USP Victorville: Visiting, Mail, SHU, Inspections

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

USP Victorville at a glance

USP Victorville is a high-security United States Penitentiary for men in Victorville, California, one of three prisons at Federal Correctional Complex Victorville and one of the federal prisons in California. It held 1,001 people as of September 2026. Its neighbors on the complex are FCI Victorville Medium I and FCI Victorville Medium II.

Official name	United States Penitentiary, Victorville
BOP code	VIP · complex VIX
Security level	High; sentenced men, plus men in transit in two holdover units
Population	1,001 (as of September 2026)
Visiting	Saturday, Sunday, Monday and federal holidays, 8:30 a.m.–3:00 p.m. · Holdover men: Friday, 8:30 a.m.–3:00 p.m.
Inmate mail	Inmate Name & Register Number · USP Victorville · U.S. Penitentiary · P.O. Box 3900 · Adelanto, CA 92301
Send money	Lockbox · Western Union (code city FBOP, DC) · MoneyGram (receive code 7932)
Phone	760-530-5000 · Fax 760-530-5103
Street address	13777 Air Expressway Boulevard, Victorville, CA 92394 · San Bernardino County
Judicial district	Central District of California
BOP region	Western
Housing	Twelve units of 64 two-person cells
Special Housing Unit	Yes; designed for 238
Medical care level	Level 3
Mental health care level	Level 2
RDAP	No
UNICOR	Yes; an annex of the complex’s vehicle factory
Camp	None

The penitentiary opened in 2004 inside Federal Correctional Complex Victorville, on land the Air Force gave up when George Air Force Base closed in 1992, in the high desert northeast of Los Angeles, in the Bureau’s Western Region. Two things set it apart. In December 2025 the Bureau made it the first site for its National Resource Team, the leadership review it has since promised every penitentiary. And in 2018 a federal appeals court settled an appeal by taking judicial notice of exactly which 933.89 acres of the old base the United States kept for it, because that was what made an assault inside the walls a federal crime.

Four codes, three prisons, one address: which Victorville is this?

USP Victorville, code VIP, is the penitentiary among three separate prisons at 13777 Air Expressway Boulevard, which share one street address, one visiting supplement, one handbook and one PREA audit; a women’s camp sits beside them, and the Bureau keys every record on a three-letter code.

Institution	Code	Security	Inmate mail (Adelanto, CA 92301)	Phone
USP Victorville (this page)	VIP	High	P.O. Box 3900	760-530-5000
FCI Victorville Medium I	VIM	Medium, with the women’s camp on its roster record	P.O. Box 3725	760-246-2400
FCI Victorville Medium II	VVM	Medium	P.O. Box 3850	760-530-5700
FCC Victorville (the complex)	VIX	The administrative umbrella, not a prison	Staff mail P.O. Box 5400	None of its own

As of September 2026, the Bureau’s population report gives the complex 3,923 people: 1,001 at the penitentiary, 1,369 at Medium I with 226 at its camp, and 1,327 at Medium II. The street address and every Bureau listing say Victorville; the mail goes to boxes in Adelanto, the next city over, and the DC Corrections Information Council describes the penitentiary as standing “in Adelanto, CA.” The Bureau’s roster also lists an Institutional Hearing Program at the penitentiary, for immigration hearings.

The camp, and the label on the Bureau’s own page

There is no camp at the penitentiary, yet the Bureau’s page for USP Victorville offers a link headed “List and prices of items sold at the commissary in USP Victorville Camp.” The heading is a template; the file behind it is the complex camp’s order form, the camp holds women, and the roster records it under Medium I. The Bureau’s 2005 State of the Bureau listed two camps here; today’s roster shows one, and as of September 2026 its population report lists “Victorville Med I-Camp, 226.” The same page labels the visiting supplement and the handbook as USP Victorville documents, but they are written for the whole complex, and the file it calls the “USP Victorville PREA Report” says on its first page “Name of Facility: FCC Victorville.”

Federal ground: why an assault inside is a federal case

In 2018 a man convicted of assault with intent to commit murder at this penitentiary argued on appeal that the government had never proved the attack happened within the “special maritime and territorial jurisdiction” of the United States, an element of the federal assault statute. The Ninth Circuit took judicial notice that California conveyed 1,912 acres to the United States in 1944, that in 1999 the United States returned the land “except for 933.89 acres, over which it specifically retained jurisdiction to build USP Victorville,” and that the penitentiary is therefore federal ground under 18 U.S.C. § 7. It also held that assault with intent to murder, assault with a dangerous weapon and assault resulting in serious bodily injury each require proof of a fact the others do not, so consecutive sentences were permitted. United States v. Redmond, No. 17-50004 (9th Cir. Oct. 24, 2018) (unpublished). An assault here is prosecuted in the Central District of California, and a conviction can add consecutive federal time.

What is the security level at USP Victorville?

USP Victorville is one of the Bureau’s high-security penitentiaries and holds men only; the only higher level is the administrative-maximum prison at Florence. Men are sent here because their security point total, or a factor that overrides it, puts them at the top of the Bureau’s scale.

How someone ends up at a penitentiary

The Bureau’s designation manual scores each man on his offense, criminal history, violence and escape history, detainers, age, education and drug history. For men, 0 to 11 points is minimum security, 12 to 15 low, 16 to 23 medium and 24 or more high. Those ranges come from the Bureau’s security designation rules, Program Statement 5100.08, which add that the score “is not the only factor”: a Public Safety Factor or a Management Variable “could effect placement at either a higher or lower level institution than the specified point total indicates.” A man in the medium range can be held here on a Management Variable, and one complaint the DC inspectors collected in 2014 was exactly that: “One inmate has 22 points and should be at a Medium.” Whether the points were added up correctly, and whether a variable was documented, is the first thing a lawyer checks.

