FCI Ray Brook: Visiting, Programs and the Olympic Prison

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

FCI Ray Brook at a glance

FCI Ray Brook is a medium-security federal prison for men in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York, with a detention center and no satellite camp. It held 843 people as of September 2026. It sits in Essex County on Ray Brook Road, between the villages of Saranac Lake and Lake Placid, and serves the Northern District of New York.

Official name	Federal Correctional Institution, Ray Brook
BOP code	RBK
Security level	Medium; men · detention center · no satellite camp
Population	843 (as of September 2026)
Visiting	Saturday, Sunday and federal holidays, 8:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m. · no processing after 1:30 p.m. · see visiting hours
Inmate mail	Inmate Name & Register Number · FCI Ray Brook · Federal Correctional Institution · P.O. Box 900 · Ray Brook, NY 12977
Send money	Lockbox · Western Union (code city FBOP, DC) · MoneyGram (receive code 7932)
Phone	518-897-4000 · Fax 518-897-4216
Street address	128 Ray Brook Road, Ray Brook, NY 12977 · Essex County
Judicial district	Northern District of New York
BOP region	Northeast
Designated capacity	848
Housing	11 units · all multiple-occupancy cells · no single-cell units or open dormitories
Special Housing Unit	Yes · 51 segregation cells · visits by video only
Medical care level	Level 1
RDAP	No
UNICOR	See where the program records disagree
Camp	None

FCI Ray Brook falls under the Bureau’s Northeast Region. One thing about it is true of no other federal prison: the buildings were put up to house the athletes of the 1980 Winter Olympic Games, and were dedicated as a prison seven months after the closing ceremony.

Two prisons sit on Ray Brook Road. Only one is federal.

FCI Ray Brook, at 128 Ray Brook Road, is the federal prison; Adirondack Correctional Facility, at 196 Ray Brook Road, is a state prison run by the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. The two addresses are 68 house numbers apart on the same road, and both prisons are described by their own agency as medium security for men. Settle which one you need before you book anything.

Prison	Run by	Address and telephone	Where to search
FCI Ray Brook (this page)	Federal Bureau of Prisons	128 Ray Brook Road, Ray Brook, NY 12977 · 518-897-4000	BOP Inmate Locator
Adirondack Correctional Facility	New York State — DOCCS	196 Ray Brook Road, P.O. Box 110, Ray Brook, NY 12977-0110 · 518-891-1343	DOCCS Incarcerated Lookup

A sentence from a New York State court means the person is in the state system and the federal locator will never return them; a sentence from a United States District Court means this page is the right one. The rules then differ on nearly everything a family has to get right, starting with the visiting day: the state facility processes visitors until 2:00 p.m. and allows three of them, where the federal institution stops processing at 1:30 p.m. and allows five. Take the state facility’s own rules from its DOCCS page, not from this one.

Ray Brook is also not one of the Bureau’s complexes: the roster record for code RBK carries no complex code, no camp and no satellite low. It does carry a detention-center flag, and the Inspector General called it “a medium security facility with a detention center” in 2022, so some people here are awaiting court proceedings rather than serving a sentence — and the visiting supplement limits them to immediate family and attorneys.

New York holds three federal prisons in all: this one, FCI Otisville with its satellite camp, and MDC Brooklyn. The Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan closed in 2021 and is off the roster. Our guide to federal prisons in New York sets out the current picture.

The 1980 Olympic Village that became a federal prison

In 1976 Congress appropriated money to build an Olympic Village near Lake Placid “with the stipulation that any federally financed Olympic facilities must also have a ‘secondary use.'” The secondary use chosen, with bipartisan support, was a federal prison. Lake Placid won the bid to host the 1980 Winter Games, which ran that February. That is the Bureau’s own account, in its 2018 feature Home to the 1980 Winter Olympic Athletes.

The design followed from the double purpose and from the murders at Munich eight years earlier. The Village needed “nearly 1000 ‘sleeping rooms,’ each approximately 8-by-13 feet in size to accommodate at least two athletes,” and the cinder-block rooms “were designed with either a single, narrow window with a steel rod running down the middle of the glass, or with no window at all.” Two eleven-foot electrified fences encircled the site. The Bureau records that “[t]he architectural design, and the remote location, contributed to the International Olympic Committee’s approval by meeting the strict security requirements needed to protect the athletes and to the Department of Justice’s ability to convert the Village into a federal correctional institution after the Olympic Games.”

Five dormitory buildings housed the athletes; six other permanent buildings held cafeterias, a medical facility, a recreation center, a shopping center, a bank, a post office and a chapel. By September 26, 1980, when FCI Ray Brook was dedicated, the sleeping rooms had become cells. The shopping center is now the institution warehouse, and the recreation center — once a discotheque, a game room and a 350-seat theater — now holds the chapel, the chaplain’s office, the Psychology Department and the commissary.

Two things follow. Listings that give the opening year as 1981 are wrong: the Bureau’s own account puts the dedication on September 26, 1980. And the room dimension matters more than it looks: a room built at roughly eight by thirteen feet for two athletes staying two weeks is the same room that later held more men for years, which is the subject of the federal litigation set out below.

What is the security level at FCI Ray Brook?

FCI Ray Brook is medium security, and only medium. There is no camp and no low-security satellite, so a person whose score later drops does not cross a road into a camp — they move to a different prison. The 2026 PREA audit records the security and custody levels in one line: “Medium/In.”

