FCI Bastrop: Visiting, Mail, Commissary and Programs

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

FCI Bastrop at a glance

FCI Bastrop is a low-security federal prison for men on Highway 95 north of Bastrop, Texas, with an adjacent minimum-security satellite camp. It held 1,169 people as of September 2026: 1,044 at the main institution and 125 at the camp. It sits in Bastrop County, about half an hour’s drive southeast of Austin, and serves the Western District of Texas.

Official name	Federal Correctional Institution, Bastrop
BOP code	BAS
Security level	Low; men; adjacent minimum-security satellite camp
Population	1,169 (as of September 2026) · FCI 1,044 · camp 125
Visiting	Saturdays, Sundays and federal holidays, 8:15 a.m.–3:15 p.m. · see visiting hours
Inmate mail	FCI: Inmate Name & Register Number · FCI Bastrop · Federal Correctional Institution · P.O. Box 1010 · Bastrop, TX 78602 Camp: Inmate Name & Register Number · FCI Bastrop · Federal Correctional Institution · Satellite Camp · P.O. Box 629 · Bastrop, TX 78602
Send money	Lockbox · Western Union (code city FBOP, DC) · MoneyGram (receive code 7932)
Phone	512-321-3903 · Fax 512-304-0117
Street address	1341 Highway 95 North, Bastrop, TX 78602 · Bastrop County
Judicial district	Western District of Texas
BOP region	South Central
Housing	6 housing units
Special Housing Unit	Yes
RDAP	Yes at the FCI; not at the camp
UNICOR	Yes
Camp	Minimum-security satellite camp

FCI Bastrop is one of the federal prisons in Texas and sits in the Bureau’s South Central Region. The institution rewrote its visiting rules on December 31, 2025, and the Monday visiting day that older listings still give, including the Bureau’s own handbook for this prison, no longer exists.

Three places in Bastrop County, and only one is a federal prison

FCI Bastrop and the satellite camp beside it are federal; the Bastrop County Jail is not, and each has a different way of finding a person.

Place	Run by	How to find someone
FCI Bastrop (this page)	Federal Bureau of Prisons	BOP Inmate Locator
The satellite prison camp beside it	Federal Bureau of Prisons — same warden, same locator, different mailing address	BOP Inmate Locator; the locator does not say FCI or camp, so ask the unit team
Bastrop County Jail	Bastrop County Sheriff’s Office	The Sheriff’s booking desk, 512-549-5073

If the person you are looking for was arrested by a county deputy or a Bastrop city officer and has not been to federal court, they are at the county jail and the federal locator will never find them. If they were sentenced by a United States district judge, this page is the right one.

The split between the FCI and the camp matters more here than at most institutions, and it runs through almost every section below. They have different post office boxes, different commissary hours, different rotation schedules, different visiting-point allowances, different caps on how many people may visit at once, and a different answer on the drug program. Sending a letter to the wrong box, or planning a second visit in one day that only camp residents are allowed, are the mistakes to avoid.

What is the security level at FCI Bastrop?

FCI Bastrop is low security, and the camp next to it is minimum security. The 2023 PREA audit records the custody levels held here as “Low/In/Minimum/Out/Community” — the Bureau’s shorthand for a site that runs both a fenced low institution and an unfenced camp whose residents work outside the perimeter.

The auditor counted six inmate housing units across the whole site, a designed capacity of 1,067, and an average daily population of 1,156 over the twelve months to November 2023. Asked whether the facility had been over capacity at any point in that year, the audit answers yes. It has not come back down: the population was 1,169 as of September 2026. A low-security prison running roughly a hundred people above its design figure is not an emergency, but it is the reason a waitlist exists for almost everything described further down this page.

Which side of the fence someone lands on is decided before they arrive, by a security point score and by whether any Public Safety Factor applies. A Public Safety Factor overrides the point total outright. The one that most often keeps a low-scoring man out of the Bastrop camp is Deportable Alien: under the Bureau’s security designation rules it applies to “a male or female inmate who is not a citizen of the United States,” and when applied “the inmate or the long-term detainee shall be housed in at least a Low security level institution.” That is a floor of low, which is exactly what the main institution here is — and a bar on the camp. (PS 5100.08, ch. 5 at 9.) Our guides to the intake process and how to prepare for prison cover what happens in the first weeks.

Who are the notable inmates at FCI Bastrop?

The one notable inmate held at FCI Bastrop is Aaron Morel LeBaron. The other names often linked to this prison belong to men who have left, some of them a quarter of a century ago, or who are held elsewhere; the table gives each man’s status in the Bureau’s records as of September 2026.