Two of the twelve housing units are holdover units for men passing through Victorville on the way somewhere else, according to the Corrections Information Council’s 2022 report. If the locator shows “Victorville USP” for a man with a short sentence and no violent history, holdover is the likely explanation, and the visiting section below explains what that status does to visits.

The fence, the towers and the rule to lie down

The perimeter is a DeTekion “lethal/non-lethal” electrified fence. The Inspector General’s 2020 audit traced it: Bureau executives approved electrified fencing for penitentiaries in August 2003 together with a cut in perimeter tower posts, and in July 2009 the Bureau contracted with DeTekion to fence eight more penitentiaries, USP Victorville second on the list. The approved plan was to eliminate the five perimeter tower positions at fenced penitentiaries while keeping the center and rear-gate towers staffed. That is why the complex handbook tells men at the penitentiary, and only there, that “in the event of an emergency, the Center Tower will sound a verbal warning. All inmates are required to immediately lie on the ground until further instructions are given.” At the two mediums the rule is to clear the sidewalks and face away from staff.

The same audit examined this penitentiary’s own perimeter assessment. The Inspector General laid the security assessment the Bureau completed for USP Victorville after the 2017 escape from USP Atwater against the Bureau’s own guidelines and found that “35 line items within the Institutional Assessment Guidelines containing important perimeter security strategy aspects were not addressed in the USP Victorville report,” with no policy requiring the assessments to recur or the prison to act on them. (Audit Report 20-115, September 2020.)

Housing: two to a cell, and the Special Housing Unit

General population lives in twelve units of 64 two-man cells, 128 men to a unit, each staffed by a unit manager, two counselors and two case managers, on the Council’s description. The September 2021 handbook removes any doubt about single cells: “inmates are required to be celled with another inmate. At any given time, staff will be pairing inmates to eliminate any single cells,” and refusing a cellmate “may include an incident report.”

The Special Housing Unit is large and has run close to capacity. Designed for 238, it held 233 on April 30, 2014, 25 in disciplinary segregation and the rest in administrative detention, “a large portion” in protective custody, with an average stay of 56 days. On September 15, 2021 the Bureau’s figures put 194 non-DC men and 13 of the 52 DC men in it, about a fifth of the prison. National policy promises SHU prisoners five hours of out-of-cell exercise a week, one social call a month and, at this penitentiary, a two-hour non-contact visit.

Lockdowns and modified operations

The Bureau’s figures given to the DC inspectors recorded sixteen lockdowns at USP Victorville between April 2013 and March 2014; no later count has been published for this prison. After a killing here in November 2013 the Los Angeles Times reported that “inmates’ movements have been restricted and relatives have been prohibited from visiting.” A lockdown closes the visiting room without notice, so check the Bureau’s page for USP Victorville or call 760-530-5000 the morning you travel.

Who are the notable inmates at USP Victorville?

As of September 2026, the Bureau’s Inmate Locator placed four men with national cases at USP Victorville, and a fifth was held here until 2014. Some names often listed for this prison belong to Medium I or to other prisons.

Name	Status at USP Victorville	Case
Juan Antonio Hernández Alvarado (“Tony Hernández”)	Currently held here, register 17838-104, serving life	Former Honduran congressman and brother of a former president of Honduras. Convicted in the Southern District of New York in October 2019 of cocaine-importation, weapons and false-statement offenses; sentenced March 30, 2021 to life
Khalid al Fawwaz	Currently held here, register 67497-054, serving life	Osama bin Laden’s media representative in London. Convicted in Manhattan in February 2015 of conspiring to kill United States nationals and related counts tied to the 1998 embassy bombings; sentenced to life on May 15, 2015
Ahmad Mohammad Ajaj	Currently held here, register 40637-053; projected release June 17, 2091	Convicted in the Southern District of New York for the February 1993 World Trade Center bombing; affirmed in United States v. Salameh, 152 F.3d 88 (2d Cir. 1998)
Abdul Hakim Murad	Currently held here, register 37437-054, serving life	Convicted in 1996 with Ramzi Yousef in the plot to bomb a dozen airliners over the Pacific; affirmed in United States v. Yousef, 327 F.3d 56 (2d Cir. 2003)
Gerardo Hernández	Former. Released December 17, 2014; the locator records his last facility as FMC Butner	Leader of the Cuban Five spy network, sentenced to life in the Southern District of Florida in 2001. The Victorville Daily Press placed him at this penitentiary in February 2014; President Obama commuted the sentence to expire on December 17, 2014, the day of the U.S.–Cuba prisoner exchange
Lenny Dykstra	Never here on the Bureau’s record; released June 14, 2013 from FCI Victorville Medium I	Former Mets and Phillies outfielder; pleaded guilty in the Central District of California in July 2012 to bankruptcy fraud, concealment of assets and money laundering

Three men often listed here are not. Lenny Dykstra served his sentence at Medium I, which the locator records as his last facility. Augustin Zambrano, the Chicago Latin Kings leader, is at the administrative-maximum penitentiary at Florence, according to the locator, and no primary record places him at Victorville. Javier Vasquez-Velasco is at Medium I, according to the locator. When someone tells you a man is “at Victorville,” ask which Victorville.

How do I find someone at USP Victorville?

