Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP)

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

Federal prisons in the United States at a glance

The Federal Bureau of Prisons holds 137,665 people in 118 institutions, and another 15,339 under its Residential Reentry Management offices, as of September 2026. The 118 stand in 36 states and Puerto Rico. The table below counts them state by state, the full list of every federal prison follows further down, and each name in both tables opens a page of its own.

State	Institutions	Population	Region
Alabama	3	2,843	Southeast
Arizona	4	3,298	Western
Arkansas	2	3,520	South Central
California	10	11,196	Western
Colorado	4	3,601	North Central
Connecticut	1	1,224	Northeast
Florida	8	10,605	Southeast
Georgia	2	3,551	Southeast
Hawaii	1	210	Western
Illinois	5	6,326	North Central
Indiana	2	2,538	North Central
Kansas	1	1,550	North Central
Kentucky	5	6,752	Mid-Atlantic
Louisiana	4	4,873	South Central
Maryland	1	1,202	Mid-Atlantic
Massachusetts	1	1,186	Northeast
Michigan	1	1,546	North Central
Minnesota	4	3,093	North Central
Mississippi	3	4,602	Southeast
Missouri	1	1,099	North Central
New Hampshire	1	889	Northeast
New Jersey	2	4,960	Northeast
New York	3	3,045	Northeast
North Carolina	4	3,870	Mid-Atlantic
Ohio	1	2,099	Northeast
Oklahoma	2	2,393	South Central
Oregon	1	1,493	Western
Pennsylvania	9	8,900	Northeast
Puerto Rico	1	1,043	Southeast
South Carolina	4	4,637	Southeast
South Dakota	1	524	North Central
Tennessee	1	1,069	South Central
Texas	13	14,605	South Central
Virginia	3	3,191	Mid-Atlantic
Washington	1	673	Western
West Virginia	7	8,299	Mid-Atlantic
Wisconsin	1	1,160	North Central
Total	118	137,665

How many federal prisons are there?

There are 118 federal prisons in the United States, counting the institutions on the Federal Bureau of Prisons roster in September 2026, and that is the number used throughout this page. The Bureau gives the same figure on its own facilities page, which says most of its employees work at “one of our 118 prisons (we call them, ‘institutions’) located throughout the Nation.”

Each institution is counted once, together with whatever is attached to it. A satellite camp or a satellite low beside a prison belongs to that prison’s row, population included, rather than standing as a prison of its own. Where several institutions share one site, which the Bureau calls a federal correctional complex, each institution counts and the complex does not. Offices are left out entirely: the Central Office in Washington, the Grand Prairie Office Complex in Texas, the six regional offices, the 22 Residential Reentry Management offices and the Bureau’s training centers are not prisons. Nor are the state and local facilities the Bureau is allowed to use, since 18 U.S.C. § 3621(b) lets it designate a suitable facility “whether maintained by the Federal Government or otherwise.”

Counted from the list below, 44 of the 118 are medium security, 34 low, 15 high, 6 minimum and 19 administrative, by the Bureau’s own labels. By type, 78 are federal correctional institutions and 16 are U.S. penitentiaries, one of them the administrative-maximum penitentiary at Florence, Colorado. Seven are medical centers and six are stand-alone federal prison camps. The last 11 are the detention and transfer institutions: federal detention centers, metropolitan correctional and detention centers, and the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City.

Other totals are in circulation, and most of the gap is about what gets counted. The Bureau’s biographies of its recent Directors speak of 122 facilities under Michael D. Carvajal (2020–2022) and Colette S. Peters (2022–2025), and an earlier version of this page said the Bureau was “overseeing over 122” institutions and holding 155,096 people. None of those figures describes September 2026. The roster now omits MCC New York, FCI Dublin, FCI Terminal Island, FPC Pensacola and Taft, for the reasons set out in the closures section below.

Complete list of federal prisons, by state

Every institution on the roster appears below, grouped by state and then by name, with its type and security level as the Bureau records them, its population in the report of September 10, 2026 with any camp added in, and its region. Names are the roster’s current ones. That is why FCI Atlanta, FCI Leavenworth and FCI Marion appear as correctional institutions rather than penitentiaries, and why FCI Yazoo City Low II is shown as medium security, the level the roster gives it in spite of its name.

