Haute, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2025. Management Advisory Memorandum 26-001.
• PREA Audit Report: Federal Correctional Complex (FCC) Terre Haute, Corrections Consulting Services, 2024. Lynni O’Haver’s audit of the whole complex.
• Evaluation of Issues Surrounding Inmate Deaths in Federal Bureau of Prisons Institutions, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2024. Evaluation and Inspections Report 24-041.
• Management Advisory Memorandum: Notification of Concerns Resulting from Multiple OIG Reviews Related to the BOP Strategy for its Medical Services Contracts, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2022. Report 22-113.
• PREA Facility Audit Report: FCC Terre Haute, PREA Auditors of America, 2022. Jennifer L. Feicht’s audit; superseded by the 2024 audit.
• Audit of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Monitoring of Inmate Communications to Prevent Radicalization, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2020. Audit Report 20-042.
• USP Terre Haute Inspection Report, District of Columbia Corrections Information Council, 2017. Covers the September 2016 inspection and includes the Bureau’s response.
• Review of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Use of Restrictive Housing for Inmates with Mental Illness, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2017. Evaluation and Inspections Report 17-05.

Court records

• BOP Cook Foreman Supervisor Indicted and Arrested for Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2026. The July 2026 indictment of a cook foreman supervisor at FCI Terre Haute.
• Taylor v. Trump, No. 1:25-cv-03742-TJK (D.D.C.), U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, 2026. The docket, opened in 2025, including ECF Nos. 70, 71, 86, 87, 114, and 115.
• Taylor v. Trump, No. 1:25-cv-03742-TJK (D.D.C. Feb. 11, 2026), U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, 2026. The memorandum opinion.
• Duka v. Rule, No. 2:25-cv-00224-JPH-MG (S.D. Ind. Sept. 9, 2025), U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, 2025. The order recording the closure of the Terre Haute CMU (ECF No. 15).
• Federal Inmate Sentenced to an Additional Five Years for Fatal Stabbing of Fellow Inmate, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Indiana, 2025. Otha Don Watkins III’s sentence.
• Taylor v. Trump, No. 1:25-cv-01161-TJK (D.D.C. May 27, 2025), U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, 2025.
• Federal Inmate Given Life Sentence for Brutal Murder of Cellmate at Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Indiana, 2025. Lawrence Taylor’s sentence.
• Former Correctional Officer Sentenced to Eight Months in Federal Prison for Accepting Bribes to Smuggle Tobacco into Terre Haute Correctional Complex, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2024.
• Former Bureau of Prisons Correctional Officer Sentenced to a Year in Federal Prison for Accepting Bribes from Inmates to Smuggle Tobacco, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2023.
• Prison Health Care Provider Naphcare Agrees to Settle False Claims Act Allegations, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2021. NaphCare’s False Claims Act settlement.
• Former Terre Haute Prison Guard Sentenced, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2015. Edward Tunwar’s sentence.

News and other sources

• Reviving the Federal Death Penalty and Lifting the Moratorium on Federal Executions, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Attorney General, 2025. Memorandum of February 5, 2025.
• Executive Order 14164, Restoring the Death Penalty and Protecting Public Safety, Executive Office of the President (Federal Register), 2025.
• Manner of Federal Executions, U.S. Department of Justice (Federal Register), 2020. The final rule (85 FR 75846) amending 28 C.F.R. part 26.
• 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e), Imprisonment of a convicted person, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).
• 28 U.S.C. § 509, Functions of the Attorney General, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).
• 28 C.F.R. §§ 26.1–26.5, Death Sentences Procedures, Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR).
• 28 C.F.R. § 542.14(b), Initial filing, Code of Federal Regulations (Legal Information Institute).

Sources reviewed September 2026.

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