USP Coleman II: Visiting, the RHU, RDAP and Oversight

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

USP Coleman II at a glance

USP Coleman II is a high-security United States Penitentiary for men in Sumterville, Florida, with no camp. It is one of four federal prisons at the Federal Correctional Complex in Coleman, and one of the two penitentiaries there. As of September 2026 it held 1,025 people. It runs a Reintegration Housing Unit, a residential alternative to segregation for men who cannot safely live on an ordinary yard.

Official name	United States Penitentiary, Coleman II
BOP code	CLP · complex COX
Security level	High; men
Population	1,025 (as of September 2026)
Visiting	Saturday, Sunday and federal holidays, 8:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m. · general population on the first three weekends of the month, Reintegration Unit on the fourth · see visiting hours
Inmate mail	Inmate Name & Register Number · USP Coleman II · U.S. Penitentiary · P.O. Box 1034 · Coleman, FL 33521
Send money	Lockbox · Western Union (code city FBOP, DC) · MoneyGram (receive code 7932)
Phone	352-689-7000 · Fax 352-689-7012
Street address	846 NE 54th Terrace, Sumterville, FL 33521 · Sumter County
Judicial district	Middle District of Florida
BOP region	Southeast
Housing	Cells · includes a Reintegration Housing Unit, one of three in the federal system
Special Housing Unit	Yes · visits on Saturday, Sunday and holidays only
RDAP	Yes · one of two Coleman prisons that run it
UNICOR	Not named in the 2026 programs guide · see education and vocational training
Camp	None

The Reintegration Housing Unit sets USP Coleman II apart from almost every other federal prison. The Bureau activated one at three institutions only — this one, FCC Oakdale in Louisiana and USP Atwater in California — so just two of the sixteen federal penitentiaries have one. USP Coleman II is also the smaller of the two penitentiaries at Coleman, the only complex in the country with two high-security penitentiaries side by side.

Which Coleman penitentiary is this?

USP Coleman II is the second of the two penitentiaries at Coleman, code CLP. There are four federal prisons at this address, and on the Inmate Locator the two penitentiaries differ by a single letter: a result reads “Located at: Coleman II USP” for this one and “Located at: Coleman I USP” for its twin. The Medium and the Low display as Coleman Medium FCI and Coleman Low FCI, and the Bureau’s records code the four CLP, COP, COM and COL.

Prison	Code	Security	Population (September 2026)	Inmate mail	Phone
USP Coleman II (this page)	CLP	High	1,025	P.O. Box 1034	352-689-7000
USP Coleman I	COP	High	1,175	P.O. Box 1033	352-689-6000
FCI Coleman Medium	COM	Medium	1,518	P.O. Box 1032	352-689-5000
FCI Coleman Low	COL	Low, with a camp	2,115	P.O. Box 1031; camp 1027	352-689-4000

Together those four held 5,833 people as of September 2026, which makes Coleman the largest federal prison complex in the country. A fifth roster entry, code COX, is the complex itself rather than a prison, so Coleman has four institutions, one of them with a camp.

Having a twin has two consequences. A document that says only “USP Coleman” does not tell you which penitentiary it means: the Justice Department’s own releases sometimes name the institution and sometimes do not, and published lists of well-known prisoners keep one entry for both. And the two are not equivalent designations: this one runs the Residential Drug Abuse Program and the Reintegration Housing Unit, and USP Coleman I runs neither.

A letter to Box 1033 reaches a different prison and is not carried across the compound. Our guides to federal security levels and transfers, and our overview of federal prisons in Florida, cover the rest of the system.

What is the security level at USP Coleman II?

USP Coleman II is a high-security penitentiary for men. The Bureau’s roster records CLP as a U.S. Penitentiary at High security; the District of Columbia’s inspectors wrote “Maximum” on their facility profile, which is their own label rather than a Bureau classification. Nothing lower is attached to this prison, so a man designated to CLP is designated to the penitentiary itself.