Institution	State	Type and security	Population	Region
FCI Aliceville	Alabama	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	784	Southeast
FCI Talladega	Alabama	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,235	Southeast
FPC Montgomery	Alabama	Federal Prison Camp · Minimum	824	Southeast
FCI Phoenix	Arizona	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,071	Western
FCI Safford	Arizona	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	660	Western
FCI Tucson	Arizona	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	475	Western
USP Tucson	Arizona	U.S. Penitentiary · High	1,092	Western
FCI Forrest City Low	Arkansas	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	1,882	South Central
FCI Forrest City Medium	Arkansas	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,638	South Central
FCI Herlong	California	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	636	Western
FCI Lompoc I	California	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	885	Western
FCI Lompoc II	California	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	2,234	Western
FCI Mendota	California	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	769	Western
FCI Victorville Medium I	California	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,595	Western
FCI Victorville Medium II	California	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,327	Western
MCC San Diego	California	Metropolitan Correctional Center · Administrative	565	Western
MDC Los Angeles	California	Metropolitan Detention Center · Administrative	897	Western
USP Atwater	California	U.S. Penitentiary · High	1,287	Western
USP Victorville	California	U.S. Penitentiary · High	1,001	Western
FCI Englewood	Colorado	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	926	North Central
FCI Florence	Colorado	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,437	North Central
USP Florence ADMAX	Colorado	U.S. Penitentiary · Administrative	399	North Central
USP Florence High	Colorado	U.S. Penitentiary · High	839	North Central
FCI Danbury	Connecticut	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	1,224	Northeast
FCI Coleman Low	Florida	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	2,115	Southeast
FCI Coleman Medium	Florida	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,518	Southeast
FCI Marianna	Florida	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,124	Southeast
FCI Miami	Florida	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	984	Southeast
FCI Tallahassee	Florida	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	1,257	Southeast
FDC Miami	Florida	Federal Detention Center · Administrative	1,407	Southeast
USP Coleman I	Florida	U.S. Penitentiary · High	1,175	Southeast
USP Coleman II	Florida	U.S. Penitentiary · High	1,025	Southeast
FCI Atlanta	Georgia	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	1,878	Southeast
FCI Jesup	Georgia	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,673	Southeast
FDC Honolulu	Hawaii	Federal Detention Center · Administrative	210	Western
FCI Greenville	Illinois	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,248	North Central
FCI Marion	Illinois	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,209	North Central
FCI Pekin	Illinois	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,288	North Central
FCI Thomson	Illinois	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	2,074	North Central
MCC Chicago	Illinois	Metropolitan Correctional Center · Administrative	507	North Central
FCI Terre Haute	Indiana	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,387	North Central
USP Terre Haute	Indiana	U.S. Penitentiary · High	1,151	North Central
FCI Leavenworth	Kansas	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,550	North Central
FCI Ashland	Kentucky	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	1,448	Mid-Atlantic
FCI Manchester	Kentucky	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,280	Mid-Atlantic
FMC Lexington	Kentucky	Federal Medical Center · Administrative	1,262	Mid-Atlantic
USP Big Sandy	Kentucky	U.S. Penitentiary · High	1,316	Mid-Atlantic
USP McCreary	Kentucky	U.S. Penitentiary · High	1,446	Mid-Atlantic
FCI Oakdale I	Louisiana	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	1,164	South Central
FCI Oakdale II	Louisiana	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	1,073	South Central
FCI Pollock	Louisiana	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,710	South Central
USP Pollock	Louisiana	U.S. Penitentiary · High	926	South Central
FCI Cumberland	Maryland	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,202	Mid-Atlantic
FMC Devens	Massachusetts	Federal Medical Center · Administrative	1,186	Northeast
FCI Milan	Michigan	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	1,546	North Central
FCI Sandstone	Minnesota	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	1,207	North Central
FCI Waseca	Minnesota	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	810	North Central
FMC Rochester	Minnesota	Federal Medical Center · Administrative	827	North Central
FPC Duluth	Minnesota	Federal Prison Camp · Minimum	249	North Central
FCI Yazoo City Low	Mississippi	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	1,678	Southeast