Name	Status (September 2026)	Case
Aaron Morel LeBaron	Held here. Register number 72697-079; projected release January 17, 2033	Leader of the LeBaron family and the “Lamb of God” sect. In the Justice Department’s account of the prosecutions arising from the coordinated killings of June 27, 1988, in Houston and Irving, the victims “had been ordered murdered by Aaron Lebaron, the leader of the Lebaron family, because they had left the religious cult”
Jonathan E. Woods	Not here. The locator shows “Butner Medium I FCI” — FCI Butner Medium I, North Carolina; projected release July 3, 2033	Former Arkansas state senator, convicted on May 3, 2018, of fifteen counts including conspiracy and honest services wire and mail fraud, and sentenced to 220 months
Yassein Said	Not here. The locator shows “Fort Worth FMC” — FMC Fort Worth; projected release November 16, 2029	Sentenced to twelve years in the Northern District of Texas for concealing a man on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list from capture for more than twelve years
Samuel George Hurd	Former. Released May 30, 2023	Former NFL wide receiver; federal cocaine conspiracy
Richard A. Causey	Former. Released October 14, 2011	Enron’s chief accounting officer, sentenced in November 2006 to 66 months for securities fraud
Christopher Matthew Lamprecht	Former. Released March 3, 2000	Computer-intrusion case of the 1990s
Jeff Fort	Former, and long gone. The locator shows “Florence ADMAX USP” — the administrative maximum penitentiary at Florence, Colorado; projected release October 14, 2044	The Inspector General’s report on inmate telephone abuse records that “even though Jeff Fort was serving a prison sentence at FCI Bastrop, TX in 1987, he was able to maintain control over the Chicago street gang ‘El Rukn’ from prison through extensive telephone contact”

Jon Woods is held at FCI Butner Medium I, not at Bastrop, and Yassein Said at the federal medical center in Fort Worth. The locator gives a short facility name and type, such as “Butner Medium I FCI,” and names that look alike belong to different prisons, so resolve the name to one institution before you address an envelope.

How do I find someone at FCI Bastrop?

Use the Bureau’s free Inmate Locator. Search by the eight-digit register number if you have it; that is the reliable key, because the locator matches the committed name on the judgment rather than the name a family uses. It covers everyone in federal custody since 1982: for someone still held it gives the facility and a projected release date, and for someone released it shows “Not in BOP Custody as of” and a date, with no facility.

The locator will not tell you two things. It does not distinguish the FCI from the camp — both return “Bastrop FCI” — so if you need to know which mailing address to use, ask in the first letter or call the institution. And a blank result usually means one of three things: the person is in state or county custody rather than federal, they are in pretrial detention under the U.S. Marshals Service and not yet designated to a prison, or the committed name is spelled differently from the name you know. Our guide to how federal register numbers work explains how the number is built and why it never changes.

How do I write to someone at FCI Bastrop?

Write to someone at the FCI at P.O. Box 1010, Bastrop, TX 78602, and to someone at the satellite camp at P.O. Box 629, Bastrop, TX 78602, with the committed name and register number on the first line. Get the box right the first time; mail sorted to the wrong box is not walked across the compound for you.

For someone at the FCI	For someone at the satellite camp
Inmate Name & Register Number FCI Bastrop Federal Correctional Institution P.O. Box 1010 Bastrop, TX 78602	Inmate Name & Register Number FCI Bastrop Federal Correctional Institution Satellite Camp P.O. Box 629 Bastrop, TX 78602

P.O. Box 730 is staff mail, although the front page of the Bureau’s 2005 directory entry for this prison and the address block of the December 2025 visiting supplement both print it as the institution’s address, and directory sites have copied it. A letter to an incarcerated person addressed to Box 730 is not inmate mail. Neither is 1341 Highway 95 North, which is the physical and freight address. Use 1010 for the FCI and 629 for the camp, and put the committed name and the eight-digit register number on the first line of the address, not just on the letter inside.

Under the Bureau’s correspondence rules, general correspondence is opened, inspected for contraband and may be read. Legal mail is opened only in the addressee’s presence and is not read — but only if the envelope identifies the sender as an attorney and is marked as special mail on the front. An attorney’s letter without that marking is handled as ordinary mail, read included, so tell your lawyer. Our guides to writing to someone in federal prison and to attorney-client communication in the Bureau of Prisons cover what gets rejected and why.

Never put cash, a check or a money order inside a letter. Funds enclosed in correspondence are rejected and returned to the sender, and if there is no return address they go to the Treasury.

How do I send money to someone at FCI Bastrop?

Money for someone at FCI Bastrop goes to the Bureau’s national lockbox in Iowa or through Western Union or MoneyGram, never to the prison, and all three routes need the committed name and the eight-digit register number on the instrument as well as the envelope.

Route	Where it goes	How fast it posts
Postal money order or cashier’s check	Federal Bureau of Prisons Committed Name Eight-Digit Register Number Post Office Box 474701 Des Moines, Iowa 50947-0001	Processed the day it arrives. U.S. postal money orders post without a hold; most other instruments carry an automatic 15-day hold
Western Union Quick Collect	Code city FBOP, DC	Two to four hours, seven days a week, for money sent between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. Eastern (the Bureau’s Send Money page; its Trust Fund manual says two hours); money sent after 9:00 p.m. posts at 7:00 a.m. Eastern the next morning
MoneyGram Express Payment	Receive code 7932, company name Federal Bureau of Prisons, Washington, DC	On the Western Union schedule, according to the same Bureau page

Our full guide to sending money to a federal prisoner compares the routes and their fees. Before sending a large sum, read the commissary section below: spending is capped at $460 a month, so money beyond that sits in the account rather than buying anything — with one exception. If the person you are sending to has been placed in refuse status under the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program, this institution’s handbook records that their commissary spending is cut to $25 a month, a ceiling that does not count stamps or telephone credits. That is a sanction with a fix, and the fix is a payment plan, not a deposit.