What the designation means, and how it is made

High security here means a reinforced perimeter, cells rather than dormitories, and a day cut into ten-minute controlled movements announced over a loudspeaker; the July 2026 audit of this campus recorded 362 segregation cells across the four prisons and no single-cell housing unit anywhere. Two consequences are easy to miss. Outgoing general mail is handed in unsealed, and privileged mail is sealed in front of the man who wrote it at Receiving and Discharge rather than posted from the unit. And the complex supplement provides that “General Population USP inmates will wear jumpsuits with bus shoes” into the visiting room — at the two Coleman institutions that are not penitentiaries, a man wears his issued green clothing.

Who gets sent here is arithmetic done at the Designation and Sentence Computation Center in Grand Prairie, Texas, under the Bureau’s security designation rules, Program Statement 5100.08: 24 points or more is a penitentiary, 16 to 23 a medium. A Public Safety Factor then sets a floor regardless of the arithmetic, and three of the nine require high security whatever the score — the third, a guilty finding on a serious institutional violence code during simultaneous institution disruptions, is what turns a single bad day at a medium into years at a penitentiary. Going the other way takes a Management Variable, the Bureau’s written override of its own score, requested on form 409 and due at the Center within twenty-one calendar days of the scheduled custody review, which means the work has to be ready before the review rather than after it. Our guide to designation explains the process.

What is the Reintegration Housing Unit?

The Reintegration Housing Unit at USP Coleman II is a residential alternative to segregation for men classified as protective-custody cases: a unit with programming in it, rather than a cell in the Special Housing Unit with the door shut. Bureau Operations Memorandum 003-2016 activated one at three institutions and only three: FCC Oakdale, USP Coleman II and USP Atwater. The Bureau has since taken that memorandum off its policy site and now publishes no operations memoranda at all; its text survives, quoted, in the District of Columbia Corrections Information Council’s 2019 inspection report on USP Atwater, which is the place to read the rule itself.

How a man is referred to the unit

A man reaches the unit by referral, not by application. A candidate must either have refused general population at multiple locations or be a verified protective-custody case, ordinarily at more than one institution; active members of a validated group are not suitable and men in disciplinary segregation are ordinarily excluded. Mental health care level decides how many doors are open: Oakdale and Coleman II take men at care level 1 or 2, Atwater level 1 only, so a man at level 2 has two options rather than three. Unit Management makes the referral with Psychology Services on form BP-A1089, traveling with a transfer request to the Designation and Sentence Computation Center, which decides. The file carries the protective-custody classification, the record of Special Housing Unit placements elsewhere, and a psychological evaluation of whether he is likely to persist in his belief that he cannot safely return to general population anywhere. The request is written at the institution he is trying to leave, not at this one.

What the inspectors found inside it

The Corrections Information Council toured both of this prison’s specialty units during its October 11 and 12, 2023, visit, and its report is the only independent description of the Reintegration Housing Unit. Its summary: “RHU residents are individuals who have requested protective custody. RHU residents receive psychology and education services within the unit and are completely segregated from the general population. Upon program completion, residents are reintegrated back into the general population.”

Complete segregation shapes the whole prison. “The RU population and general population maintain separate schedules for time spent out of the housing units. When the RHU population is permitted outside recreation, the rest of the general population must stay within their housing unit, and vice versa.” Men in general population told the inspectors they lose out-of-cell time to that deconfliction, competing for telephones, showers and computers in a shorter window.

Education comes to the unit rather than the other way around — one teacher works specifically for it and GED programming is delivered inside. Recreation does not. The inspectors recorded that “RHU residents are offered outdoor recreation one day a week, on Wednesday mornings,” and that scheduling conflicts often take even that away: if lawn maintenance falls on a Wednesday morning, the unit does not go outside that week. One morning a week, contingent on the grounds crew, is the outdoor allowance a man accepts when he accepts this unit.

What it costs, and how a man leaves

The Council described the trade: “Several of the DC Code offenders in the RHU expressed a desire to return to the general population. While the RHU is a voluntary assignment, it limits resident movement outside of the housing unit and the ability to conduct outside recreation or visit common areas, such as the law library or commissary.” In a prison with two law library computers in total, that restriction matters to anyone with a filing to make.

The Council asked that the unit be exempted from modified operations, since it is already separated from everyone else. The Bureau gave its standard answer about the necessity of modified operations and offered no exception. The unit is a way out of segregation and a possible route to a prison nearer home; it is not insulated from the lockdowns that close the rest of the compound. It also has its own visiting weekend, set out below, and that weekend is the costliest detail on this page to get wrong. Our pages on protective custody and Special Housing Units explain the alternative and how placements are reviewed.