FCI Yazoo City Low II	Mississippi	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,457	Southeast
FCI Yazoo City Medium	Mississippi	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,467	Southeast
MCFP Springfield	Missouri	Federal Medical Center · Administrative	1,099	North Central
FCI Berlin	New Hampshire	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	889	Northeast
FCI Fairton	New Jersey	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	746	Northeast
FCI Fort Dix	New Jersey	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	4,214	Northeast
FCI Otisville	New York	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	936	Northeast
FCI Ray Brook	New York	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	843	Northeast
MDC Brooklyn	New York	Metropolitan Detention Center · Administrative	1,266	Northeast
FCI Butner Low	North Carolina	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	942	Mid-Atlantic
FCI Butner Medium I	North Carolina	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	823	Mid-Atlantic
FCI Butner Medium II	North Carolina	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,304	Mid-Atlantic
FMC Butner	North Carolina	Federal Medical Center · Administrative	801	Mid-Atlantic
FCI Elkton	Ohio	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	2,099	Northeast
FCI El Reno	Oklahoma	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,160	South Central
FTC Oklahoma City	Oklahoma	Federal Transfer Center · Administrative	1,233	South Central
FCI Sheridan	Oregon	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,493	Western
FCI Allenwood Low	Pennsylvania	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	1,037	Northeast
FCI Allenwood Medium	Pennsylvania	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,070	Northeast
FCI Lewisburg	Pennsylvania	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,065	Northeast
FCI Loretto	Pennsylvania	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	781	Northeast
FCI McKean	Pennsylvania	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,080	Northeast
FCI Schuylkill	Pennsylvania	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,262	Northeast
FDC Philadelphia	Pennsylvania	Federal Detention Center · Administrative	941	Northeast
USP Allenwood	Pennsylvania	U.S. Penitentiary · High	351	Northeast
USP Canaan	Pennsylvania	U.S. Penitentiary · High	1,313	Northeast
MDC Guaynabo	Puerto Rico	Metropolitan Detention Center · Administrative	1,043	Southeast
FCI Bennettsville	South Carolina	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,136	Southeast
FCI Edgefield	South Carolina	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,618	Southeast
FCI Estill	South Carolina	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	192	Southeast
FCI Williamsburg	South Carolina	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,691	Southeast
FPC Yankton	South Dakota	Federal Prison Camp · Minimum	524	North Central
FCI Memphis	Tennessee	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	1,069	South Central
FCI Bastrop	Texas	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	1,169	South Central
FCI Beaumont Low	Texas	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	1,834	South Central
FCI Beaumont Medium	Texas	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,111	South Central
FCI Big Spring	Texas	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	506	South Central
FCI La Tuna	Texas	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	558	South Central
FCI Seagoville	Texas	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	1,437	South Central
FCI Texarkana	Texas	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	1,310	South Central
FCI Three Rivers	Texas	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,157	South Central
FDC Houston	Texas	Federal Detention Center · Administrative	840	South Central
FMC Carswell	Texas	Federal Medical Center · Administrative	1,271	South Central
FMC Fort Worth	Texas	Federal Medical Center · Administrative	1,567	South Central
FPC Bryan	Texas	Federal Prison Camp · Minimum	618	South Central
USP Beaumont	Texas	U.S. Penitentiary · High	1,227	South Central
FCI Petersburg Low	Virginia	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	216	Mid-Atlantic
FCI Petersburg Medium	Virginia	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,596	Mid-Atlantic
USP Lee	Virginia	U.S. Penitentiary · High	1,379	Mid-Atlantic
FDC SeaTac	Washington	Federal Detention Center · Administrative	673	Western
FCI Beckley	West Virginia	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,858	Mid-Atlantic
FCI Gilmer	West Virginia	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,258	Mid-Atlantic
FCI Hazelton	West Virginia	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,701	Mid-Atlantic
FCI McDowell	West Virginia	Federal Correctional Institution · Medium	1,632	Mid-Atlantic
FPC Alderson	West Virginia	Federal Prison Camp · Minimum	438	Mid-Atlantic
FPC Morgantown	West Virginia	Federal Prison Camp · Minimum	159	Mid-Atlantic
USP Hazelton	West Virginia	U.S. Penitentiary · High	1,253	Mid-Atlantic
FCI Oxford	Wisconsin	Federal Correctional Institution · Low	1,160	North Central
Total	37 states and territories	118 institutions	137,665