Housing is cellular throughout. The April 2026 audit counted eleven housing units, none single-cell and none open dormitories, plus 51 segregation cells across sixteen buildings. The institution’s own documents name them: Genesee, Niagara, Delaware and Mohawk, each split into an A and a B side, plus Saranac, Ausable and the Special Housing Unit.

Population sits close to the line. The audit recorded a designated capacity of 848 against 880 held on the day the auditor arrived, an average daily population of 811 over the preceding year, and a straight answer to the form’s own question: had the facility been over capacity at any point in the past twelve months? Yes. The Bureau reported 843 as of September 2026.

Designation here turns on a security point score and on whether a Public Safety Factor applies, and our guides cover the intake process and preparing for prison. Two things should be argued before designation rather than after: the distance from almost everywhere, and an average stay of seventeen to twenty-one months, short for a medium, which means the population turns over fast.

Who are the notable inmates at FCI Ray Brook?

None of the best-known people linked to FCI Ray Brook is held there now, and two names on other published lists do not match the Bureau’s own records.

Name	Status	Case
Sathajhan Sarachandran	Former — released July 19, 2019, register number 64076-053. The locator’s record carries facility code RBK, this institution	Sentenced on January 22, 2010, in the Eastern District of New York by Chief Judge Raymond J. Dearie to 26 years for providing, conspiring to provide and attempting to provide material support to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, and for conspiring and attempting to acquire guided surface-to-air missiles and missile launchers
Rezwan Ferdaus	Former — released June 26, 2026, register number 94133-038, from the New York reentry office rather than from the institution	Sentenced on November 1, 2012, in the District of Massachusetts by Judge Richard G. Stearns to 17 years and 10 years of supervised release, on guilty pleas to attempting to damage and destroy a federal building with an explosive and attempting to provide material support to terrorists
Jeffrey Atkins, the rapper Ja Rule	Former — released July 26, 2013, register number 04526-748, also from the New York reentry office	Federal firearm sentence served after a New York State gun conviction

Two names on most published lists about this prison need correcting. Eduardo Arellano-Félix, register number 04117-748, was released on August 18, 2021, and the facility code in his Bureau record is ALF — FCI Allenwood Low in Pennsylvania, not Ray Brook. The Hollinger executive David Radler was held here and has left: the Bureau’s record names him F David Radler, register number 18189-424, released from Ray Brook on September 18, 2008. A locator search for first name “David” and last name “Radler” returns nothing at all, which is the committed-name trap in miniature.

How do I find someone at FCI Ray Brook?

Use the Bureau’s free Inmate Locator. The eight-digit register number is the search that works, because the locator matches the committed name on the judgment rather than the name a family uses — which is how David Radler disappears from it. The locator 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.

For someone held here the result reads “Located at: Ray Brook FCI”, and the record behind it carries the code RBK. Adirondack Correctional Facility is a state prison and is not in the federal locator at all. If a search returns nothing, the usual reasons are state rather than federal custody, pretrial detention held by the United States Marshals Service outside a Bureau institution, or a committed name spelled differently from the one you used. Our page on how register numbers work explains how the number is built.

How do I write to someone at FCI Ray Brook?

Mail for someone at FCI Ray Brook goes to P.O. Box 900, not to Ray Brook Road: the street address is the physical and shipping address. The first line carries the committed name and the register number, in that order.

Inmate mail and parcels	Physical and shipping address
Inmate Name & Register Number FCI Ray Brook Federal Correctional Institution P.O. Box 900 Ray Brook, NY 12977	FCI Ray Brook 128 Ray Brook Road Ray Brook, NY 12977 (staff mail uses P.O. Box 300)

Under the Bureau’s correspondence rules, general correspondence is opened, inspected and may be read. Legal mail is opened only in front of the addressee and is not read — but only where the envelope carries the sender’s identity and is marked as special mail to be opened in the inmate’s presence, and the Bureau puts the burden of telling the lawyer that on the prisoner. Legal and special mail reaches him through the unit team within 24 hours. Our guides to attorney-client communication in the Bureau of Prisons and to writing to someone in federal prison cover the privilege rules and what gets rejected.

How do I send money to someone at FCI Ray Brook?

Money for someone at FCI Ray Brook goes to the Bureau’s lockbox in Des Moines or through Western Union or MoneyGram, never to the prison, under the Bureau’s trust fund rules, Program Statement 4500.13 (2026). Each route needs the committed name and the eight-digit register number on both the instrument and the envelope.

Route	Where it goes	What to expect
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	The handbook records a 15-day hold on some instruments judged a financial risk and a 45-day hold on foreign ones. Personal checks are not accepted
Western Union Quick Collect	Code city FBOP, DC	Per the Bureau’s Send Money page, 2 to 4 hours when sent from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Eastern; a later transfer waits until 7:00 a.m. the next day. The Trust Fund manual says ordinarily within two hours
MoneyGram	Receive code 7932, company name Federal Bureau of Prisons, Washington, DC	The Send Money page gives the same posting times as for Western Union

Money cannot change hands in the visiting room: the supplement is explicit that the visiting room officer may not accept funds for deposit and that visitors may not pass money to a prisoner, and the front entrance officer will not hold it either. Our guide to sending money to a federal prisoner sets out what each of these three routes charges.

One thing to know before sending a large sum: commissary spending is capped nationally at $460 a month, so money above that sits in the account rather than buying anything, and a person on encumbrance or limited status here may spend only $15 a month.