Use the Bureau’s free Inmate Locator, by the eight-digit register number if you have it; the locator matches the committed name on the judgment, not a nickname, and covers everyone in federal custody since 1982. Read the location line, not the town: a man held here shows as “Victorville USP,” and the two mediums on the same road show as “Victorville Medium I FCI” and “Victorville Medium II FCI.” The codes VIP, VIM and VVM belong to the locator’s underlying record and do not appear on the screen. A record the Bureau marks “IN TRANSIT” means the person has been moved from a Bureau facility and may or may not be returned; it names no facility, and the screen shows “NOT IN BOP CUSTODY.” A holdover housed here shows as “Victorville USP.” No result usually means state custody, pretrial detention, or a spelling on the judgment that differs from daily use.

How do I write to someone at USP Victorville?

Write to a man at USP Victorville at P.O. Box 3900, Adelanto, CA 92301, not at the street address; each of the three institutions has its own box.

For someone at the penitentiary	What to check
Inmate Name & Register Number USP Victorville U.S. Penitentiary P.O. Box 3900 Adelanto, CA 92301	Medium I uses Box 3725 and Medium II Box 3850; a letter to the wrong box is a letter to the wrong prison

The September 2021 complex handbook adds “mail security enhancements” that reject more mail than most families expect: letters must be on white paper in a white envelope, addressed in ink or with an address stamp, not a label; colored paper, cardstock, crayon, marker, perfume and homemade cards are refused; commercial cards and attorneys’ envelopes are photocopied, with the copy delivered and the original kept back. Money in a letter is returned. The Bureau’s correspondence rules and our guide to writing to someone in federal prison cover the national rules.

Legal mail is opened only in the client’s presence, and only if the envelope identifies the sender by full name and title and is marked “Special Mail: Open Only in the Presence of the Inmate”; without the marking it may be read. Outgoing legal mail cannot go in the unit mailbox. At the penitentiary it is handed to mail-room staff and sealed in front of them, daily from 6:30 to 7:30 a.m., the earliest window on the complex and one hour long. See our guide to attorney-client communication in the Bureau.

How do I send money to someone at USP Victorville?

Money for someone at USP Victorville goes to the Bureau’s national lockbox in Iowa or through one of two wire services, never to Adelanto or the prison, always with the committed name and eight-digit register number; money received at the institution “will be returned to the sender with a letter containing the LockBox address.”

Route	Where it goes	What to know
Postal money order, cashier’s check, government or business check	Federal Bureau of Prisons Committed Name Eight-Digit Register Number Post Office Box 474701 Des Moines, Iowa 50947-0001	No cash and no personal checks; foreign instruments in U.S. dollars only
Western Union Quick Collect	Code city FBOP, DC	Register number and committed name as account and beneficiary
MoneyGram Express Payment	Receive code 7932, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Washington, DC	Same details

Three details change how much is worth sending. The national commissary ceiling is $460 a month under Program Statement 4500.13, so anything beyond that sits in the account. The telephone account is separate, fed by transfers from commissary and capped at $400 by the September 2021 handbook. And a man who refuses the Financial Responsibility Program for his fines and restitution is held by that handbook to maintenance pay of $5.25 a month, and by the complex commissary order form to a $25-a-month limit, hygiene and medication only. Fees for each route are compared in our guide to sending money to a federal prisoner.

What are the visiting hours at USP Victorville?

Visiting at USP Victorville runs Saturday, Sunday, Monday and every federal holiday, 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., with social visitors processed only between 8:30 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. That schedule comes from Complex Supplement VIX 5267.09, Visiting Regulations, dated March 1, 2022, which replaced the October 2015 supplement and covers all three institutions.

Two rules in the supplement single out the penitentiary. Men in its Special Housing Unit visit for no more than two hours in a non-contact room, face to face through a barrier, where the same men at the two mediums get non-contact video; at all three, visitors for anyone in the SHU are not processed after 1:00 p.m. And men in holdover status, who usually arrive without an approved visiting list, may apply for visiting through the Unit Manager 30 days after arrival and then visit on Fridays, 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., a day on which the rest of the prison has no visiting at all. For a man in holdover, Friday is the visiting day, not Saturday.

The 2021 handbook differs from the supplement in two places, and the newer supplement controls: the handbook describes a 40-point monthly visiting allowance the supplement does not mention, and puts the age limit for extra children at two where the supplement says ten.

Who can visit, and how many

• The approved list holds 20 people and can be changed as often as the person inside likes, by an Inmate Request to Staff at unit open house.
• Four approved visitors at a time, counting every adult and every child who occupies a seat, plus up to three children under ten in a lap or the play area. Children under sixteen must be with a responsible adult.
• Visiting is “ordinarily for persons having an established relationship with the inmate prior to incarceration.”
• A criminal record is not an automatic bar; immediate family is refused only for “strong circumstances that preclude visiting.” A discrepancy on the application can mean denial, and it is the person inside who has to tell you.

What visitors can wear and bring

A clear plastic bag no larger than 8 by 12 inches, up to $20 in coins for the vending machines, photo ID, and essential medication, which the officer holds; for an infant, diapers, wipes, two clear bottles, two unopened jars of baby food and a blanket in a clear bag up to 12 by 16 inches. Phones and every other device stay in the car, and nothing may be handed to the person you visit. The dress code, enforced in the lobby, is the complex’s: tops that cover stomach, chest and back, hems no more than two inches above mid-knee, nothing tight, see-through or sleeveless, closed-toe shoes, nothing the commissary sells, and nothing forest green, the prisoners’ color.

Prisoners change clothes too. At the penitentiary, and nowhere else on the complex, prisoners are issued a jumpsuit and shower shoes by the visiting-room officer and change into them before they come through the door, buttoned up, sleeves and legs unrolled. Do not expect to see him in his own clothes.