What are the visiting hours at FCI Bastrop?

Visiting at FCI Bastrop runs on Saturdays, Sundays and federal holidays, 8:15 a.m. to 3:15 p.m., at both the FCI and the camp. That is from institution supplement BAS 5267.09E, dated December 31, 2025, which rescinded the April 2023 version. The last visitors are processed sixty minutes before the end, so anyone arriving after 2:15 p.m. is turned away.

Monday visiting is gone. The Bureau’s own Admission and Orientation handbook for this institution, updated in 2021 and still the version the Bureau publishes, says visiting at the FCI runs “Saturday through Monday,” 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., and listings copied from it say the same. The December 2025 supplement lists three visiting days and Monday is not one of them, and it is the later and more specific document, so it controls. A Monday trip finds the visiting room closed.

The Special Housing Unit visits on the same days and in the same hours, but not in person. Under the current supplement, people in Administrative Detention or Disciplinary Segregation “will no longer be escorted to the Visiting Room for social visits” and instead use a video station inside the unit, one hour per visit, first come first served. If a visit is already running when you arrive, staff will ask you to leave and come back at the next available time. Legal visits are the exception and are still held in the visiting room. The supplement adds, flatly, that “[p]resently, at the FCI there is not a non-contact visiting area.”

Who can visit, and how many

• The visiting list holds up to 25 people in total, of whom no more than ten may be friends and associates. There is no limit on how often the list is changed, and only the Unit Team may add a name.
• At the FCI, five visitors at a time, “to include all children regardless of age due to limited space.” At the camp, six. The FCI visiting room seats 170; the camp room seats 105.
• At the FCI, one trip to the visiting room per day. Camp residents get two — so a family driving in from out of state can break the day in half at the camp and cannot at the FCI.
• Immediate family identified in the presentence report go on the list after an NCIC check. Other relatives, friends and associates need a completed form BP-A0629 and must have known the person before he was locked up; only the Warden may waive that.
• Only the Warden may put a person with a prior criminal conviction on a visiting list.
• Children under sixteen must be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian who is on the approved list.
• Newly arrived men get no social visits until the investigation of a proposed visitor is complete; in the meantime, only immediate family identified in the presentence report may come.
• A minister of record does not count against the visitor total or the social-visit allowance, and clergy visits are not charged against visiting points. One minister of record at a time.

Visiting points, and how many visits a month that buys

Bastrop runs a points system. Each man is allotted eight points on the first of the month at the FCI and ten at the camp. A visit on a weekend or a federal holiday costs two points. Unused points do not carry over.

Since every visiting day here is a weekend or a holiday, the arithmetic is fixed: four visits a month at the FCI, five at the camp. Attorney, professional, legal and Prisoner Visitation and Support visits are scored at zero points and do not eat into the allowance. Unit Managers may approve extra points after consulting the Associate Warden of Programs and the Captain, which is the route for a family that has traveled a long way and wants two days in a row.

What visitors can wear and bring

The December 2025 dress code bars the obvious things and several that are not obvious. Prohibited: tight, transparent or spandex clothing, including leggings and yoga pants; tank tops, halter tops and sleeveless shirts; plunging necklines; wrap-around skirts; any skirt that does not touch the bottom of the knee when the wearer is seated; shorts, except on children; holes or tears in clothing; hooded clothing; jogging and sweatpants; hospital scrubs and medical uniforms; excessive jewelry; hats and caps other than religious headwear; open-toed shoes, sandals and flip-flops; and Crocs of any type.

Color matters as much as cut, because nothing may be mistakable for an inmate uniform or a staff one. Khaki-colored pants or shirts, camouflage, orange and gray are all turned away, as is a plain white tee shirt worn as the only top. Purses and bags of any kind are barred, and so are watches, which the supplement lists alongside the clothing prohibitions.

Visitors are not allowed to give anything to the person they are visiting, and money cannot be handed over in the visiting room for deposit. Anything not permitted stays in the car; the institution does not store personal effects. Service animals are allowed with certification and current vaccination records, and no animal may be left in a parked vehicle.

Identification, screening and the overcrowding rule

Bring a valid state driver’s license, a state identification card, a passport or an alien registration card. Without acceptable identification you will not be permitted to visit. Everything you carry goes through the x-ray machine, visitors pass a metal detector, and clear plastic containers and attorneys’ briefcases may be searched.

One unusual local rule works against visitors from Austin. When the visiting room becomes overcrowded, the Operations Lieutenant compiles a list, in order of arrival, of visitors whose address is within a hundred miles of the institution. Those visitors are asked first, privately, to volunteer to end their visit; if that does not clear the room, the first five groups on the list are told their visits are pending termination. The supplement is explicit that “[v]isitors traveling less than 100 miles are considered local visitors.” Austin is about thirty miles away, Houston and San Antonio are not. An Austin family is at the front of the line to be sent home.