What are the visiting hours at FCI Ray Brook?

Visiting at FCI Ray Brook runs on Saturdays, Sundays and federal holidays. Visitor processing begins at 8:00 a.m., visiting begins at 8:30 a.m. and visiting ends at 2:30 p.m. That is from the institution’s own visiting regulations, Institution Supplement RBK 5267.09D, issued September 30, 2020, which replaced the August 2019 version.

The sentence that trips people up is the next one: “Visitors arriving at the Entrance Building after 1:30 p.m. will not be processed into the visiting room.” There are no weekday visits and no evening visits. Listings that give a 3:00 p.m. end time are out of date.

One caution about the document: it is six years old, and it still carries four pages of COVID-19 modified operations — a rotating schedule by housing unit, nine visiting stations, a cap of eighteen adult visitors, non-contact visits — which apply only when the institution announces it is running them. Ray Brook went into lockdown at least six times in 2024, on the Adirondack Daily Enterprise’s tally of December 3, 2024, and visits were suspended each time; by that October the same paper had reported that staffing had already cut visiting to every other weekend. Call 518-897-4000 before you travel.

Who can visit, and how many

• Five adults per prisoner at any one visit. Children under sixteen are not limited in number.
• A prisoner may have a maximum of twelve friends and associates on the list, in addition to immediate family, and friends ordinarily need a relationship predating the confinement.
• Immediate family documented in the presentence report go on after unit staff review; anyone else completes form BP-S629 with the institution’s own request form, returned by the visitor directly to the correctional counselor. If a background check turns up something disqualifying, the supplement is blunt that “[n]o information from the application or subsequent checks can be revealed to the inmate.” You will be told no, not why.
• Visitors may not normally appear on more than one prisoner’s list unless the prisoners share immediate family. Pre-trial and holdover prisoners may have only immediate family and attorneys.
• Someone in the Special Housing Unit visits by video only: weekends and holidays from 8:30 a.m., no processing after noon, finished by 2:00 p.m., two hours and two visitors maximum, requested from the unit manager on form BP-A0148 at least seven days ahead.
• Attorney visits may be arranged during regular visiting hours or on weekdays in business hours, prearranged with the unit team. A prisoner may also have one minister of record on the list, who does not count against the total.

What visitors can wear and bring

The dress rule here is written in inches: shorts and skirts no more than six inches above the knee. Transparent clothing, tank tops, muscle shirts, halter tops, short shorts, mini-skirts, culottes and excessively tight clothing are refused; shoulders must be covered and there must be no exposed cleavage. Bare feet are not allowed, and neither is open-toed footwear of any kind at any time, which rules out sandals in August. Hats, bandanas and other headwear are barred except authorized religious headwear. And a rule aimed at men: anyone “dressed in attire similar to inmate clothing (i.e., khaki pants or shirts) will not be allowed to visit.”

What may cross into the visiting room is one clear wallet or change purse no larger than five by eight by four inches holding money and identification only, plus infant supplies. Everything else goes into a lobby locker or stays in the car.

Specifically prohibited, and the list is longer than most: balloons, gum, candy, food, toys, newspapers, magazines, books, legal material unless pre-approved by memorandum, baby carriers, ordinary diaper bags, cosmetics, writing instruments, tobacco, photographs, pagers, cell phones and remote-control door-lock devices. No medication may come inside unless the Operations Lieutenant or Institution Duty Officer authorizes it — stricter than many institutions, so call in advance if anyone in your party carries an inhaler or cardiac medication. The institution is smoke-free.

Inside the room the vending machines are for visitors only, and anything bought for a prisoner comes out of its packaging onto a paper plate before it is handed over. He wears an institution-issued one-piece khaki jumpsuit, and may carry in only prescription glasses, one plain religious neck chain, one plain wedding band and photo tickets.

Identification and screening

Everyone sixteen and over needs a driver’s license or other state or government-issued photo identification, and must already be on the approved list. Children under sixteen are exempt from the identification rule but must come with a responsible adult. Every visitor sixteen and over signs a contraband declaration on form BP-224 and signs the visitation log.

Screening has four layers: a walk-through metal detector every visitor must pass; random ion spectrometry testing for drug residue, where a positive can mean being turned away at the Warden’s discretion; an x-ray scan of every approved item before it passes the C-building line, shoes and coats included; and random pat searches by a staff member of the same sex. Our guide to searches, shakedowns and contraband explains how these powers work.

Then the hand stamp. Every admitted visitor is stamped with invisible ink and shows that hand under a black light at the control center window before entering the visiting room, again inside it, again on leaving, and a fourth time on the way out. Staff escort visitors in groups, with a red line to wait behind at each door. Vehicles must be locked, no one may wait in a car, and vehicle searches happen on the Warden’s approval or on a random schedule with a lieutenant present. Anyone refused entry must leave the grounds immediately. The Bureau’s visiting regulations set the national rules, and our general guide to federal prison visitation explains them.

Getting there

Getting here is the hard part, and the institution’s own paperwork says so more frankly than most. The visiting supplement places the prison “in the Adirondack Mountain Region of New York,” off State Route 86, 5.06 miles from Saranac Lake and 6.46 miles from Lake Placid, and then adds a sentence you will not find in another Bureau visiting supplement: “This is a resort area. Motel and restaurant reservations are recommended and may be difficult to obtain during peak tourist seasons.” Plan the bed before you plan the visit, particularly in February and in high summer.