Identification, screening and what happens inside

Every visitor sixteen and over shows a valid state or federal government photo ID; consular cards and any other foreign document except a passport are refused. You sign form BP-A0224, pass through a metal detector “without activation,” and may be screened by an electronic drug detector. Every vehicle entering the complex is subject to search, and visitors may not wait in a parked car. Inside, an embrace and a kiss are allowed at the start and end only; you sit across from each other, he sits facing the center of the room, and “there will be no circling of chairs.” The room is video-monitored. The rules that apply at every institution are in the Bureau’s visiting regulations and our guide to federal prison visitation.

Legal visits

Attorney visits ordinarily run during the same Saturday-to-Monday hours and need an appointment at any other time; for a client in the SHU, appointments Tuesday to Friday are preferred, with no processing after 1:00 p.m. To be approved, an attorney sends the Unit Manager proof of bar standing or form BP-A0241 with a written request. An attorney who arrives without approval can be verified on the spot, but “only bona fide attorneys with current pending litigation (within 10 days)” get in that way. Paralegals and investigators need a criminal history check and a BP-A0243 application in advance. Electronic discovery on a disc or drive needs advance approval here, unlike at Medium II, and nothing may be handed over in the room.

Getting there

The complex sits on the former George Air Force Base, up Interstate 15 in the high desert northeast, not northwest, of Los Angeles. The 2022 supplement’s route: leave Interstate 15 at the “D” Street exit, follow Route 66/Highway 18 to Air Expressway Boulevard, turn left, then left onto George Boulevard into the complex. The handbook adds the detail that matters inside the gate: “USP – is the last institution on the right.”

How do phone calls and email work at USP Victorville?

Calls from USP Victorville go one way: a man calls out to numbers on his approved list of 30, which he manages himself through TRULINCS, and cannot receive calls. The Bureau’s telephone regulations, Program Statement 5264.09, issued September 3, 2026, allow 510 minutes a calendar month: 300 free to anyone eligible for First Step Act telephone incentives, and 210 more that anyone, eligible or not, may buy after using up the first 300. A single call should generally not exceed 15 minutes, with at least 30 minutes between calls, and properly arranged unmonitored legal calls do not count. The September 2021 handbook still says 300 minutes a month; that was the 2008 rule, and the 2026 program statement controls.

Every call but a properly placed legal call is recorded, and handing the phone to another man is a disciplinary offense. Phones run between 6:00 a.m. and 11:30 p.m. under the national rule, and at the penitentiary only during off-duty hours. A man in the Special Housing Unit gets one social call a month unless a sanction has taken that too. Email runs on TRULINCS, reached from outside through CorrLinks: he adds your address, you accept, messages are text only and read before delivery, and relaying messages to social media through an outside person is prohibited as evasion of monitoring. A lawyer can be on the list, but those messages are not privileged. See our guides to federal inmate phone calls and CorrLinks and TRULINCS.

What can people buy at the USP Victorville commissary?

Commissary spending at USP Victorville is capped at $460 a month, the national limit in the Bureau’s trust fund rules, Program Statement 4500.13, issued May 7, 2026, which raised it from $360. The limit rises by $50 during the November and December holiday period, for no more than one validation period. Items excluded from the limit include stamps, over-the-counter medicines, copy cards, footwear and the secured media device. Two local documents print older numbers. The September 2021 handbook says “$360.00 per month, $90.00 per week,” the national figure when it was written and now obsolete. The complex’s own 2023 order form prints “SPENDING LIMIT $180” with no period stated, and the program statement lets an institution validate spending every two weeks; ask the unit team which cycle applies.

The validation date follows a formula: the fifth digit of the register number, times three, plus one, gives the day of the month the limit resets. Shopping is by housing unit on a posted schedule, and all sales are final. The 2023 list is a two-page complex form; its women’s razors and foundation sit under the heading “TRANSGENDER (2 EA)”, and the camp has its own list. It prices a 7-inch tablet at $131.30, a wind-up radio at $66.50, a G-Shock watch at $99.95, a photo ticket at $1.00, typewriter ribbon at $9.80 and a legal pad at $2.30. The food runs to chilorio pork, menudo, flour tortillas and Tajín alongside tuna, mackerel and ramen, with kosher and halal items marked. Over-the-counter medicine is sold rather than dispensed, from ibuprofen at $2.90 to omeprazole at $7.95. The national rules are on our federal prison commissary page.

What programs are available at USP Victorville?

USP Victorville offers drug education and a non-residential drug program, literacy and college classes, vocational training, a UNICOR factory annex, and religious and reentry programs, but no residential drug treatment.

Drug treatment, and why there is no RDAP here

There is no Residential Drug Abuse Program at USP Victorville or anywhere on the complex. The Bureau’s 2026 First Step Act guide lists 57 RDAPs at 50 locations, with no Victorville institution among them, and the handbook says Psychology can only refer a man “to the residential drug abuse program (RDAP) at another institution, when appropriate.” A man who wants the year off under 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e) has to be transferred first, which at high security means a change in points or a variable. What runs here is the 15-hour Drug Education class, assigned within 45 days of arrival to anyone whose record calls for it, the non-residential program, and support groups.

One residential program that once ran here is no longer listed. The Challenge Program is the Bureau’s cognitive-behavioral residential treatment for high-security men with substance abuse or mental illness and at least 18 months left. The Justice Department’s budget submission for fiscal year 2014 listed USP Victorville among the penitentiaries operating it; the 2026 guide names eleven Challenge sites, and Victorville is not one. A man here who needs it is now referred elsewhere.