The Bureau’s visiting regulations and our general guide to federal prison visitation cover the rules that apply system-wide, and searches, shakedowns and contraband explains how the screening rules are applied.

Getting there

The institution is on Highway 95 north of the town of Bastrop, in the Camp Swift area; nearly every visitor arrives through Austin.

The December 2025 supplement gives two routes from Austin. Take Highway 71 East to Highway 95 in Bastrop, then Highway 95 North about six miles to the institution entrance. Or take Highway 290 East from Austin to Highway 95 in Elgin, then Highway 95 South about nine miles. Austin-Bergstrom International Airport is the nearest commercial airport; the Bureau’s own directory entry for this prison puts it 25 miles away. From San Antonio, the 2021 handbook routes visitors up Interstate 35 about 74 miles, east on Highway 71 about 29 miles to Bastrop, then north on Highway 95. From Houston, Interstate 10 west about 75 miles, then Highway 71 west about 57 miles to Bastrop.

The Bureau’s documents disagree on the last leg: the 2005 directory entry and the 2021 handbook put the institution eight miles north of Bastrop, and the December 2025 supplement says six. The difference will not cost you a visit.

There is no public transport to the gate. Visitor parking is in front of the FCI and camp buildings, with marked accessible spaces at the main entrance; visitors may not wait in the parking lot before hours or stay on the grounds afterward.

How do phone calls and email work at FCI Bastrop?

Calls from FCI Bastrop go out, never in. The person inside places them from an approved list using a nine-digit Phone Access Code, and a single call should generally not exceed fifteen minutes. Across the Bureau the allowance is 510 minutes a calendar month under the Bureau’s telephone regulations, Program Statement 5264.09, issued September 3, 2026, of which 300 are free to anyone eligible for First Step Act telephone incentives; the other 210 may be bought only after those 300 are used up, by anyone, eligible or not. The extra 100 minutes in November and December belonged to the 2008 policy and did not survive its rescission. All calls except properly arranged unmonitored legal calls are recorded and may be monitored.

At Bastrop specifically, the 2021 handbook records that the phones run from 6:00 a.m. to no later than 11:30 p.m., and that access is normally blocked on weekdays between 7:30 and 10:30 a.m. and from 12:30 p.m. until after the 4:00 p.m. count clears. Those are working hours; the institution expects men to be at their job assignments and not on the telephone. In practice that leaves early mornings, the middle of the day, and the evening. For someone in a different time zone, the evening window is the one to plan around. See our guide to federal inmate phone calls.

Email runs on TRULINCS, which families reach through CorrLinks. There are dedicated workstations in the housing units. It is text only — no attachments, no internet, 13,000 characters a message — and it is charged by the minute. The person inside adds your address and the system sends you an invitation you have to accept before anything can pass. See CorrLinks and TRULINCS for the rates.

Two TRULINCS services here matter. One is a prescription refill request service, which the handbook says Health Services receives and processes directly — a faster route than a paper request for someone who has run out of medication. The other is the standard Department of Justice sexual abuse reporting mailbox, which reaches the Office of the Inspector General rather than anyone at Bastrop. Email with a lawyer is not privileged on this system and never has been; privileged written communication has to travel as marked special mail.

What can people buy at the FCI Bastrop commissary?

The monthly commissary spending limit at FCI Bastrop is $460, raised from $360 by the Bureau’s trust fund rules, Program Statement 4500.13, issued May 7, 2026; it rises by $50 during the November and December holiday period, for no more than one validation period. Items excluded from the limit include postage stamps, over-the-counter medications, nicotine replacement products, footwear, mattresses and secured media devices.

Bastrop’s own 2021 handbook still says “The National Spending Limit is 360.00,” and adds that accounts here are revalidated on a monthly, bi-weekly basis at $180.00. The $360 figure is obsolete. The $180 half-month validation is a local arrangement and may or may not still be in force; the commissary order form published for this institution prints no spending figure at all and carries no date. Ask the unit team which validation cycle applies before assuming a full month’s worth of money is spendable at once.

What the order form does publish is the shopping schedule, and it is unlike most institutions’: your day is set by the last two digits of your register number, not by your housing unit.

	Days and hours	Rotation by the last two digits of the register number
FCI	Monday to Thursday. Express sales 10:45 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., 25 items or fewer; regular sales 4:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.	Monday 01–25, Tuesday 26–50, Wednesday 51–75, Thursday 76–00
Satellite camp	Monday to Wednesday, regular sales 6:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m.	Monday 01–33, Tuesday 34–66, Wednesday 67–00

Source: FCI/SPC Bastrop commissary order form, undated. The form’s own rules are unforgiving: “ONCE YOUR COMMISSARY LIST IS TURNED IN, NO ITEMS WILL BE ADDED TO IT,” only one man in the sales booth at a time, items may be substituted if out of stock, and all sales are final.

The list itself reads like a South Texas grocery: corn and flour tortillas, refried beans, jalapeño beans, jalapeño cream cheese, El Pato, salsita, pork cracklins and chicharrones sit beside the standard soups and coffee. Sugar is stocked. Sample prices: an MP3 player is $88.40, a Sangean digital radio $39.00, a Timex Marathon watch $22.10, Adidas trainers between $64.90 and $69.95, Wolverine boots $80.60, and a book of twenty forever stamps $9.80. A typewriter ribbon is $5.20. Clothing sold in the commissary is limited to gray and white, because khaki is the uniform. Our page on the federal prison commissary covers the national rules.