By road, the institution’s handbook routes visitors off the Adirondack Northway. From Interstate 87, take Exit 30 toward Route 73 and Keene Valley, left onto US-9 for 2.2 miles, bear left onto NY-73 north for 25.9 miles, bear left onto Old Military Road for 3.6 miles, then left onto NY-86 and follow it to the New York State Police Troop B barracks, which sits directly across from the left turn onto Old Ray Brook Road. On the handbook’s own mileages that is about 32 miles of two-lane mountain road after the interstate, and it is the part snow closes. Wooden signs mark both ends of Old Ray Brook Road.

By air, the supplement points at Adirondack Regional Airport, about ten miles away in Lake Clear; the airport lists daily Cape Air flights to Boston Logan and New York JFK, on a timetable it dates to June 2024 and tells travelers to confirm with the airline. Albany, Burlington and Montreal are all outside the Park and none is close.

Without a car the options are thin. The handbook lists Adirondack Trailways coach service and three Lake Placid taxi firms, then says: “Local transportation is limited to taxi service.” Those listings are thirteen years old, so confirm what is running when you call the institution — and note that a visitor arriving by bus or shared car gets no priority if the room has to be cleared, and has to arrange the ride out.

How do phone calls and email work at FCI Ray Brook?

Calls from FCI Ray Brook go one way: the person inside places the call, and you cannot call in. The number has to be on their approved list first. Under the Bureau’s telephone regulations, Program Statement 5264.09, issued September 3, 2026, which rescinded the 2008 telephone policy, the allowance is 510 minutes a calendar month: 300 free to anyone eligible for First Step Act telephone incentives, and 210 more that anyone who uses up the first 300, eligible or not, may buy. A single call should generally not exceed 15 minutes. The extra 100 minutes that used to be granted in November and December belonged to the old policy and did not survive its rescission.

Ray Brook’s own handbook (2013) describes the 15-minute cap and the 30-minute wait but sets out no monthly allowance, and older Bureau material giving 300 minutes a month is out of date. The program statement controls. What the handbook does give is the local timetable, and it is restrictive: telephones are normally live from 6:00 a.m. to 11:30 p.m., but on weekdays only one telephone per housing unit is available from 7:30 to 10:30 a.m. and from 12:30 to 3:30 p.m., and “[a]ll phones will be turned off at 3:30 p.m. and turned back on at 4:30 p.m.” If calls from Ray Brook reach you in the evening, that is why.

Two local mechanics trip families up. A warning tone sounds at fourteen minutes, and the thirty-minute wait afterward “cannot be waived.” And money for calls has to be moved from the commissary account to the telephone account by the prisoner, in whole dollars, no more than twice a day, never between 6:00 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. on a weekday — and once moved it cannot be moved back. Our guide to federal inmate phone calls covers rates, monitoring and the bar on three-way calls.

Unmonitored legal calls are arranged through unit staff and do not count against the monthly allowance. Email runs on TRULINCS and reaches families through CorrLinks, which he has to open by adding your address before anything can pass; nothing sent that way is privileged, so confidential writing travels as marked special mail. See our page on CorrLinks and TRULINCS.

What can people buy at the FCI Ray Brook commissary?

A person at FCI Ray Brook may spend $460 a month on commissary. The Bureau’s trust fund rules, Program Statement 4500.13, issued May 7, 2026, raised the ceiling to that figure from $360. Ray Brook’s own handbook still prints “January through November – $320. December – $370,” and listings that give $360 are out of date; the program statement controls. Stamps are capped separately at twenty first-class stamps.

Shopping here is weekly, not monthly, which is unusual; plan deposits around it. The order form sets a housing-unit rotation — Delaware Tuesday, Genesee Wednesday, Niagara Thursday, Saranac and Mohawk Friday — and states that “[i]nmates are allowed to shop once per week.” The shopping day is derived from the register number by a formula the handbook spells out: take the fifth digit, multiply by three, add one. Lists cannot be added to once submitted, all sales are final, there are no substitutions for out-of-stock items, and a highlighted list is rejected outright.

Two limits sit underneath the national one. Someone on encumbrance or limited status may select only bold-print items, one of each, with a monthly spending limit of $15. Hobby-craft and other special-purpose orders are capped at $600 a quarter, including markup and shipping, under Program Statement 4500.13, and limited to one a month unless the warden approves an exception; the 2013 handbook still prints the old $300 a quarter.

What the list stocks says something about where this prison is. Thermal tops and bottoms run from medium through 6X at $9.10 to $11.70; a gray knit hat and gray thermal underwear are on the local-use-only list, meaning they cannot travel with a prisoner who transfers; boots cost $99.95. The religious section carries a kufi, a miswak stick, and frankincense, sandalwood, Somali rose and myrrh oils annotated “one per week.” Kosher items are marked throughout, and over-the-counter medications are limited to three of any kind. Typewriter ribbons, print wheels and correcting tape are all still stocked and all local-use-only, which tells you how some legal work here still gets typed. The national rules behind all of this are on our federal prison commissary page. The order form dates from 2020, so treat the prices as the shape of the list rather than today’s receipt.

What programs are available at FCI Ray Brook?

Drug treatment, and the program that is not here

There is no Residential Drug Abuse Program at FCI Ray Brook. The institution’s handbook says so itself: “Ray Brook does not have a Residential Drug Abuse Program (RDAP), but we can refer interested inmates who meet all the eligibility requirements.” The Bureau’s own program guide agrees — the RDAP locations list inside the August 2026 First Step Act Approved Programs Guide records 57 programs at 50 locations, and Ray Brook is not among them.