Education and vocational training

Literacy is 240 hours toward a GED for anyone without a diploma, with $25 on completion, and English as a second language until a man tests at the eighth-grade level. The handbook lists a Coastline Community College associate’s degree for which “inmates are responsible for the cost of tuition, books, and any additional fees.” In 2014, by contrast, the tuition was subsidized by the State of California, 40 men at the penitentiary were enrolled, and the DC Council called the partnership a best practice. The Bureau’s list of sixteen sites with Pell-funded college programs includes no Victorville institution.

Vocational training on the complex includes building trades, horticulture, solar panel installation, culinary arts and forklift certification, with Department of Labor apprenticeships in plumbing, HVAC and electrical work. What is open in any month depends on staff. In September 2021 the Council found the penitentiary had one teacher, against three at Medium I and four at Medium II, that almost half the education posts were vacant including both special-education teachers, and that education staff were covering nine vacant officer posts. The Bureau answered that the complex’s department was 86 percent staffed by 2022. In May 2025 the Bureau announced what it called “a historic first for USP Victorville”: 28 men received their GEDs at a ceremony their families attended.

UNICOR

Federal Prison Industries at the complex is a vehicle factory that “rebuilds and reconditions” trailers, forklifts, Humvees and five-ton trucks for the Defense Department, Homeland Security and the Forest Service, and the handbook says there are “two factories, one at the FCI-I and an Annex Factory at the USP.” The 2022 inspection put 40 men at work in the annex. Pay runs from 23 cents to $1.35 an hour, and a man without a GED is capped at grade 4. The Bureau’s 2026 guide is inconsistent here: the program’s own text names Medium I as the Victorville site and omits the penitentiary, while the by-institution grid marks the penitentiary too. Ask the unit team whether the annex is running.

Faith-based and reentry programming

Religious Services runs about fifteen faith groups on the handbook’s count, with an indoor chapel and an outdoor worship area, services in English and Spanish, two chaplains dedicated to the penitentiary, and the Kairos mentoring program. Chaplains handle religious diets and emergency messages from families, for which they need the register number, the relative’s name and a hospital or funeral home number to verify. Reentry runs through Ready-To-Work sessions with U.S. Probation and the Release Preparation Program; halfway-house placement for Southern California goes through RRM Long Beach. On First Step Act programming, the Bureau’s 2026 guide marks 46 programs against USP Victorville in its by-institution grid, but not one program’s descriptive entry names this penitentiary, because almost all of them “may be offered at all BOP institutions.” That is permission, not a report that a class is running.

What is daily life like at USP Victorville?

Daily life at USP Victorville runs on a fixed schedule, set out in the September 2021 complex handbook with separate times for the penitentiary where they differ from the mediums. A lockdown suspends all of it.

	Weekdays	Weekends and holidays
Counts	Midnight, 3:00 a.m., 5:00 a.m., 4:00 p.m. (standing), 9:30 p.m. (standing)	The same, plus a 10:00 a.m. standing count
Lights	On at 5:30 a.m., out at 10:00 p.m.
Meals	Breakfast from 6:00 a.m. until the last unit is called; lunch 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.; dinner after the 4:00 p.m. count	Breakfast from 7:00 a.m.; lunch after the 10:00 a.m. count; dinner after the 4:00 p.m. count
Sick call sign-up	6:30 to 7:00 a.m. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday; Wednesdays reserved for the SHU	Emergencies only
Legal and certified mail accepted	6:30 to 7:30 a.m. daily
Education	7:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Monday to Thursday; to 3:30 p.m. Friday	Sunday 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.; closed Saturday

Housing is two to a cell, ready for inspection from 7:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on weekdays with the bed made military-style. The unit rules run to 32 numbered items: nothing on the walls, one 8-by-10 family photograph and one religious book on the locker, no exercise in the unit, and a combination lock found attached to anything but the locker handle “will be viewed as a weapon.” No one may keep a copy of his own presentence report, statement of reasons, or any docket or transcript that reproduces them, a rule that exists because those papers get men hurt. At the penitentiary, hats and headphones come off in the secure corridors.

The dining hall seated 350 in 2014 and ran a “split yard” system, one side of the compound eating and leaving before the other arrives; SHU meals are cooked in the main kitchen and carried over. Recreation lists the usual sports plus bowling, hobby craft with finished work mailed to an approved visitor, and music instruction in English and Spanish. There is an electronic law library terminal in the SHU as well as in Education, and typewriters are for legal work only.

Health care is by sick call at 6:30 in the morning with a $2 co-pay, waived for emergencies, chronic care and men with under $6 in their account for a month. The Bureau’s 2024 care-level charts place the penitentiary at medical care level 3 and mental health care level 2; the DC Council’s 2016 report gave level 2 for both. Routine dental care runs on a waiting list: the DC Council was told in 2014 that a cleaning took about four years, and the Inspector General reported in 2017 that, as of May 2016, one in four men at the complex was on the national routine dental list — a backlog of nearly 1,000 — some of them waiting since 2008. Psychology promises a routine appointment within five working days of a request; in 2021 fewer than a quarter of the DC men surveyed said they had ever met a psychologist here.

What do inspectors say about conditions at USP Victorville?

USP Victorville has had two independent inspections, both by the District of Columbia’s Corrections Information Council because DC residents are held here: a one-day visit on April 30, 2014, reported in January 2016, and a two-day visit on September 15 and 16, 2021, reported in July 2022. The DOJ Office of the Inspector General has not conducted an on-site inspection of this facility, though its national tables name the penitentiary on deaths and on restraints, and the Prison Rape Elimination Act audit that covers it is an audit of the whole complex. The Council’s reports are surveys of a small, self-selected group of DC men, 15 of 55 in 2014 and 25 of 52 in 2021, with the Bureau’s reply printed alongside.