What programs are available at FCI Bastrop?

FCI Bastrop is approved for a long list of programs, including residential and non-residential drug treatment, literacy and English as a second language, occupational education, UNICOR and Threshold, but no college program. The Bureau’s August 2026 First Step Act Approved Programs Guide is the authoritative list of what is approved to run at each institution, and its programs-by-institution table marks Bastrop for anger management, basic cognitive skills, criminal thinking, emotional self-regulation, the Bureau literacy program, English as a second language, faith-based conflict management, family programming for men, illness management and recovery, the inmate companion program, national parenting, non-residential drug treatment, all four occupational-education categories, residential drug treatment, seeking safety, Threshold and Wellness Inside and Out. The same table marks post-secondary education with a dot rather than an X — no college program is approved here. Approval is not delivery: whether a class is actually running, and how long the waitlist is, is a question for the unit team in writing.

RDAP and drug treatment

The Residential Drug Abuse Program runs at the FCI and not at the camp. The institution’s handbook says so in terms — “The RDAP is available here at FCI Bastrop but is not available at the camp” — and the Bureau’s current list of RDAP locations, updated in June 2026 and published inside the August 2026 programs guide, names FCI Bastrop among the South Central Region sites with no suspension marker against it. That list totals 57 programs at 50 locations; listings that give 65 programs at 53 locations cite a superseded edition.

Two consequences follow; raise both with a lawyer early. A man designated to the camp who wants RDAP has to be moved to the FCI to get it, which is a redesignation rather than a request to the drug abuse program coordinator. And timing decides everything: the handbook records that people are ordinarily interviewed between 42 and 24 months before release, so a man with four years left who has not been interviewed is not late, and a man with eighteen months left who has not been interviewed probably is. Under the Bureau’s drug-treatment rules, completion of all three phases, including the community transition component in a residential reentry center, can be worth up to twelve months off a sentence for a non-violent offense under 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e). The non-residential program and the drug abuse education course run at both the FCI and the camp.

Education, vocational training and UNICOR

Literacy and English as a second language are the mandatory pieces: a man without a high school credential must complete at least 240 instructional hours of GED enrollment, and an unsatisfactory-progress code stops good conduct time from vesting until another 240 hours are done. Adult Continuing Education classes run in the evenings and on weekends, and correspondence courses are allowed if they need only paper and pencil, at the inmate’s own expense.

One line in the handbook’s occupational-education rules matters to anyone with an immigration hold: Education staff “will determine an inmate’s academic eligibility for enrollment and deportation status (if applicable)” before an occupational program place is approved. A deportation detainer is therefore not just a release-planning problem here; it is a gate on vocational training.

UNICOR operates at Bastrop — the August 2026 programs guide names BAS in the Federal Prison Industries entry, and its by-institution table agrees. The certifications the handbook says a man can leave here with are specific: a 609 automotive air-conditioning certification, a bed-lining certification, a forklift certification and a quality assurance apprenticeship. Apprenticeships are registered with the Department of Labor and carry a certificate of completion that means something outside. The catch is the one that applies everywhere: a man in refuse status under the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program cannot work for UNICOR at all. Our guides to prison education and vocational training explain how these programs work across the system.

Faith-based and reentry programming

Religious Services runs worship, study and the Alternative Diet Program, which at Bastrop means either self-selection from the main line including a no-flesh option, or the certified processed-food diet on a thirty-five-day menu cycle, approved by the chaplain. The August 2026 guide marks Threshold, the Bureau’s faith-based reentry program, as approved here; it does not mark Life Connections, the residential faith-based program, which runs at five institutions and none of them is this one.

On the productive-activities side the guide marks a long list for Bastrop: alongside Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, drug education, financial responsibility and MoneySmart, it marks the AARP Foundation’s Finances 50+, Brain Health as You Age, Getting to Know Your Aging Body, Healthy Steps for Older Adults, Living a Healthy Life with Chronic Conditions, Managing Your Diabetes, Arthritis Foundation Walk With Ease and Talking with Your Doctor. The PREA audit put the age range at the main institution at 18 to 75 and at the camp at 21 to 73. A Career Resource Center sits in the Education Department for release planning, and the Reentry Affairs Coordinator is reachable there or by written request.

What is daily life like at FCI Bastrop?

Daily life at FCI Bastrop follows the schedule in the institution’s 2021 handbook, built around meal times, controlled movement and counts.

	Monday to Friday	Weekends and federal holidays
Breakfast	6:00 a.m.	7:00 a.m.
Lunch or brunch	11:00 a.m.	11:00 a.m. (brunch)
Dinner	Approximately 4:30 p.m.
Uniform required outside the unit	7:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.	—
Controlled movement	Five minutes before the hour and five past the half hour, about ten minutes at a time	First move 7:55 a.m., second 8:55 a.m.; compound secured 9:30 a.m. for the 10:00 a.m. count
Telephones	6:00 a.m. – 11:30 p.m., blocked 7:30–10:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. until the 4:00 p.m. count clears	6:00 a.m. – 11:30 p.m.