That single fact changes what a sentence here is worth. For someone convicted of a non-violent offense, finishing RDAP can take as much as twelve months off a sentence under 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e) (see the Bureau’s drug treatment program rules), and none of that is available at a prison without the program. Anyone who qualifies and wants it has to be referred and then transferred, which means the request, the paperwork and the timing all have to be handled from here, through the Drug Abuse Program Coordinator, in writing, and early. Our guide to federal prison transfers explains how a redesignation request is actually made.

What does run here is the non-residential drug program, drug education, aftercare for people who finished RDAP elsewhere, and voluntary Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous groups. Drug education is mandatory where the sentencing judge recommended treatment, where the violation involved drugs or alcohol, where substance abuse contributed to the offense, or where the case manager thinks there is a significant problem — and the handbook is clear about refusing: someone required to take it who does not complete it is “restricted to grade 4 pay,” the bottom of the institution scale.

Education, Pell grants and vocational training

The August 2026 First Step Act Approved Programs Guide names sixteen institutions, out of the Bureau’s 118, that offer post-secondary education funded by Pell grants following the restoration of Pell eligibility for incarcerated students. Ray Brook is one of the sixteen. That is a college program paid for by a federal grant, at a prison most people have never heard of. Ask the education department about it in the first week rather than the last year.

The rest is the standard Bureau offering on local hours. Under the Bureau’s literacy program, a prisoner without a verified high school diploma must attend 240 institutional hours, and anyone who cannot speak English proficiently stays in ESL until he scores 215 or 225 on the CASAS test. A leisure library with newspapers and inter-library loan sits beside the law library, and Education opens 7:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Monday to Thursday and 7:15 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. on Saturday. See prison education and vocational training.

The records disagree on prison industries. Ray Brook’s handbook says the institution has a UNICOR textile factory with a waiting list, producing gloves, canteen covers and ammunition pouches. The August 2026 program guide’s narrative entry for Federal Prison Industries lists 54 institutions and does not include Ray Brook, while the guide’s by-institution grid marks it. The narrative entry is the half the Bureau writes and maintains; the handbook is local but thirteen years old. Either way, ask the unit team in writing whether the factory is hiring, and how long the list is.

Religious services and reentry

The chapel, the chaplain’s office and the Psychology Department all sit in the building that was the Olympic recreation center. Religious Services runs the diet program and approves ministers of record, and the institution’s own list of community volunteer programs names Jehovah’s Witness studies and Christian ministries alongside Literacy Volunteers of America, a parenting program, AIDS peer education and SCORE business administration.

Psychology Services screens every arrival during Admission and Orientation (see the Bureau’s mental health policy). The 2026 PREA audit counted 32 volunteers authorized to enter and five individual contractors against 190 staff who may have contact with prisoners — a thin outside presence, which is part of what remoteness costs a program department.

What is daily life like at FCI Ray Brook?

Daily life at FCI Ray Brook is controlled and tightly timed, around three counts and a movement schedule measured in five-minute windows.

	Weekdays	Weekends and holidays
Wake-up	6:00 a.m.
Meals	Breakfast 6:00–7:00 a.m.; lunch 10:40–11:40 a.m.; dinner 4:30–5:30 p.m.	Coffee hour 7:00–8:00 a.m.; brunch 11:00 a.m.–12:30 p.m.; dinner 4:30–5:30 p.m.
Counts and cell lockdown	9:45 a.m. for the 10:00 a.m. count; 3:45 p.m. for the 4:00 p.m. count; 9:15 p.m. for the 9:30 p.m. count	Extra counts at 8:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m.
Movement	First work call 7:20 a.m., ten minutes; then two five-minute moves on each half hour until 3:20 p.m.; evening moves end 8:40 p.m. after the 8:15 p.m. recall	Moves on the hour; 9:30 a.m. recall; last move 3:15 p.m.
Uniform	Khaki, 7:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.; leisure clothing after that	—
Recreation areas	6:15–7:30 a.m.; 8:30–10:15 a.m.; 10:30 a.m.–3:15 p.m.; 4:30–8:15 p.m.	7:15–9:15 a.m.; 10:30 a.m.–3:15 p.m.; 4:30–8:15 p.m.
Telephones	6:00 a.m.–11:30 p.m., but one phone per unit only from 7:30–10:30 a.m. and 12:30–3:30 p.m., and all phones off 3:30–4:30 p.m.	6:00 a.m.–11:30 p.m.

Source: the FCI Ray Brook Admission and Orientation Handbook (2013). Schedules change, and modified operations change them; treat this as the shape of the day rather than a promise.

Some of the texture is specific to a prison in the Adirondacks. The handbook notes that “‘Outside Recreation’ is open only during daylight hours,” which where the December sun sets before 4:30 p.m. makes the yard close to a summer facility. Recreation otherwise runs intramural softball, soccer, volleyball and basketball, fitness programming and hobby craft. Unit televisions can be heard only through a commissary-bought radio; running on the compound is prohibited; the identification lanyard is worn outside the clothing everywhere but a man’s own unit; and exactly three commissary items may be carried into the dining hall — hot sauce, honey and chocolate syrup.

Health Services is in D-Building near Saranac Unit, and sick-call sign-up is a fifteen-minute window: the handbook directs anyone needing routine care to report between 6:15 and 6:30 a.m. to be seen the following day. Call-outs for the next day go up on unit boards after 4:00 p.m., attendance is mandatory, and missing one draws an incident report.