Who are the notable inmates at USP Coleman II?

Bureau records place five widely reported prisoners at USP Coleman II. The register number is the key to each: every one of those records carries this prison’s code, CLP, and the locator displays the place as Coleman II USP.

Name	Register number	What the Bureau’s record says
Édgar Valdez-Villarreal	05658-748	USP Coleman II (CLP). Projected release August 23, 2056. The Mexican-American trafficker known as “La Barbie,” extradited from Mexico
José Antonio Acosta-Hernández	92043-280	USP Coleman II (CLP). Release date LIFE. Leader of La Línea in Ciudad Juárez; pleaded guilty over the 2010 killings connected to the U.S. consulate and was sentenced to seven concurrent life terms, three consecutive life terms and twenty years
Brendt Christensen	22127-026	USP Coleman II (CLP). Release date LIFE. Convicted on June 24, 2019, in the Central District of Illinois of kidnapping resulting in death and two counts of making false statements to the FBI, over the 2017 abduction and murder of the visiting scholar Yingying Zhang, and sentenced on July 18, 2019, to life without release
Scott Kimball	14444-006	USP Coleman II (CLP). Projected release January 7, 2082
Patrick Howell	01390-265	USP Coleman II (CLP). Projected release May 31, 2028

The best-known name attached to this prison belongs to a man who has left it. Larry Nassar, the former USA Gymnastics physician, was stabbed here on Sunday, July 9, 2023, and the Bureau confirmed at the time that “an inmate was assaulted at the United States Penitentiary (USP) Coleman II, in Sumterville, Florida.” The assault took place at USP Coleman II, not at FCI Coleman Medium. Nassar has since been moved: the locator places him, register number 21504-040, at FCI Lewisburg in Pennsylvania, projected release January 30, 2068. Five other men often listed at “USP Coleman” are elsewhere, according to Bureau records.

Name	Register number	Where Bureau records place him
James “Whitey” Bulger	02182-748	Died at USP Hazelton on October 30, 2018, hours after being transferred out of this prison
Louis Daidone	39065-053	FCI Butner Medium II (BTF), North Carolina. Release date LIFE
Vincent Basciano	30694-054	USP Florence High (FLP), Colorado. Release date LIFE
Ronell Wilson	71460-053	Medical Center for Federal Prisoners Springfield (SPG), Missouri. Release date LIFE
David Oquendo-Rivas	34348-069	FCI Coleman Medium (COM), half a mile away. Release date LIFE

A widely repeated passage from a former prisoner’s writing calls USP Coleman II “a so-called ‘special-needs’ prison — a ‘safe’ facility where informants, former cops, ex-gang members, check-ins… homosexuals, and sex offenders can all, supposedly, walk the Yard freely.” That is one man’s account, and no Bureau document describes the institution that way. What the Bureau’s documents establish is narrower: a segregated Reintegration Housing Unit for men who asked for protective custody, whose residents cannot walk the yard at all and go outside one morning a week.

How do I find someone at USP Coleman II?

To find someone at USP Coleman II, search the Bureau’s free public Inmate Locator by the eight-digit register number wherever you have it, because it matches the committed name on the judgment rather than the name a family uses. A result reading “Located at: Coleman II USP” means this penitentiary, and with no camp here it settles the mailing address in one step. It does not settle the visiting weekend: the locator does not show whether a man is in general population or in the Reintegration Housing Unit, and the two visit on different weekends. Ask the unit team, or ask him, before booking anything. If nothing comes back, the usual explanations are state rather than federal custody, detention by the U.S. Marshals Service before designation, or a committed name that differs from the one the family uses. Our guides to the Inmate Locator and to how federal register numbers work explain both.

How do I write to someone at USP Coleman II?

Letters for someone at USP Coleman II go to P.O. Box 1034, Coleman, FL 33521, with the committed name and register number on the first line. The Bureau’s USP Coleman II page gives Box 1034 for inmate mail and Box 1024 for staff. One wrong digit delivers the letter to a different prison, and mail without a register number is returned.