Source: FCI Bastrop Admission & Orientation Handbook (2021), the newest daily schedule the Bureau publishes for this institution. The callout sheet posted in the unit governs a given day.

The uniform is khaki pants, a belt, a khaki shirt over a khaki t-shirt, and an identification card worn on the upper front torso with the photograph visible. Institution-issued brown short-sleeved shirts are the only ones permitted underneath, and gray sweatshirts may not be worn over the khaki shirt. To enter the visiting room a man must be in khaki pants, khaki shirt, belt and black institution boots; anything else on his feet means changing into blue slip-ons at the door.

Food Service serves roughly 1,445,400 meals a year on a budget the handbook states as $3.384 per person per day. Shorts and sweats are allowed in the dining room only at breakfast, at dinner, and on weekends and the ten federal holidays. The only commissary item that may be carried into Food Service is hot sauce; everything else is contraband at the door, and nothing may be carried out.

Recreation covers organized and informal sport, physical fitness and wellness programming, and a hobby craft program that at Bastrop specifically means art, leather, beading and stick art. The Zimmer Amendment restrictions apply as they do everywhere: no R, X or NC-17 films, no instruction in boxing, wrestling, martial arts or weightlifting, and no electric instruments. Callouts for the next day’s medical, dental, education and team appointments reach the units after 4:00 p.m., and it is the individual’s responsibility to check them daily — missing a callout is a disciplinary matter, not an administrative one.

Health care runs on a sick call system with a $2.00 fee charged to the commissary account for each requested visit. A man with $6.00 or less in his account over thirty days qualifies as indigent and is not charged, and the handbook is explicit that no one is denied care for lack of funds. Emergencies are treated first and at no charge. Anyone who becomes ill after the sick call sign-up period tells their work supervisor or the unit officer, who calls Health Services; people in segregation ask the clinician on daily rounds or submit a written request. Our page on medical care in federal prison explains the copay rules and what to do when care does not arrive.

What do inspectors say about conditions at FCI Bastrop?

The DOJ Office of the Inspector General has not conducted an on-site inspection of this facility. The District of Columbia’s Corrections Information Council, which inspects the prisons holding DC Code offenders, has never inspected it either. What exists is a Prison Rape Elimination Act audit conducted in November 2023, a Government Accountability Office report to Congress published in May 2026 that publishes five years of allegation data for this prison by name, and a run of criminal prosecutions of staff.

The 2023 PREA audit

Marc Coudriet, an independent auditor subcontracted by PREA Auditors of America, was on site on November 28–30, 2023, and signed the final report on January 17, 2024. The facility passed: three standards exceeded, 38 met, none unmet, and four audited at agency level rather than here. The three exceeded were limits on cross-gender viewing and searches, employee training, and inmate education — a better result than most institutions achieve.

The audit is also the most detailed public description of this prison that exists.

Designed capacity	1,067
Population on day one of the audit	1,107
Average daily population, prior 12 months	1,156
Inmate housing units	6
Age range	18 to 75 at the FCI; 21 to 73 at the camp
Staff who may have contact with inmates	212
Contractors / volunteers with inmate contact	4 / 33
Limited English proficient, day one	215 of 1,107 — roughly one man in five
Disclosed prior sexual victimization at screening	18
Placed in segregation for risk of sexual victimization	0

In the twelve months before the audit the institution recorded five allegations of sexual abuse — four inmate-on-inmate and one staff-on-inmate — and no allegations of sexual harassment. All five were handled as administrative investigations; none was investigated criminally. The auditor also noted that no volunteers were available for interview during the on-site review, which is a limitation on a finding about volunteer training.

The language figure matters most. On the first day of the 2023 audit, 215 of the 1,107 men here were recorded as limited English proficient. Every rule described above — the shopping rotation, the visiting-point allowance, the callout sheet, the sick call sign-up — is published in English and enforced in English. The institution publishes a Spanish-language version of its Admission and Orientation handbook and of its visiting regulations, and a family that reads Spanish should ask for both by name. As of September 2026 the Bureau serves a Spanish handbook at 89 of its 118 institutions and a Spanish visiting supplement at 90, so the documents are ordinary rather than exceptional; a family has to know to ask for them, and not every facility page links them.

What the GAO found in 2026

On May 5, 2026, the Government Accountability Office published Federal Prisons: Improvements Needed to Prevent, Detect, and Address Sexual Abuse (GAO-26-107343), a report to congressional requesters based on a performance audit that ran from February 2024 to May 2026. Its appendices publish, facility by facility, the number of reported sexual abuse allegations at every Bureau institution from 2020 through 2024. Bastrop appears in both.

Alleged perpetrator	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	Total
Another incarcerated person	3	1	2	2	2	10
A Bureau employee	7	1	3	1	0	12

Source: GAO-26-107343, Tables 7 and 8 (May 5, 2026). Allegations against incarcerated people are counted in the year the incident occurred; allegations against employees in the year they were reported. Those are small numbers by the standards of the table they sit in — the highest institution in each list recorded 113 and 260 — and the staff-perpetrator figure at Bastrop falls from seven in 2020 to none in 2024.