For the same list cut one way at a time, our security-level pages print every minimum-security, low-security, medium-security, high-security and administrative institution by state, and our guide to women’s federal prisons lists every institution that holds women. The seven medical centers have a page of their own on Federal Medical Centers.

Which states have the most federal prisons?

Texas has the most: 13 institutions, holding 14,605 people in the September 10, 2026 report. California comes next with 10, then Pennsylvania with 9, Florida with 8 and West Virginia with 7, while Illinois and Kentucky have 5 apiece. The largest single figure anywhere on the national list belongs to FCI Fort Dix in New Jersey, 4,214 people once its camp is counted; the smallest is FPC Morgantown in West Virginia, at 159.

Fifteen jurisdictions have exactly one institution: Connecticut, Hawaii, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oregon, Puerto Rico, South Dakota, Tennessee, Washington and Wisconsin. For those, the state page is in effect a guide to one prison.

Fourteen states have no federal prison at all: Alaska, Delaware, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont and Wyoming. The District of Columbia has none either, although the Bureau has been responsible for its sentenced felons since the National Capital Revitalization and Self-Government Improvement Act of 1997, which, the Bureau’s timeline says, “required the BOP’s absorption of the entire DC felony population.” The Offices page still assigns every one of those states to a region. Anyone sentenced there who is sent to a Bureau institution serves the sentence in another state, which is where the designation rules below matter most.

One cell in the state table needs a caution. The Bureau’s Offices page, read in September 2026, lists Tennessee under the Mid-Atlantic Region, while the roster, which the table follows, puts FCI Memphis in South Central. Colorado is North Central on both, although an earlier version of this page had placed it in the Western Region.

How is the Federal Bureau of Prisons organized?

In three tiers, with national offices alongside. The Central Office in Washington, D.C. sits at the top, six regional offices sit beneath it, and each region supervises the institutions in its territory, every one run by a warden. A regulation fixes the frame: 28 C.F.R. § 503.1 describes the Bureau as a Central Office, a Staff Training Center and six regional offices, and names the regions as Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, North Central, South Central and Western.

The Bureau is part of the Department of Justice. Under 18 U.S.C. § 4041 it is “in charge of a director appointed by and serving directly under the Attorney General,” and under § 4042(a)(1) it has “charge of the management and regulation of all Federal penal and correctional institutions.” The Offices page, read in September 2026, names William K. Marshall III as Director and shows the post of Deputy Director as vacant.

Headquarters is where national programs are written and where the divisions sit; the Offices page lists ten, among them the Correctional Programs Division, the Health Services Division, the Reentry Services Division, Federal Prison Industries and the National Institute of Corrections. It is also where a grievance ends up if nobody below resolves it: PS 1330.18 at pp. 6–7 sends an appeal from the warden’s answer to the Regional Director on a BP-10, and from there to the General Counsel on a BP-11. Our page on the Central Office covers its divisions, and our guide to filing a BP-9 starts the appeal at the bottom.

The regions arrived decades after the prisons. The Bureau’s timeline dates the first regional office, South Central, to 1973, four more to the next year, and the sixth, Mid-Atlantic, to 1990. Our regional offices index sets out which states each covers. The six split the 118 institutions and their population like this, with the reentry offices assigned to each in the last column:

Region	Institutions	Population	Reentry offices
Mid-Atlantic	20	23,314	3
North Central	20	21,437	5
Northeast	18	22,303	4
South Central	22	26,460	2
Southeast	21	27,281	4
Western	17	16,870	4
Total	118	137,665	22

One national operation sits outside the regional chain altogether. The Grand Prairie Office Complex in Texas houses three components, the Human Resource Services Center, the Designation and Sentence Computation Center and the Field Acquisition Office, and the second of these decides where most newly sentenced people are sent and calculates their release dates. The Bureau’s timeline records that designation and sentence computation were consolidated and centralized as part of its 2004 cost-cutting.