Personal and legal mail	What to know about the address
Inmate Name & Register Number USP Coleman II U.S. Penitentiary P.O. Box 1034 Coleman, FL 33521	The institution’s handbook adds the housing unit to the first line. The city changes with the purpose: mail goes to Coleman, while the prison’s street address is in Sumterville. Both are in Sumter County

Under the Bureau’s correspondence rules, ordinary letters are opened, inspected and may be read. Legal mail is opened only in the addressee’s presence and is not read, but only where the envelope identifies the sender as an attorney and is marked “Special Mail — Open only in the presence of the inmate”; without the marking it is processed like any other letter. Never enclose money: funds found in correspondence are rejected and returned to the sender. Our pages on attorney-client communication in the Bureau of Prisons and on writing to someone in federal prison cover what gets rejected and why.

Two rules on outgoing mail trip people up. Nothing leaves sealed, and it must carry a computer-generated return label or it comes back to the sender inside. And privileged mail cannot be posted from the unit at all: it goes to Receiving and Discharge during a scheduled special and legal mail open house, where staff inspect the contents and seal the envelope in front of the man who wrote it. A lawyer working to a deadline should build that into the calculation.

How do I send money to someone at USP Coleman II?

Money for someone at USP Coleman II goes to the Bureau’s national lockbox in Des Moines or through one of two wire services, never to the prison. Each route needs the committed name and the eight-digit register number, written on the instrument and on the envelope.

Route	Where it goes	When 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 on arrival and available the following day. A U.S. postal money order carries no hold; most other instruments are held automatically for 15 days
Western Union Quick Collect	Code city FBOP, DC	Two to four hours, according to the Bureau’s Send Money page (ordinarily two under its trust fund rules, Program Statement 4500.13), for a transfer sent between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. Eastern; otherwise by 7:00 a.m. the following morning
MoneyGram	Receive code 7932, company name Federal Bureau of Prisons, Washington, DC	The same window as Western Union

No cash and no personal checks, and our comparison of sending money to a federal prisoner sets out each route’s fees. Two limits then decide what the money is for. Nothing above the $460 monthly commissary ceiling can be spent, so the surplus sits in the account. And the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program takes a share toward restitution, fines and assessments — a figure the Inspector General sampled at this complex and two others in its August 2024 audit, finding 40 payment plans across the three that departed from the Bureau’s own formula with no reason recorded. Ask for the calculation in writing.

What are the visiting hours at USP Coleman II?

Visiting at USP Coleman II is on Saturdays, Sundays and federal holidays, 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., with general population and the Reintegration Unit visiting on different weekends. There is no visiting Monday through Friday — not for general population and not for the Special Housing Unit — except a special visit arranged in advance through the Warden’s Office. The rules are in the complex visiting supplement, COC 5267.09E, “Visiting Regulations,” dated October 1, 2024, which governs all four prisons here. The Bureau’s visiting regulations and our guide to federal prison visitation cover the national rules.

The fourth weekend belongs to the Reintegration Unit

The supplement prints two tables for USP Coleman II. The first gives the days. The second divides the month:

Weekend of the month	Who visits	Hours
First	General population	8:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Second	General population	8:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Third	General population	8:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Fourth	Reintegration Unit	8:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.

A man in general population does not visit on the fourth weekend of the month; a man in the Reintegration Housing Unit does not visit on the first three. The Bureau’s facility page for this prison does not mention the rotation, and the Inmate Locator does not record which unit a man is in.

Before booking travel, telephone 352-689-7000 and ask which weekend applies to the unit he is in; men here told inspectors the compound closes far more often than the incident log records. Three further rules matter on the day: no one is admitted after 2:00 p.m. whatever the closing time says, processing stops at 9:30 a.m. for the official count, and a visitor who steps out ends the visit — “Once a visitor enters the Visiting Room, they will not be allowed to leave for any reason.”

A superseded Spanish edition of the supplement, from 2016, is still on the Bureau’s server in this facility’s directory, though not linked from the facility page. It lists Monday as a general visiting day at both penitentiaries and does not mention the Reintegration Unit; the 2024 supplement controls.