The 2022 report on the September 2021 visit

• Population 1,009 against a rated capacity of 1,500, one staff member for every 3.1 prisoners, 142 men serving life; the Council’s central complaint was that programming built for men near release shuts out men with decades left.
• Courses existed on paper, but “almost none were in operation during the site visit,” volunteers were barred, and the penitentiary had one teacher.
• Medical: 13 of 23 respondents said they could not get care when they needed it, and more than half of all grievances filed here concerned medical care. A medical officer, two nurses, a staff psychologist, a social worker and the chief pharmacist were all vacant. The Bureau called the complaints anecdotal.
• Grievances: on the Bureau’s own numbers, 30.5 percent of appeals to the Central Office were answered on time. Three respondents said a grievance had ever been resolved to their satisfaction.
• The SHU held 13 of the 52 DC men and 194 others on the first day. “You could be in the SHU for 3 weeks waiting to be seen.” One man came to his interview in hand and leg restraints after, he said, nearly three hours’ wait in them.
• Safety: eleven of 22 said staff had harassed or abused them, nine of 22 reported racist remarks by staff, and eight of 21 said force had been used on them. One said an officer “threatened to find a knife in my cell when I finish talking to the CIC.” The Bureau replied that none of this was raised during the visit and that without names it could investigate nothing.

The 2016 report on the April 2014 visit

The earlier report describes a different prison in April 2014: 1,308 men against a rated capacity of 720, with 55 DC residents. “Over half of the inmates interviewed by the CIC reported being assaulted at Victorville or expressed fear for their safety or lives,” several described gang control of the yard, two DC men had been stabbed while in protective custody, one badly enough to need reconstructive surgery, and a third was assaulted and suffered broken bones. The Bureau replied that of the 34 DC men still there in July 2015 only four had a documented history of assault or fighting here, and that “several others had documented histories of threatening and assaulting staff.”

The Bureau’s incident figures for April 2013 to March 2014, printed in the report, are the only such table ever published for this prison: 16 lockdowns, one homicide, two suicides, ten assaults on prisoners with a weapon and 53 without, 26 assaults on staff without a weapon and two attempts with one, 77 uses of force, 30 uses of chemical agents and 28 of restraints. Of 55 letters the Council mailed to DC men here, 44 came back, and 34 of the 45 men still at the prison never received notice that inspectors were coming.

What the Inspector General has and has not done here

The DOJ Office of the Inspector General has not conducted an on-site inspection of this facility, and as of September 2026 none of its ongoing work named this penitentiary. Its only audit of this complex, Report 17-20 of March 2017, was a contract audit of dental staffing whose findings belong to the complex.

Four national products single out the penitentiary by name. The February 2024 evaluation of 344 deaths in custody by suicide, homicide, accident and unknown causes from fiscal 2014 through 2021 lists USP Victorville eighth among the ten institutions with the highest number, with nine deaths against a 2018 population of 1,150 — the same nine recorded for USP Beaumont and for the medical center at Springfield. The July 2025 audit of restraints listed every institution with more than 300 recorded applications between January 2018 and mid-January 2024: USP Victorville had 480, sixth in the country, on data the auditors called informative rather than relied upon. The 2020 perimeter audit, described above, found 35 required items missing from this penitentiary’s own security assessment. And the 2021 pandemic survey of staff publishes results by institution, as proportions rather than counts: at “Victorville USP” 80.9 percent of the staff who answered reported increased stress or anxiety at work and 38.3 percent had considered leaving the Bureau. The Inspector General publishes no respondent count for any institution.

Three prosecutions of officers here were the Inspector General’s work. In January 2012 Justin Morrow, a correctional officer at the penitentiary, was sentenced to two years for taking about $10,500 in bribes from two prisoners to smuggle tobacco. In 2017 Ignacio Adrian Sobers Jr., another officer here, pleaded guilty to taking a $1,000 bribe to bring in a package for a prisoner and was sentenced to six months. In August 2024 a senior officer assigned to the complex, Erik Salgado, was indicted in the Central District of California on two counts of deprivation of rights under color of law for assaulting two prisoners with chemical spray in August 2021; an indictment is an accusation, and the release does not say which institution.

The 2023 PREA audit of the complex, and the GAO counts

FCC Victorville was audited under the Prison Rape Elimination Act on December 19–21, 2023 by Valerie Wolfe Mahfood, a PREA Auditors of America subcontractor, in a final report dated February 6, 2024. The complex passed: six standards exceeded, 35 met, none unmet. Its figures cover 4,389 people and cannot be divided out to the penitentiary: 24 allegations of sexual abuse in the preceding year, 17 by prisoners and seven by staff, the staff cases all still under open criminal investigation, and one prisoner case substantiated.

The Government Accountability Office published in May 2026 the Bureau’s own counts of reported sexual-abuse allegations by institution for 2020 through 2024. For USP Victorville: 55 naming another prisoner as the alleged abuser, seven to fourteen a year, and 23 naming a Bureau employee, 16 of them reported in 2024 against one to three in each earlier year. These are reported allegations, not findings; nationally, most of the allegations GAO examined from 2014 through 2022 were closed as unsubstantiated, which means not proved either way. (GAO-26-107343, tables 7 and 8.)