On legal work, Institution Supplement RBK 1315.07E (2012), which applies the Bureau’s legal activities rules here, sets out an electronic law library in Education and a second inside the Special Housing Unit, the latter open seven days a week from 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. with at least an hour a day per request. The library may only be used in non-working hours unless a prisoner is released from a work detail for an imminent court deadline, which the supplement defines as one falling “in the next 14 to 20 days”; that release needs the Associate Warden for Programs and runs five days at a time. Two sentences there set expectations: “There is no formal legal assistance program at FCI Ray brook,” and “There are no local legal service agencies that provide free counsel to federal prisoners.”

What do inspectors say about conditions at FCI Ray Brook?

Inspectors have said little about FCI Ray Brook: the public record is a PREA audit conducted in April 2026, a 2022 Inspector General audit of the medical contract covering this institution, and a federal jury verdict about one cell. The DOJ Office of the Inspector General has not conducted an on-site inspection of this facility. Its inspection program had reached 14 BOP institutions since 2023, on the Inspector General’s own count in May 2026 (Report 26-055), and Ray Brook is not among them, nor among the inspections now under way. The District of Columbia’s Corrections Information Council has never inspected here either.

The 2026 PREA audit

FCI Ray Brook was audited under the Prison Rape Elimination Act on April 28–30, 2026, by Lori Fadorick of Corrections Consulting Services LLC, an independent auditor, and the final report is dated June 12, 2026. It passed, with 45 standards recorded as met, none exceeded, none unmet and no corrective action required. The Bureau’s facility page links this report at a reversed filename, prea_rbk.pdf; the conventional address, rbk_prea.pdf, serves the superseded audit of June 2023, by Brian Sutherland, on site May 9–11, 2023, so a copy found at that address is not the current one.

One answer in the report is not about compliance at all, and it is the most specific published statement anyone has made about what remoteness costs this institution. Asked whether she had communicated with community-based organizations or victim advocates serving the facility, the auditor recorded no, and said why: “At this time, there is not an established MOU with an outside victim advocate agency for emotional support services due to sexual abuse. The auditor reviewed attempts to establish such an agreement.” The institution does post the name and toll-free number of an outside organization in the inmate handbook, and the standard was recorded as met. What it has no agreement with is a rape crisis center — so the advocate actually available to a man who reports an assault here is a trained Bureau psychologist, a member of staff at the prison he is reporting. Forensic examinations are done at a local hospital rather than on site, and the institution employs no criminal investigators of its own. The audit is also the fullest public description of the place that exists, and this is what it counted.

Buildings	16 — 11 inside the perimeter, 5 outside
Housing units	11, all multiple-occupancy cells. No single-cell units and no open dormitories
Segregation cells	51
Designated capacity	848, against a recorded population of 880 and 866 held on the first day of the visit
Average daily population, preceding year	811, with the facility over capacity at some point in the twelve months
Average length of stay	17 to 21 months
Staff who may have inmate contact	190, of whom 19 were hired in the preceding year
Accreditation within three years	ACA and AAAHC

Of the 866 men held on the audit’s first day, 102 were limited English proficient — close to one in eight — with PREA posters in English and Spanish and telephonic interpreting available. A hundred and sixteen had disclosed prior sexual victimization at risk screening, and four identified themselves as transgender or intersex. No one had been placed in segregated housing either for risk of victimization or for having reported abuse.

In the twelve months before the audit the institution recorded two allegations of inmate-on-inmate sexual abuse and none against staff, plus four of sexual harassment. Both abuse allegations closed as unsubstantiated, which does not mean they were false — it means the evidence settled nothing. The Government Accountability Office’s per-institution series, published in May 2026, counts five allegations here naming another incarcerated person between 2020 and 2024, and six naming a Bureau employee, four of those six in 2023. The two tables come from different Bureau systems with different cut-off dates and cannot be added; neither is adjusted for population, and a low count can equally mean people do not report. They are not a ranking.

The Inspector General and the medical contract

Ray Brook is one of only three federal prisons examined in the Inspector General’s audit of the Bureau’s comprehensive medical services contracts with the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Report 22-052 of March 17, 2022. The other two are FCC Butner and FMC Devens, both medical missions, which is what makes Ray Brook’s inclusion notable. The three contracts, awarded between 2012 and 2014, had a combined estimated value of $304,423,965; Ray Brook’s share was $8,166,684.

The central finding is one sentence: “the BOP did not have a reliable, consistent process in place to evaluate timeliness or quality of inmate healthcare.” The Bureau “did not utilize any mechanisms to consistently review and evaluate UMass’s performance of the contract requirements, including the quality and timeliness of healthcare,” tracked neither why outside appointments were canceled nor how long a prisoner then waited, and did not ensure the contractor staffed the on-site specialty clinics the contracts required. Fifteen recommendations followed.

One passage is about this institution alone, and it describes a paper clinic: “We reviewed the recent solicitation for a follow-on contract at FCI Ray Brook that required certain clinics even though these clinics had not been provided by UMass in the preceding 5 years covered by the existing contract.” Two other findings are Ray Brook’s. It is a Care Level 1 facility, the lowest of four, “with a generally healthy inmate population,” though the auditors added that “the need for inmate healthcare may arise at any time and in any level of complexity.” And by March 2020 the contract had expired and the institution was buying medical care month to month on purchase orders. Two findings in the report are not Ray Brook’s: the near two-year gap in competitive contracting was Butner and Devens, and the $169,814 in late-payment interest was Butner’s alone.