Who may visit, and how the points work

Six points a calendar month, two points a visit, so three visits — and at this institution those three fall within whichever weekends belong to the man’s unit. Any part of a visit counts as a whole one and points do not roll into the next month.

A list should not exceed twenty people, no more than ten of them friends rather than family, and a friend must have had an established relationship before the sentence began — though the warden may waive that “particularly for inmates without other visitors.” Five visitors may come at once. No one joins a permanent list before an NCIC check clears.

The room here seats 180, the smallest on a campus whose others hold 192, 200 and 275. When it fills, the officer asks for volunteers to leave, and if there are none, “visitors who have traveled less than 300 miles are considered local visitors and will be terminated in the order in which they arrived.”

For a man in the Special Housing Unit the regime is different again, and it is the same at both Coleman penitentiaries: visits on Saturdays, Sundays and approved holidays only, no processing after 11:00 a.m., two hours, two visitors, the man secured in a non-contact room throughout and brought there “in hand restraints, leg restraints and martin chain.” Paragraph 7.j of the supplement applies that to all Special Housing Unit prisoners at the USPs while paragraph 18.a applies it to those “with security concerns”; the supplement does not say which controls, so ask the unit lieutenant before traveling.

What visitors may bring, and what they may not

Clothing is the most common reason a visitor is turned away at the lobby: no khaki, no green, no camouflage, because those are the institution’s uniform colors, and no see-through fabric, sleeveless or tight clothing, plunging necklines, open-toed shoes, spandex, hats, swimwear or gang insignia. Clothing must reach the knee while standing, and the supplement warns that an underwire bra may not clear the metal detector.

Permitted: a clear change purse no larger than six by six by three inches; up to $20 with no note larger than $5; clear baby bottles, diapers, wipes and two sealed containers each of baby food and formula; one change of baby clothes; life-maintenance medication such as heart or epilepsy medicine, from which diabetic insulin and syringes are expressly excluded; and feminine hygiene items. Barred: sunglasses, over-the-counter medication, cards, toys, gum, candy, makeup, photographs, letters, pens, pencils and — in capitals, on both sides of the room — watches.

Screening is not sampled at this security level. Every visitor clears a metal detector, every visitor’s belongings are visually searched, pat searches are applied by a daily random method, and declining a visual search or breathalyzer is grounds for removal from the visiting list. The visitor handout warns: “An electronic drug detection system is in use, anyone testing positive for illegal substances will be denied entry into the facility.” Ion scanners pick up trace quantities transferred from banknotes or a shared car, and the supplement provides no appeal. Photo identification is required from the age of sixteen, and birth certificates are not accepted.

Attorney visits

Attorney visits take place in private rooms during the regular hours, and the supplement is unqualified about the privilege: “Staff may not subject visits between an attorney and an inmate to auditory supervision.” An attorney not on the visiting list needs the warden’s written approval at least twenty-four hours ahead, with a bar card and a Notification to Visitor form.

Papers cause the most trouble. The supplement directs that legal documents move by mail rather than through the visiting room, though counsel may bring a reasonable quantity in for review, and the client may bring materials from his unit only in an amount the unit team has approved in writing. For a client in the Reintegration Housing Unit there is a further wrinkle: the Council recorded that men in that unit cannot walk to the law library, and this prison has two law library computers in total.

Getting there

The Coleman complex sits in rural Sumter County off State Road 470, between Interstate 75 and U.S. 301. These directions are the Bureau’s own, from Attachment A to the visiting supplement. Park in the visitor lot for this prison only; each of the four has its own, and parking along any Bureau road is prohibited.

• From I-75: Exit 321, then Highway 470 east — a right turn if you are northbound, a left if southbound — as far as Highway 301, where a Cumberland Farms store faces you. Left and north on 301, then right at the light back onto 470 east, about three miles.
• From Orlando International: north on Airport Boulevard to SR-528, the Turnpike at Exit 259 toward Ocala, north to Exit 296 for Highway 470, left off the ramp, three to four miles to the complex entrance on the right.

How do phone calls and email work at USP Coleman II?