Reentry has a network of its own. The Bureau has 22 Residential Reentry Management field offices, and the Offices page says they administer contracts for community-based programs and act as the Bureau’s local liaison “within their specific judicial districts.” They hold no one themselves. The Bureau’s reentry page says a halfway-house referral ordinarily goes to the office nearest where the person will be releasing, which is often nowhere near the prison, and that people in a halfway house remain in federal custody; our page on federal halfway houses explains the timing.

What do federal prison security levels mean?

They describe the institution, not the crime. PS 5100.08 at p. 13 provides that Bureau institutions “are classified into one of five security levels: MINIMUM, LOW, MEDIUM, HIGH, and ADMINISTRATIVE based on the level of security and staff supervision the institution is able to provide,” and lists the features that decide it, among them towers, perimeter barriers, detection devices, the type of housing and the inmate-to-staff ratio. Our prison security levels explainer takes each one in detail. In the Bureau’s own descriptions, from its facilities page:

• Minimum. Federal prison camps have dormitory housing, a relatively low staff-to-inmate ratio and little or no perimeter fencing, and they are built around work and programs. Six stand alone on the roster; others are satellite camps beside a larger institution.
• Low. Federal correctional institutions with double-fenced perimeters, mostly dormitory or cubicle housing, and a higher staff ratio than a camp. This is the second-largest group, 34 institutions.
• Medium. Correctional institutions with strengthened perimeters, often double fences with electronic detection, and mostly cell housing. At 44, the largest group on the roster.
• High. The U.S. penitentiaries, with walls or reinforced fences, single- and multiple-occupant cells, the highest staff ratio and close control of movement; 15 institutions.
• Administrative. Institutions with a special mission: pretrial detention, medical care, or holding people the Bureau calls “extremely dangerous, violent, or escape-prone.” The facilities page adds that, except for the ADX, they “are capable of holding inmates in all security categories.”

A prisoner’s own level is scored separately and matched to an institution. PS 5100.08 at p. 15 warns that the point score “is not the only factor used in determining a commensurate security level for an inmate,” because public safety factors and management variables can move a placement up or down. The same page notes that “Female security level institutions are classified as Minimum, Low, High and Administrative,” with no medium tier.

Where institutions of different levels share a site, the Bureau calls it a federal correctional complex, and its facilities page says complexes let staff “gain experience at institutions of many security levels.” The national list treats each institution in a complex as its own row, which is why Coleman, in Florida, appears four times: FCI Coleman Low, FCI Coleman Medium, USP Coleman I and USP Coleman II.

How does the Bureau decide where someone is sent?

The Bureau decides, not the judge. Under 18 U.S.C. § 3621(b), “The Bureau of Prisons shall designate the place of the prisoner’s imprisonment,” and the Supreme Court has called that authority “plenary control, subject to statutory constraints.” Tapia v. United States, 564 U.S. 319, 331 (2011). A sentencing judge can recommend a prison or a program; on the same page, the Court added that “decisionmaking authority rests with the BOP.”

The statute lists what the Bureau weighs: bed space, the prisoner’s security designation, program needs, mental and medical health, faith-based requests, the court’s recommendations and the Bureau’s own security concerns. Subject to those, § 3621(b) calls for placement “in a facility as close as practicable to the prisoner’s primary residence, and to the extent practicable, in a facility within 500 driving miles of that residence.” It forbids “favoritism given to prisoners of high social or economic status,” and 18 U.S.C. § 4051(b) directs the Bureau’s placement office, where a prisoner has children, to consider placing the prisoner as close to them as possible. The subsection closes with a sentence that shapes every dispute: “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a designation of a place of imprisonment under this subsection is not reviewable by any court.”