What a federal jury found about Cell 127

In November 2008 Ellis Walker arrived at FCI Ray Brook and was put in Cell 127 with five other men. The cell measured 190.62 square feet, and the parties stipulated at trial that with six men in it the unencumbered space came to “slightly over 16 feet” each, “slightly more than a four-by-four-foot square” — in a room built for two Olympic athletes. He stayed 880 days, through 38 different cellmates, and was moved to a two-man cell in April 2011, a month after he sued.

The district court dismissed his complaint for failure to state a claim. The Second Circuit vacated that dismissal in 2013, summarizing what he had plausibly alleged: that “for approximately twenty-eight months, he was confined in a cell with five other men, with inadequate space and ventilation, stifling heat in the summer and freezing cold in the winter, unsanitary conditions, including urine and feces splattered on the floor, insufficient cleaning supplies, a mattress too narrow for him to lie on flat, and noisy, crowded conditions that made sleep difficult and placed him at constant risk of violence and serious harm from cellmates.” Walker v. Schult, 717 F.3d 119, 126 (2d Cir. 2013).

The case was tried to a jury in January 2020. The institution’s former safety manager, who had been its accreditation manager, testified that the American Correctional Association’s non-mandatory standard is 25 square feet of unencumbered usable space per prisoner, and that New York’s corrections department and the United States Public Health Service both recommend at least 50 or 60 square feet as the minimum needed “in order to maintain normal psychological functioning.” The warden’s written answer to Walker’s grievance, read into the record, was that “FCI Ray Brook is able to accommodate the inmates currently housed here while continuing to operate a safe and secure institution.” She never spoke to him about it and never inspected the cell.

The jury found no physical injury. It also found that Walker’s imprisonment in Cell 127 “posed a substantial risk of serious damage to his health or safety,” that the warden and his counselor had been “deliberately indifferent” to it, and it awarded him $20,000.

He kept none of it. On August 16, 2022, the Second Circuit reversed and remanded for dismissal, on three grounds and without reaching whether a damages action was available at all: the Prison Litigation Reform Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(e), bars damages for mental or emotional injury where no physical injury is proven; qualified immunity foreclosed even nominal damages; and the injunction request was moot because he had been released. Walker v. Schult, 45 F.4th 598 (2d Cir. 2022). The court wrote of “whether or not the facts found by the jury sufficed to establish a violation of Walker’s Eighth Amendment rights” and did not decide it. Nothing there says the conditions were lawful. What it says is that a prisoner who proves them, is not physically hurt, and has gone home, recovers nothing. The 2026 audit’s own numbers keep the case relevant: eleven housing units, every one multiple-occupancy, no single cells, and a population that went over designed capacity within the last year.

FCI Ray Brook in the news

Recent news about FCI Ray Brook centers on a death after an altercation in April 2026, unpaid officers during the 2025 shutdown and at least six lockdowns in 2024; older items concern a former officer’s bribery sentence and documented gang conflict.

• April 2026 — a death after an altercation. In a release titled Death at FCI Ray Brook, the Bureau reported that on April 24, 2026, at about 10:15 a.m., Juan Ramon Rodriguez “was found unresponsive following a perceived altercation”; he “was transported by EMS to a local hospital” and on April 29, 2026, was “pronounced deceased by hospital personnel.” A second individual “was medically assessed and treated for minor injuries,” and the FBI was notified. Rodriguez was 39, serving 87 months from the Western District of Texas, and had been here since December 4, 2025. The PREA auditor arrived four days after the incident.
• October 2025 — unpaid through a shutdown, and without a contract. Officers here went unpaid during the federal government shutdown, and WCAX reported on October 15, 2025, that morale had been further weakened after the Bureau ended its contract with the union representing workers at prisons including FCI Ray Brook.
• 2024 — at least six lockdowns in one year, on the Adirondack Daily Enterprise’s own tally of December 3, 2024. Around three weeks in January after a drone dropped drugs, phones and chisels on the grounds; February, after two simultaneous fistfights; May, after two targeted fights; back-to-back lockdowns in August, with one man badly hurt in the recreation area; two weeks from early October after a prisoner shoved an officer; and from November 26, after staff found an internal security device deliberately damaged. Visits were suspended every time.
• 2019 — a ten-year sentence for a former officer. The Inspector General recorded that Carlos Ochoa, a former Ray Brook officer charged in March 2017, admitted taking a $600 cash bribe in October 2012 to smuggle an iPhone to a prisoner and was sentenced to 120 months on firearm, drug and bribery convictions.
• 2010, decided 2014 — documented gang conflict. A Federal Labor Relations Authority judge recorded that “[a]mong the inmates housed at FCI Ray Brook are inmates from two Security Threat Groups, one known as the ‘Bloods’ and the other known as the ‘D.C.’ group,” that four incidents of violence occurred in the seven days from July 31, 2010, and that violence erupted again each time a full lockdown was lifted.

Frequently asked questions about FCI Ray Brook

Problems at FCI Ray Brook: where we can help

The recurring problems at this institution are visible in its own record: a prison with no camp and no drug-treatment program, eleven multi-occupancy housing units and no single cells, medical care bought month to month under a contract the Inspector General found the Bureau was not monitoring, and at least six lockdowns in 2024. These are the issues that follow from that record; our page on problems in federal prison explains how we approach them.