Phone calls at USP Coleman II go one way: a man calls out on a monitored line, paying from his own account, and no one can telephone him. The Bureau’s telephone regulations, Program Statement 5264.09, issued September 3, 2026, replaced the 2008 policy and set the allowance at 510 minutes a calendar month. The first 300 are free to anyone eligible for First Step Act telephone incentives, and anyone who uses up those 300, eligible or not, may buy the other 210. A single call should generally not exceed 15 minutes, and a properly arranged unmonitored legal call does not count against the monthly limit. The institution’s 2013 handbook still describes the old 300-minute allowance with a holiday supplement in November and December; the program statement controls, and the holiday supplement did not survive it. Our guide to inmate phone calls covers the national rules.

Locally, up to thirty numbers go on the approved list and every man is issued a Phone Access Code on arrival. A tone warns at fourteen minutes and the call cuts at fifteen. Replacing a compromised code costs $5 and a statement of charges costs $3; third-party billing and call transfer are disciplinary offenses. A family whose telephone company will not accept collect calls can set up a prepaid account with the Bureau’s telephone contractor.

Electronic messaging runs on TRULINCS, the Bureau’s inmate computer system, which families reach through CorrLinks. Two constraints are specific to this prison: the Corrections Information Council counted two computers in the law library and none at all in the leisure library in October 2023, and men in the Reintegration Housing Unit do not walk to either. Our guide to TRULINCS and inmate email explains how to open an account.

What can people buy at the USP Coleman II commissary?

Men at USP Coleman II buy from a commissary order form whose items run from matzos to scented oils and a knee support, up to a limit of $460 a month. The Bureau’s commissary rules, Program Statement 4500.13, issued May 7, 2026, raised the limit from $360. The institution’s 2013 handbook still says “Inmates having funds in their accounts will be permitted to spend up to $320.00 per month”; the $460 figure controls. The handbook also says stamps and telephone credits do not count against the limit. Stamps still do not, because Program Statement 4500.13 names postage stamps among “the only items excluded from the spending limitation”; telephone credits are not on that list, so do not plan phone time around the handbook’s word.

The commissary sits “in the Main corridor between Main 3 and 4” and keeps evening hours: Monday through Thursday, 1:00 to 3:30 p.m. and again after the 4:00 p.m. count until 8:30 p.m., with last call at 6:30 p.m. A man whose name is called three times without an answer forfeits his turn “until the following week,” not until the next day. Men in the Special Housing Unit shop every two weeks on Tuesdays with delivery on Wednesday mornings.

The 2021 order form (its heading reads “USP2 COLEMAN COMMISSARY LIST”) is one of only two Coleman sheets that publish the commissary rules rather than leaving them on an unpublished reverse. Everything comes off the limit except stamps, copy cards and over-the-counter medication, and items marked “L” are local-use only and may not travel with a man to another institution, so do not spend a month’s limit on such property shortly before a transfer.

Two entries distinguish this sheet from its twin half a mile away. It stocks lightly salted matzos at $4.05 and a fifth scented oil, Egyptian Musk, neither of which appears on the USP Coleman I list. And it prices a knee support at $14.95 where the USP Coleman I sheet, dated the same month, prices the same item at $9.95. Running the other way, the USP Coleman I sheet marks eleven staples kosher or halal and this one marks nothing at all, so a man keeping a religious diet here cannot tell from the form what he is allowed to buy.

The handbook also publishes a warranty procedure most institutions do not: no outside party may pay for a replacement, no upgrades, nothing after the warranty period, all components in the box, and the original receipt plus one copy — “except for Koss headphones.” Our guide to the federal prison commissary covers how accounts work.

What programs are available at USP Coleman II?

USP Coleman II runs two residential programs, the Residential Drug Abuse Program and the Challenge Program: the Bureau’s August 2026 First Step Act Approved Programs Guide names this institution by code in both program descriptions, which is a great deal for a penitentiary. On everything else the Corrections Information Council’s summary was blunter: “USP Coleman II offers limited programming opportunities for residents.”

The residential drug abuse program

USP Coleman II runs the Residential Drug Abuse Program, the most consequential program here for anyone weighing a designation. The Bureau’s RDAP locations list, printed inside the August 2026 guide, records 57 programs at 50 locations; its two Coleman entries are “FCI Coleman – L” and “USP-II Coleman.” Neither USP Coleman I nor FCI Coleman Medium is on it. Two of the four prisons at this address can deliver the program, and this is the only penitentiary among them.