The work itself is done in Texas. PS 5100.08 at p. 14 says initial designations “are initiated, in most cases by staff at the Designation and Sentence Computation Center (DSCC), Grand Prairie, Texas,” who enter what the court, the Marshals Service, the prosecutor and the probation office send them into the Bureau’s SENTRY database. The system produces a security score, and a DSCC or Medical Designations Officer then chooses an institution (at p. 15). The file behind it is paperwork from sentencing: PS 5100.08 at p. 23 lists the presentence report, the judgment and the statement of reasons among the documents the DSCC needs first, so an error left uncorrected in the presentence report can carry straight into the score.

A first designation is not the last word. Section 3621(b) lets the Bureau transfer a prisoner “at any time,” and it directs the Bureau, subject to the same factors and the prisoner’s own preference, to move people closer to their primary residence even when they are already within 500 driving miles of it. Our pages on designation and transfers explain what a family or lawyer can put in front of the Bureau, and when, and our summary of the security designation and custody classification policy walks through the scoring.

Which federal prisons have closed or been renamed?

Seven institutions changed names in 2024. On April 4, 2024 the Bureau announced that six institutions still called U.S. penitentiaries, at Atlanta, Leavenworth, Lewisburg, Lompoc, Marion and Yazoo City, would be renamed as federal correctional institutions, and that FCI Morgantown would become FPC Morgantown. It explained: “The missions and security levels for these facilities had been previously changed but for a variety of reasons the names of the facilities were not.” The list above uses the new names, and each facility page records the change.

A larger set of closures was announced on July 1, 2026. Pointing to “decades of deferred maintenance” and a maintenance backlog it put above $4 billion, the Bureau said it would close FCI Beaumont Low, FCI Big Spring and its satellite camp, FCI La Tuna with its satellite low and camp, the satellite camp at FMC Lexington, FCI Petersburg Low and Taft, and that FPC Morgantown and FPC Duluth would become satellite-low facilities. The announcement gave no dates.

By September 2026 only Taft was gone. The other institutions on that list were still on the roster with populations, so they appear and are counted in the tables on this page: read them as announced closures, not completed ones. The roster also still listed Morgantown and Duluth as minimum-security camps. Taft, which the July release called “currently non-operational,” had left the roster; our page on Taft Correctional Institution tells its history.

Four more Bureau institutions with pages here have left the roster as well. MCC New York, the Manhattan jail, was closed temporarily in October 2021 because of substandard conditions, according to a June 2023 report of the Justice Department’s Inspector General, and is not on the roster now. The Bureau’s biography of Director Peters credits her with “the temporary closure of FCI Dublin,” the women’s prison in California; the former FCI Dublin is no longer on the roster. The Bureau said in November 2025 that it would suspend operations at FCI Terminal Island near Los Angeles, and the former FPC Pensacola, a minimum-security camp in Florida, is also off the roster. Each of those pages dates its closure from the underlying records.

Nine further pages cover prisons the Bureau never ran. For years it placed prisoners in privately or county-operated facilities under contract. On December 1, 2022 it announced that it had ended all its contracts with privately managed prisons, the last of them at McRae, Georgia, on November 30, 2022, and it said that over time it had held contracts for 15 private prisons housing about 29,000 people. The nine former contract facilities with pages here are Big Spring Correctional Center (not the Bureau’s own FCI Big Spring), D. Ray James Correctional Facility, Adams County Correctional Center, Giles W. Dalby Correctional Facility, Great Plains Correctional Facility, McRae Correctional Facility, Moshannon Valley Correctional Center, Reeves County Detention Complex and Rivers Correctional Institution. None of them is among the 118. Our explainer on major federal prison closures covers what a closure means for the people inside.

How many people are in federal prison?

The Bureau’s population report of September 10, 2026 counted 153,004 people in its custody: 137,665 in the 118 institutions and 15,339 under the Residential Reentry Management offices, a group made up mainly of people in contract residential reentry centers or on home confinement. It counted nobody in privately managed facilities. The institution figure is the one the tables on this page add up to, by state and by region; the Southeast is the most populous region at 27,281, with South Central, which takes in Texas, next at 26,460.