The National Resource Team, December 2025

In the first week of December 2025 the Bureau’s Deputy Director, Joshua J. Smith, brought assistant directors, regional directors and wardens to FCC Victorville “with the USP serving as the first site” for a National Resource Team, a standardized assessment of infrastructure, staffing, population management and training that the Bureau says will now go to every penitentiary. Staff recalls produced “immediate and future corrective actions”: repairing the roofs of the Special Housing Unit and food service areas, “repairing three housing units closed due to electrical and plumbing issues,” and “allocating more than a dozen positions.” Town halls with prisoners produced complaints about First Step Act credit calculations, and recalculating them led, the Bureau says, to changed designations, longer halfway-house placements and one immediate release that week. The Bureau does not say how many of the three closed units were at the penitentiary or when the repairs were finished.

USP Victorville in the news

Recent news about USP Victorville centers on a July 2026 death in custody, the National Resource Team’s first assessment and a GED ceremony; older items concern officer prosecutions, deaths in custody and the killings of 2013 and 2014.

• July 2026: a death in custody. On July 27, 2026, at approximately 8:50 p.m., Justin Meunier, 38, was found unresponsive at the penitentiary; responding employees “initiated life-saving measures,” and he was “subsequently pronounced deceased by EMS personnel.” The Federal Bureau of Investigation was notified. He was serving 35 months from the Western District of Texas for transporting aliens and had been at the penitentiary one week. The Bureau’s release gives no cause; it is one of only two death notices for this prison on the Bureau’s press-release page, which reaches back to 2014.
• December 2025: the National Resource Team’s first assessment, described above.
• May 2025: the Bureau announced “a historic first for USP Victorville,” 28 men receiving GEDs at a ceremony their families attended, Warden Lepe presiding.
• April 2025: the officers’ union told the Victorville Daily Press that eight penitentiary staff were taken to hospital over two days after “exposure to an unknown substance,” which the union blamed on drugs arriving by mail. The account is the union’s.
• August 2024: a senior officer assigned to the complex was indicted on federal civil-rights charges over a chemical-spray assault on two prisoners in August 2021. An indictment is an accusation, not a finding of guilt.
• June 2021: the Bureau reported the death of Carlous Lindell Daily, 57, who tested positive for COVID-19 in December 2020, was declared recovered, then collapsed and died on December 28; the release put the population at 1,060.
• 2017: officer Ignacio Adrian Sobers Jr. was arrested in January with a $1,000 bribe and a package for a prisoner, pleaded guilty and was sentenced in July to six months.
• September 2014: Edgar Steele, the disbarred Idaho lawyer serving 50 years for a murder-for-hire plot, died here on September 4.
• June 2014: Brian Kountz, 24, and Robert Howard Ferguson, 49, were found dead on the evening of June 21 and their deaths treated as homicides. The San Bernardino Sun counted five deaths across the complex in nine months.
• November 2013: David Snow, 53, a former president of the Aryan Brotherhood in Ohio, was killed here on November 13; the prison restricted movement and stopped visits while the FBI investigated, and a second man was found dead of apparent suicide the next day.
• January 2012: officer Justin Morrow was sentenced to two years for taking about $10,500 in bribes to smuggle tobacco into the penitentiary.

Frequently asked questions about USP Victorville

Problems at USP Victorville: where we can help

Each of these problems has a record at this penitentiary, and each runs on a clock, usually the twenty-day clock of the administrative remedy program.

• Designation to a penitentiary that the points do not support. A man in the medium range can be held here on a Management Variable, which must be documented and justified; the 2014 inspection recorded exactly this complaint. How a redesignation request is built is covered in our guide to federal prison transfers.
• First Step Act time credits. In December 2025 the Bureau’s Deputy Director heard men at this complex complain about the accuracy and timeliness of their credit calculations and saw designations and halfway-house dates change when the credits were applied. See our time-credit review.
• The Special Housing Unit and restraints. A fifth of the prison was in the SHU in September 2021, and the Inspector General counted 480 applications of restraints here between 2018 and January 2024. A placement that outlasts its stated reason can be challenged. See SHU placements and protective custody.
• Disciplinary hearings where the video was never reviewed. Two federal courts have handled habeas petitions from men disciplined at USP Victorville who said the hearing officer refused to look at the surveillance footage; a request to preserve it has to be made in writing before the hearing.
• Medical and dental care that does not arrive. It was the leading complaint in 2021, and the routine dental list at this complex has run to years. The route is the administrative remedy process, and where neglect has caused injury a Federal Tort Claims Act claim to the Western Regional Office on Standard Form 95.
• Assaults. A negligence claim against the United States for an assault here has to clear the discretionary-function exception, and the one such claim from this penitentiary tried to judgment, over a 2015 stabbing at a unit sallyport, failed on it after a bench trial, Tate v. United States, No. CV 15-9323 (C.D. Cal. Mar. 1, 2023). The facts that can overcome the exception, such as a specific warning ignored or a specific duty abandoned, have to be gathered early.
• Transfer to RDAP, which does not exist here; compassionate release under the Bureau’s reduction-in-sentence rules; sentence-computation errors; and halfway-house placement or home confinement through the release district’s reentry office (RRM Long Beach for Southern California). Our early-release practice covers each.
• 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 Victorville, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The Bureau’s page for the institution, with its address, phone numbers and posted documents.
• FCC Victorville Commissary Shopping List, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Federal Correctional Complex Victorville, 2023.
• Visiting Regulations, Complex Supplement VIX 5267.09, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Federal Correctional Complex Victorville, 2022. Replaced the October 2015 supplement.
• Visiting Regulations, Complex Supplement VIX 5267.09 (Spanish edition), Federal Bureau of Prisons, Federal Correctional Complex Victorville, 2022.
• FCC Victorville Inmate Handbook, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Federal Correctional Complex Victorville, 2021.
• FCC Victorville Manual de Reos, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Federal Correctional Complex Victorville, 2021. The Spanish edition of the handbook.
• 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, as amended in 2026. Security points, Public Safety Factors and Management Variables.
• Inmate Telephone Regulations, Program Statement 5264.09, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Replaced Program Statement 5264.08 (2008).
• Special Housing Units, Program Statement 5270.12, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2025.
• First Step Act Approved Programs Guide, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Reentry Services Division, 2026. Includes the list of residential drug program and Challenge Program locations.
• Send Money, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The Bureau’s instructions for the lockbox, Western Union and MoneyGram.
• 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.
• State of the Bureau 2005, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2006.
• Death at USP Victorville, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Justin Meunier’s death.
• Advancing the NRT Initiative, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026.
• BOP Launches First-Ever National Resource Team, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2025.
• Post on the GED ceremony at USP Victorville, Federal Bureau of Prisons (@OfficialFBOP on X), 2025.
• Inmate Death at USP Victorville, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2021. Carlous Lindell Daily’s death.