RDAP matters because it is the program that can shorten a sentence: for a nonviolent offense, finishing it can take up to twelve months off under 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e). A man with a qualifying offense, a documented substance use disorder and enough time to finish a nine-month course is in the right prison here and would have to transfer out of the penitentiary next door. Our guide to RDAP sets out who screens in, and our RDAP page covers the referral: it goes to Psychology Services in writing, and the timing against the release date is the part people get wrong.

One caution. The institution’s 2013 handbook lists drug abuse education, the non-residential program and “referrals to the Residential Drug Abuse program” — language that describes a prison without one. The 2026 list is thirteen years newer and names this institution, and the newer document controls.

The Challenge Program in J-1

Challenge is the Bureau’s residential psychology treatment program for men in penitentiaries with substance use problems, serious mental illness, or both, run as a modified therapeutic community in a separate unit. The August 2026 guide names eleven institutions for it, and two of them are the Coleman penitentiaries. This institution’s handbook puts it in a specific place — “Residential CHALLENGE Program (J-1 Unit)” — which tells a man where he will be living before he applies.

It is worth 500 First Step Act credit hours and needs at least eighteen months left to serve. The waiting list is the problem. In October 2023 the Corrections Information Council found 170 men on the waiting list and recorded that the 500 hours “does not occur when residents are confined to their cells during lockdowns. Frequent lockdowns delay residents from achieving the required programming hours, which prevents them from graduating and other residents from enrolling into the program.” A waiting list of 170 behind a course whose clock stops every time the compound closes does not move at its published speed.

The Council asked that Challenge residents be let out of their cells within the unit to program during a lockdown, since the unit is self-contained. The Bureau’s answer was that they are permitted out “when there is no threat to the safety of staff or AICs” — which is the same discretion that produced the problem.

Education and vocational training

Education and vocational training at USP Coleman II are thin, and the inspectors said so. At the October 2023 visit the institution offered culinary arts, custodial maintenance and ServSafe Food Handler certification, with one further vocational program — Work Keys — planned but not running, three teachers for general population and one in the Reintegration Housing Unit. The Bureau’s reply listed more: literacy, GED, English as a second language, ServSafe Manager, and post-secondary education by correspondence at all four Coleman institutions, open to anyone “if they have the financial resources to cover all expenses.” It also noted that Bureau policy authorizes peer instruction for adult continuing education courses only, which is why a prison short of teachers cannot let men teach the credit-bearing classes; and that FCC Coleman is working with Lake Sumter State College toward a Prison Education Program carrying Federal Pell Grants, with no implementation date set. A real prospect, not a program yet. Our guides to education in federal prison and vocational training cover the national picture.

Federal Prison Industries needs careful wording. The August 2026 guide names 54 institutions for it in its program description and marks 105 in its grid; USP Coleman II is in neither, while the Low, the Medium and USP Coleman I are in both. The institution’s 2013 handbook, however, lists an associate warden with UNICOR among his departments. Ask the unit team before counting on factory work here.

Religious services, voting and reentry

The most specific religious finding here is an absence. Twenty of the 44 District of Columbia residents practice Islam, which the Council recorded as the most common faith among them and the second most common in the population as a whole — and “[t]here is no Imam at USP Coleman II; the facility has been unable to secure an outside volunteer to fulfill this role.” The Bureau’s reply in the same report says the department “has contracted an Imam to provide religious services to the Muslim population.” A family with a Muslim relative here should ask when Jumah is held and who leads it. Our guide to religious programs in prison covers the national rules.

Voting is handled better than at most prisons and still imperfectly. The mailroom manager told inspectors that ballots are special mail, opened in the resident’s presence; fourteen of the 22 men interviewed had received a ballot in the last cycle and nine of the fourteen who registered were able to vote. District of Columbia residents keep the vote while incarcerated.