Those numbers sit well below the peak. The Bureau’s table of past totals, kept by fiscal year, reaches its highest point at 219,298 in 2013 and drops to 214,149 in 2014, the year in which, its history page says, the population fell “for the first time in 34 years.” The fiscal-year total has not been above 160,000 since 2020 and stood at 155,270 for 2025.

The Statistics page says its data are refreshed every Thursday, so any single figure is a snapshot. Every population on this page comes from the one report, dated September 10, 2026, which keeps the page consistent with itself and with our state, region and facility pages built from the same report.

How has the federal prison system grown since 1891?

From three authorized penitentiaries to 118 institutions, with the steepest growth after 1980. Before 1891, federal courts relied on state jails and penitentiaries, and the Revised Statutes let the Attorney General contract with state authorities for their use. The Eighth Circuit described that arrangement, and called the Act of March 3, 1891 “The first act of Congress relating to federal penitentiaries,” in Stevens v. Biddle, 298 F. 209, 211 (8th Cir. 1924).

That act, ch. 529, 26 Stat. 839, authorized three sites and buildings “for the confinement of all persons convicted of any crime whose term of imprisonment is one year or more at hard labor by any court of the United States,” as the court quoted it. The Bureau’s timeline calls it the Three Prisons Act and names the three: USP Leavenworth, USP Atlanta and USP McNeil Island. Building was slow. “As there was no appropriation made by Congress to carry this act into effect, no action was taken under it until a later time,” the court noted, and the new penitentiary at Leavenworth was partly occupied in 1903, with the last prisoners moved from the old military prison there by February 1, 1906 (id. at 211–212). The institutions long known as USP Atlanta and USP Leavenworth are on today’s roster as FCI Atlanta and FCI Leavenworth.

By 1930 there were 11 federal prisons, and the Bureau’s history page says their wardens “functioned autonomously for the most part,” with limited oversight from a Superintendent of Prisons at the Justice Department. Congress created the Federal Bureau of Prisons by the Act of May 14, 1930, Pub. L. No. 71-218, 46 Stat. 325, which President Herbert Hoover signed. The push came from Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker Willebrandt and from a 1928 study of the prisons by James V. Bennett of the Bureau of Efficiency. Sanford Bates, the Superintendent of Prisons who had prepared the legislation, became the first Director, and Bennett the second, in 1937.

For its first fifty years the Bureau grew in institutions far more than in people. Its history page counts 14 facilities and a population “just over 13,000” at the end of 1930, though its timeline gives 14,115 prisoners for the same year; then 24 facilities and 24,360 people in 1940; and a population of 24,252 in 1980, by which time there were 44 facilities, because the Bureau had moved away from large prisons that mixed security levels toward smaller ones grouped by security need. The timeline marks USP Lewisburg, opened in 1932, as the first penitentiary the Bureau built, the medical center at Springfield as its first medical facility in 1933, and 1934 as the year of both Federal Prison Industries and the maximum-security penitentiary on Alcatraz.

Sentencing law changed the scale after that. The history page credits the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 with determinate sentencing, the end of parole and reduced good time, followed by mandatory minimums enacted in 1986, 1988 and 1990. Between 1980 and 1989 the population more than doubled, from just over 24,000 to almost 58,000, and in the 1990s it doubled again, to about 136,000 at the end of 1999, when the Bureau ran 95 institutions. The count kept climbing to its 2013 peak before the declines described above. Along the way came the First Step Act, signed on December 21, 2018, the end of private-prison contracts in 2022, the renaming of seven institutions in 2024 and the closure announcement of July 2026.

Directors of the Bureau of Prisons

The Bureau’s list of past Directors, with its timeline for the current one, gives these names and years; it names no one for 2015–2017 or 2018–2019. An earlier version of this page gave some of these years differently, and the Bureau’s own dates are the ones used here.