• Getting to a prison that runs RDAP. Ray Brook does not have one, so the eligibility assessment, the written request to the Drug Abuse Program Coordinator and the redesignation all have to be handled from here, with enough runway before the release date. See our guides to designation and federal prison transfers.
• Transfer requests generally. This is one of the most remote institutions in the system, and distance from family bears on a nearer-release transfer alongside security points, Public Safety Factors and management variables.
• Medical care that is not happening. The Inspector General found the Bureau had no reliable process for evaluating timeliness or quality of care under the contract covering this institution. The route is a written request to staff and then the administrative remedy process, on a clock at every stage; the Bureau’s patient care rules and our medical care guide set out what care is owed. Where neglect has caused injury, see Federal Tort Claims Act claims.
• Cell assignment and housing. Every unit here is multiple-occupancy and the institution has been over its designed capacity within the past year. The litigation history of this prison shows what happens to a conditions claim that is not documented at the time.
• Discipline and segregation: hearings that put good conduct time at risk under the Bureau’s discipline rules, and Special Housing Unit stays that outlast whatever started them. A SHU placement here costs contact visits outright — video only, two hours, two visitors, booked seven days ahead — and protective custody questions arise where Security Threat Group conflict is documented.
• First Step Act time credits under the Bureau’s time-credit rules — whether they are being earned, calculated and applied, and whether a program someone was told to complete is actually running.
• Halfway house and home confinement placement under the Bureau’s placement procedures, administered for most people going back downstate through RRM New York; sentence computation errors under the Bureau’s sentence computation rules; and compassionate release under its reduction-in-sentence rules. See early release from federal prison.
• 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 Ray Brook, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Facility description, contact details, mailing addresses and population.
• Visiting Regulations, Institution Supplement RBK 5267.09D, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCI Ray Brook, 2020. Replaced Institution Supplement RBK 5267.09C (2019).
• FCI Ray Brook Commissary Order Form, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCI Ray Brook, 2020.
• FCI Ray Brook Admission and Orientation Handbook, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCI Ray Brook, 2013.
• Legal Activities, Inmate, Institution Supplement RBK 1315.07E, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCI Ray Brook, 2012.
• Trust Fund/Deposit Fund Manual, Program Statement 4500.13, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The $460 ceiling, deposit routes and holds, and special purpose orders.
• Inmate Telephone Regulations, Program Statement 5264.09, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Replaced Program Statement 5264.08 (2008).
• First Step Act Approved Programs Guide, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Reentry Services Division, 2026. Programs by institution, including the Pell-funded post-secondary sites, the RDAP locations list and Federal Prison Industries.
• Send Money (Community Ties), Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Western Union and MoneyGram posting times.
• Death at FCI Ray Brook, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCI Ray Brook, 2026. Juan Ramon Rodriguez.
• Home to the 1980 Winter Olympic Athletes, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2018.

Audits and inspections

• PREA Audit Report: Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Ray Brook, Lori Fadorick, Corrections Consulting Services LLC, 2026.
• Federal Prisons: Improvements Needed to Prevent, Detect, and Address Sexual Abuse (GAO-26-107343), U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2026. Per-institution allegation counts.
• Inspection of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ U.S. Penitentiary Canaan (Report 26-055), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2026. Includes the count of institutions inspected since 2023.
• Audit of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Comprehensive Medical Services Contracts Awarded to the University of Massachusetts Medical School (Report 22-052), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2022.

Court records

• Walker v. Schult, 45 F.4th 598 (2d Cir. 2022), U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, 2022.
• Federal Corrections Officer Sentenced to 120 Months on Firearm, Drug and Bribery Convictions, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of New York, 2019. Carlos Ochoa’s sentence; posted by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General.
• Federal Corrections Officer Arraigned on Bribery Charges: Former FCI Ray Brook Officer Charged with Smuggling Cell Phone to Inmate, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of New York, 2017. Carlos Ochoa’s arraignment; posted by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General.
• U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCI Ray Brook and AFGE Local 3882, Case No. BN-CA-10-0552, Federal Labor Relations Authority, Office of Administrative Law Judges, 2014.
• Walker v. Schult, 717 F.3d 119 (2d Cir. 2013), U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, 2013.
• Man Sentenced in Boston for Plotting Attack on Pentagon and U.S. Capitol and Attempting to Provide Detonation Devices to Terrorists, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Division, 2012. Rezwan Ferdaus’s sentence.
• Two Defendants Sentenced to 26 and 14 Years in Prison for Conspiring to Provide Material Support to the LTTE, a Foreign Terrorist Organization, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York, 2010. Sathajhan Sarachandran’s sentence.

News and other sources

• Federal Corrections Officers in NY Struggle Amid Shutdown and Canceled Union Contract, WCAX, 2025.
• FCI Ray Brook on Lockdown, Adirondack Daily Enterprise, 2024. The count of 2024 lockdowns.
• FCI Ray Brook Lockdown to Last Through Next Week, Adirondack Daily Enterprise, 2024.
• The Federal Prison in the Adirondacks Is on Lockdown, North Country Public Radio, 2024.
• Federal Prison in the Adirondacks on Lockdown for the Second Time in Weeks, North Country Public Radio, 2024.
• Adirondack Correctional Facility, New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, 2026.
• 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e), Imprisonment of a convicted person, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).
• 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(e), Suits by prisoners, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).

Sources reviewed September 2026.

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