Audits and inspections

• Federal Prisons: Improvements Needed to Prevent, Detect, and Address Sexual Abuse (GAO-26-107343), U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2026.
• Ongoing Work, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2026. The Inspector General’s list of engagements under way.
• Audit of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Oversight of the Use of Restraints (Report 25-070), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2025.
• Evaluation of Issues Surrounding Inmate Deaths in Federal Bureau of Prisons Institutions (Report 24-041), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2024.
• PREA Facility Audit Report: Final, FCC Victorville, PREA Auditors of America, 2024. On-site audit of December 19–21, 2023, by Valerie Wolfe Mahfood, an independent auditor subcontracted by PREA Auditors of America.
• USP Victorville Inspection Report, District of Columbia Corrections Information Council, 2022. Covers the September 2021 visit.
• Staff Perceptions of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Management of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic: A Follow-Up Survey of BOP Staff (Report 21-126), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2021.
• Audit of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Perimeter Security Strategy and Efforts Related to the Contract Awarded to DeTekion Security Systems, Incorporated, to Update the Lethal/Non-Lethal Fence at Nine United States Penitentiaries (Report 20-115), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2020.
• Audit of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Contract No. DJBP0616BPA12004 Awarded to Spectrum Services Group, Inc., Victorville, California (Report 17-20), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2017.
• USP Victorville Inspection Report, District of Columbia Corrections Information Council, 2016. Covers the April 2014 visit.
• Military Bases: Case Studies on Selected Bases Closed in 1988 and 1991 (GAO/NSIAD-95-139), U.S. General Accounting Office, 1995. Includes George Air Force Base.

Court records

• Tate v. United States, No. CV 15-9323 (C.D. Cal. Mar. 1, 2023), U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, 2023. Findings of fact and conclusions of law after the bench trial.
• BOP Correctional Officer Indicted and Arrested for Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2024. Erik Salgado’s indictment.
• Downey v. Ciolli, No. 3:21-cv-50196 (N.D. Ill. Jan. 3, 2024), U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, 2024.
• Former Honduran Congressman Tony Hernández Sentenced to Life in Prison and Ordered to Forfeit $138.5 Million for Distributing 185 Tons of Cocaine and Related Firearms and False Statements Offenses, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York, 2021. Juan Antonio Hernández Alvarado’s life sentence.
• Neal v. Warden, No. 7:19-cv-00139 (W.D. Va. Mar. 26, 2020), U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia, 2020. Memorandum opinion.
• United States v. Redmond, No. 17-50004 (9th Cir. Oct. 24, 2018), U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 2018. Unpublished memorandum.
• Correctional Officer at Federal Prison in Victorville Agrees to Plead Guilty to Taking Bribe to Smuggle Contraband to Prisoner, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Central District of California, 2017. Ignacio Adrian Sobers Jr.’s plea agreement.
• Manhattan U.S. Attorney and Assistant Attorney General Announce Sentence of Life in Prison for High-Ranking Al Qaeda Terrorist Convicted of Conspiring to Kill Americans and Other Terrorism Offenses, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York, 2015. Khalid al Fawwaz’s life sentence.
• Federal Correctional Officer Sentenced to Prison in Bribery Case, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Central District of California, 2012. Justin Morrow’s sentence.
• United States v. Yousef, 327 F.3d 56 (2d Cir. 2003), U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, 2003.
• United States v. Salameh, 152 F.3d 88 (2d Cir. 1998), U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, 1998.

News and other sources

• Eight FCC Victorville Staffers Rushed to Hospital After Suspected Fentanyl Exposure, Victorville Daily Press, 2025.
• Commutations Granted by President Barack H. Obama (2009–2017), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Pardon Attorney, 2017.
• Passings: Edgar Steele, H. Walter Croskey, Los Angeles Times, 2014.
• Inmates Killed at Victorville Prison Identified, San Bernardino Sun, 2014.
• Penitentiary Home to One of Cuban Five, Victorville Daily Press, 2014.
• Aryan Brotherhood Inmate’s Death Is Latest at Victorville Prison, Los Angeles Times, 2013.
• FY 2014 Performance Budget Congressional Submission: Federal Prison System, Salaries and Expenses, U.S. Department of Justice, 2013. Lists the penitentiaries then running the Challenge Program.
• 18 U.S.C. § 7, Special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States defined, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).
• 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e), Imprisonment of a convicted person, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).

Sources reviewed September 2026.

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