• Sanford Bates, 1930–1937
• James V. Bennett, 1937–1964
• Myrl E. Alexander, 1964–1970
• Norman A. Carlson, 1970–1987
• J. Michael Quinlan, 1987–1992
• Kathleen Hawk Sawyer, 1992–2003, and again 2019–2020
• Harley G. Lappin, 2003–2011
• Charles E. Samuels, Jr., 2011–2015
• Mark S. Inch, 2017–2018
• Michael D. Carvajal, 2020–2022
• Colette S. Peters, 2022–2025
• William K. Marshall III, from 2025

How do I find someone in a federal prison?

Begin with the Bureau’s inmate locator, which searches every institution at once by register number or by first and last name, and which shows the name of the facility holding the person while they are in custody. That facility name unlocks the rest, because mail and visiting are handled institution by institution, and our page for each prison in the list above sets out its own arrangements.

Money is the exception, because it never goes to the prison. The Bureau’s facility pages carry the same notice: “All funds sent through the mail must be addressed to a processing center in Des Moines, Iowa. This applies to all Federal inmates, regardless of where they are incarcerated.” Our guides to sending money, writing to someone inside and visiting cover the rest.

Where we can help

We represent people in federal custody and advise their families on the problems this system creates: where someone is designated and whether a transfer is worth seeking, First Step Act time credits, halfway-house timing, administrative remedies, compassionate release and post-conviction motions. Our prison consulting and early release pages describe that work in more detail.

Call 843-620-1100 or contact us to arrange a paid one-hour consultation about a specific situation. Calls are answered 24 hours a day.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. is a federal criminal defense and post-conviction firm based in Columbia, South Carolina, practicing nationwide. Mentions of particular places on this page do not imply an office or a lawyer there.

Sources and currency

Bureau of Prisons documents

• Our Locations, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The institution roster, as queried September 18, 2026.
• Population Statistics, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The report of September 10, 2026, and the fiscal-year table of past totals.
• About Our Facilities: Federal Prisons, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026.
• Offices, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026.
• Residential Reentry Management Centers, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026.
• Historical Information, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026.
• Timeline, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026.
• Past Directors, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026.
• BOP Ends Use of Privately Owned Prisons, Federal Bureau of Prisons, December 1, 2022.
• Name Changes Approved for Seven FBOP Facilities, Federal Bureau of Prisons, April 4, 2024.
• Federal Bureau of Prisons Announces Facility Closures and Operational Changes, Federal Bureau of Prisons, July 1, 2026.
• Inmate Security Designation and Custody Classification, Program Statement 5100.08, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2006, as amended by Change Notice 3 (May 6, 2026). Security levels at pp. 13 and 15; designation at pp. 14–15.
• Administrative Remedy Program, Program Statement 1330.18, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2014. Appeals at pp. 6–7.
• Find an Inmate, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026.

Statutes and regulations

• 18 U.S.C. § 3621, Office of the Law Revision Counsel. Designation and transfer at § 3621(b).
• 18 U.S.C. § 4041, Office of the Law Revision Counsel. The Director.
• 18 U.S.C. § 4042, Office of the Law Revision Counsel. Duties of the Bureau.
• 18 U.S.C. § 4051, Office of the Law Revision Counsel. Placement near children at § 4051(b).
• 28 C.F.R. § 503.1, Structure of the Bureau of Prisons.
• Act of March 3, 1891, ch. 529, 26 Stat. 839, as quoted in Stevens v. Biddle (below), and Act of May 14, 1930, Pub. L. No. 71-218, 46 Stat. 325, as cited on the Bureau’s Historical Information page.

Court records

• Stevens v. Biddle, 298 F. 209, 211–212 (8th Cir. 1924).
• Tapia v. United States, 564 U.S. 319, 331 (2011).

Audits, news and other sources

• Investigation and Review of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Custody, Care, and Supervision of Jeffrey Epstein at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York, New York, Report 23-085, U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, June 2023. The October 2021 closure of MCC New York.
• Bureau of Prisons to ‘suspend operations’ at California penitentiary, Government Executive, November 25, 2025.

Sources reviewed September 2026.

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