The report also supplies the caveat that belongs with every sentence about a passed PREA audit, at this institution and every other. GAO found that “[t]he goal of the audits is to determine facilities’ compliance with the PREA Standards, not for auditors to detect ongoing sexual abuse at the facilities,” that auditors “have no specific instructions to detect whether there is ongoing abuse,” and that “[s]ome BOP facilities passed their PREA audits despite widespread ongoing sexual abuse.” GAO made seven recommendations; the Justice Department concurred with all of them.

Read the 2023 result here in that light. Forty-one standards assessed and none failed is a real and creditable outcome. It is not, and was never designed to be, a finding that nothing is happening.

The Inspector General’s record

What the Inspector General has done here is prosecute people. Three staff bribery cases are on the public record, spread across eighteen years, and the most recent is the largest.

• Waldemar Perez, a correctional officer at FCI Bastrop, was arrested and pleaded guilty to bribery by a public official on January 13, 2026, and was sentenced on May 7, 2026, in the Western District of Texas to 20 months in prison, three years of supervised release, a $10,000 fine and a $100 special assessment. The Inspector General records that from January 2022 through May 2023 he “corruptly received approximately $77,651 in return for smuggling contraband into FCI Bastrop,” including a $300 electronic transfer on May 3, 2023, to bring in cigarettes and other prohibited items.
• In July 2015 a pharmacy technician at the institution and two incarcerated men were sentenced in a federal bribery prosecution.
• In December 2008 a correctional officer was sentenced to two years in federal prison for seeking and accepting bribes to smuggle contraband into the institution, by United States District Judge Sam Sparks.

The Inspector General’s staff survey on the Bureau’s pandemic management, published in September 2021, also reports results for “Bastrop FCI” by name. That is staff perception rather than an inspection of conditions, and it should not be described as one.

Set against a prison of nearly 1,200 people in September 2026, three prosecutions in eighteen years is not an epidemic. What it does establish is a settled route for contraband: an officer, paid by an outside family, over a period of months. That is the pattern the 2026 case describes, and it is the pattern a family should have in mind when someone inside asks them to send money to a stranger.

FCI Bastrop in the news

Recent news about FCI Bastrop centers on a correctional officer’s 2026 bribery sentence and a 2024 death; older items concern a 2020 death, a 2009 walkaway from the minimum-security side and the 1987 telephone case.

• May 2026 — a former correctional officer was sentenced to 20 months for taking roughly $77,651 over sixteen months to smuggle contraband into the institution.
• July 2024 — Pelesasa Feiloaiga, 29, was found unresponsive at about 6:30 a.m. on July 18 and pronounced dead. He had arrived at FCI Bastrop the previous day.
• November 2020 — the Bureau posted one news release reporting the death of a person held at FCI Bastrop; the Bureau’s releases are listed on its press release page.
• November 2009 — two men walked away from the minimum-security side, Leandro Luna, 52, and Adan Chavez, 53, taking a government Crown Victoria and switching to a truck in an Austin parking lot. A Mexican state police agency captured both in Ciudad Acuña six days later, the U.S. Marshals Service said.
• 1987 — the Inspector General’s later review of inmate telephone abuse used this institution as its example of what unmonitored calling allowed. The monthly cap — 510 minutes since September 2026 — and the recording of every non-legal call are, in part, the system’s answer to that case.

Frequently asked questions about FCI Bastrop

Problems at FCI Bastrop: where we can help

The problems that recur at this institution are visible in its own records, and they are not the ones a family usually expects. These are the issues that come up here:

• Camp placement, and the Public Safety Factor that blocks it. The gap between the FCI and the camp at Bastrop decides access to RDAP, how many people may visit at once, whether a second visit in a day is possible, and how much freedom of movement a man has. A Public Safety Factor — most often Deportable Alien, sometimes sentence length — overrides a low point score outright, and the designation manual sets out when it must be removed. See our guide to federal prison transfers and our federal prison consulting services.
• RDAP timing and the § 3621(e) year. The program runs at the FCI and not the camp, and under the institution’s 2021 handbook interviews are ordinarily held 42 to 24 months before release. A referral made at the wrong end of that window, or a camp placement that puts the program out of reach, costs the year.
• First Step Act time credits — whether they are being earned, calculated and applied — and whether a final order of removal is being treated correctly in the calculation. See our federal prison early release practice.
• Language. With 215 of 1,107 men recorded as limited English proficient at the 2023 audit, a rule not understood is a rule broken. Incident reports, administrative remedy deadlines and program sign-ups all run in English here, and a missed deadline is usually fatal to a claim.
• Contraband investigations that sweep up the wrong person. Three staff bribery prosecutions in eighteen years mean contraband arrives here through staff as well as through visitors. A man found with an item that came in that way faces disciplinary proceedings that threaten good conduct time, and Special Housing Unit placement that can outlast its justification.
• Medical care that is not happening. The route is a written request to staff and then the administrative remedy process, and every rung of that ladder has a clock on it. Where negligence has caused injury, see Federal Tort Claims Act claims.
• Halfway house and home confinement placement, which follows the district a man is released to rather than the prison’s own — RRM San Antonio for the Eastern, Western and Southern Districts of Texas, RRM Dallas for the Northern — and the detainers that can defeat it.
• Compassionate release under the Bureau’s reduction-in-sentence rules, and sentence computation errors measured against the Bureau’s sentence computation manual.
• 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

• FCI Bastrop, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The Bureau’s facility page, with address, contact details, mailing addresses, judicial district, county and region.
• Institution Supplement BAS 5267.09E, Visiting Regulations, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCI Bastrop, 2025. Visiting days and hours, visiting lists, points, dress code, identification, Special Housing Unit video visits, the overcrowding procedure and directions; replaced BAS 5267.09D (2023).
• FCI Bastrop visiting regulations (Spanish edition), Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCI Bastrop. The Spanish-language visiting supplement the institution publishes.
• FCI Bastrop Inmate Admission & Orientation Handbook, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCI Bastrop, 2021. Daily schedule, meals, controlled movement, telephone hours, commissary validation, RDAP availability, UNICOR certifications, occupational education, hobby craft, sick call and the uniform.
• FCI Bastrop Inmate Admission & Orientation Handbook (Spanish edition), Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCI Bastrop, 2021.
• FCI/SPC Bastrop Commissary List, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCI Bastrop. Undated. Shopping days and hours, the register-number rotation, prices, stocked items and sales rules.
• Trust Fund/Deposit Fund Manual, Program Statement 4500.13, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Sets the $460 monthly spending limitation, the holiday increase, the exclusions and the deposit routes.
• Inmate Security Designation and Custody Classification, Program Statement 5100.08, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2006, as amended in 2026. Public Safety Factors, including Deportable Alien.
• Inmate Telephone Regulations, Program Statement 5264.09, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Replaced Program Statement 5264.08 (2008).
• Community Corrections Center (CCC) Utilization and Transfer Procedure, Program Statement 7310.04, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 1998. Referral to the Chief U.S. Probation Officer in the release district.
• First Step Act Approved Programs Guide, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Reentry Services Division, 2026. Program approvals by institution, Federal Prison Industries and the RDAP locations list.
• Community Ties, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. How to send money through the lockbox, Western Union and MoneyGram.
• About Federal Inmate Records, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. What each search-result field means and how far back the Bureau’s records go.
• RRM San Antonio, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The residential reentry office for the Eastern, Western and Southern Districts of Texas.
• RRM Dallas, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The residential reentry office for the Northern District of Texas.
• Press Releases, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2020. Includes the November 2020 release reporting a death at FCI Bastrop.
• State of the Bureau 2005, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2006. The Bureau’s own directory entry for FCI Bastrop, with the location description and the distance to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.

Audits and inspections

• PREA Facility Audit Report: FCI Bastrop, PREA Auditors of America, 2024. On-site audit of November 28–30, 2023, by Marc Coudriet; capacity, housing units, staffing, age range, population characteristics, allegation counts and the audit result.
• Federal Prisons: Improvements Needed to Prevent, Detect, and Address Sexual Abuse, U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2026. Report GAO-26-107343, with per-facility sexual abuse allegations for 2020–2024 and the limits of the PREA audit process.
• Staff Perceptions of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Management of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic: A Follow-Up Survey of BOP Staff, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2021. Report 21-126, which publishes per-institution results for Bastrop.
• Criminal Calls: A Review of the Bureau of Prisons’ Management of Inmate Telephone Privileges, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 1999. The El Rukn telephone case at FCI Bastrop.

Court records

• Former BOP Correctional Officer Sentenced for Bribery, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2026. Waldemar Perez’s sentence.
• Former BOP Correctional Officer Arrested and Pleaded Guilty to Bribery, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2026. Waldemar Perez’s guilty plea.
• Yassein Said Sentenced to 12 Years for Concealing ‘10 Most Wanted’ Suspect Yaser Said from Arrest, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of Texas, 2021.
• Former Arkansas State Senator Sentenced to 220 Months in Federal Prison for Wire Fraud, Mail Fraud and Money Laundering, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Arkansas, 2018. Jon Woods’s sentence.
• Former Bastrop Federal Prison Pharmacy Technician and Two Inmates Sentenced to Federal Prison on Bribery Charge, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2015.
• Jacqueline Lebaron Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy to Obstruct Religious Beliefs, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Houston Division, 2011. The June 27, 1988, killings and Aaron LeBaron’s role.
• Jacqueline LeBaron sentencing release, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Texas, 2011.
• Former Federal Correctional Officer Sentenced for Bribery Charge, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2008.
• Former Enron Chief Accounting Officer Richard Causey Sentenced to 66 Months in Prison, U.S. Department of Justice, Criminal Division, 2006.

News and other sources

• 29-Year-Old Inmate Dies in Bastrop Prison, KXAN Austin, 2024.
• Two Inmates Flee Federal Prison Camp in Bastrop County, ABC13 Houston, 2009.
• Escaped Bastrop Inmates Found in Mexico, Austin American-Statesman. The U.S. Marshals Service account of the November 2009 escape and the capture in Ciudad Acuña.
• 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