Reentry runs through a complex Reentry Affairs Coordinator who told inspectors in 2023 that he was introducing an instructional video to reach men who cannot program during lockdowns — an answer that says a good deal about how routinely the compound closes. Halfway-house placement is handled by the Residential Reentry Management office for the district a man is releasing to. In Florida the Bureau’s office pages put the Northern District under RRM Orlando alone and list the Middle District under both Orlando and RRM Miami, which also serves the Southern District. The penitentiary’s 2013 handbook says the placement process “usually begins approximately 17-19 months prior to the established release date” — a 2013 figure, so ask the unit team for the review date in writing. See the Bureau’s halfway house placement rules, our page on halfway houses and the Bureau’s rules on First Step Act time credits.

What is daily life like at USP Coleman II?

Daily life at USP Coleman II is a cell day on two schedules, because the Reintegration Unit and general population are never out at the same time. The shape below is the institution’s own, from its 2013 Admission and Orientation handbook; treat it as the structure of a day rather than a timetable, and assume the movement windows are shorter in practice than they look on paper.

	Weekdays	Weekends and holidays
Official counts	12:01 a.m., 3:00 a.m., 5:00 a.m., 4:00 p.m. standing, 10:00 p.m.	The same, plus a 10:00 a.m. standing count
Breakfast	5:45 a.m. food service workers; 6:15–7:00 a.m. general population	Coffee hour 7:00–8:00 a.m.
Lunch	10:00 a.m. food service workers; 10:30 a.m.–12:00 p.m. general population	Brunch 10:30 a.m.–12:00 p.m.
Dinner	3:30 p.m. food service workers; general population after the 4:00 p.m. count clears
Controlled movement	Ten minutes, generally beginning on the half hour	—
Recreation yard	6:00–10:30 a.m., 11:00 a.m.–12:30 p.m., 1:30–3:30 p.m., 4:30 p.m. to dusk	7:00–9:30 a.m., 11:00 a.m.–3:30 p.m., 4:30 p.m. to dusk
Commissary	Monday through Thursday, 1:00–3:30 p.m. and after the 4:00 p.m. count to 8:30 p.m.	—
End of day	10:00 p.m. lockdown; no television after 10:00 p.m. without the Warden’s approval

The laundry schedule is a better guide to how this prison runs than the daily timetable. Clothing exchange falls on the day set by the last two digits of a man’s register number — Monday for 00 to 25 through Thursday for 76 to 99, with Friday kept for initial issues and Special Housing Unit reissues. And Friday is the catch-up day, in the handbook’s own words, “for holidays, adverse weather, lockdowns, mechanical issues or any other unforeseen problems.” A prison that lists lockdowns among the routine reasons laundry slips is telling you something the incident log does not.

Recreation is substantial on paper: five basketball courts, six handball and racquetball courts, a softball field doubling as a jogging track, a leisure center with leather, art and wellness rooms, a music center with three band rooms and a fitness area. The handbook even specifies the televisions — sports, a movie channel, one Spanish-language station and one news station, “usually CNN or Headline News.” Access to all of it depends on which population is out that hour.

What do inspectors say about conditions at USP Coleman II?

Inspectors who visited USP Coleman II in October 2023 found residents reporting frequent lockdowns, limited programming and slow sick call. This prison has the most unusual oversight record of the four at Coleman. The District of Columbia’s Corrections Information Council inspected it and published a dedicated report; an independent auditor audited the complex under the Prison Rape Elimination Act; the Government Accountability Office published per-institution allegation counts; and the Justice Department’s Inspector General wrote a full investigation into a single decision taken here, which remains the most detailed public account of how anything works inside it.

The March 2024 inspection

The Council inspects federal prisons because District of Columbia residents serve federal sentences in them. It toured this complex on October 11 and 12, 2023, visiting both specialty housing units along with education, religious services and psychology, and published its report on March 6, 2024. The Council also inspected USP Coleman II in March 2015, according to its list of inspected facilities, and its 2019 annual report records that it decided not to publish its 2015 FCC Coleman report. The sample behind the 2023 findings is small: 44 District residents were held here and the Council interviewed 22. Everything below in a resident’s voice rests on those 22, and describes October 2023.

The report gives two capacity figures that disagree by more than fifty percentage points. The Council recorded that the prison “has operated at an average of 129.2% of its rated capacity” for the year, against a rated capacity of 946 and 1,183 people on the day. The Bureau’s reply, a few pages later: “[a]t the time of the site visit, USP Coleman II housed 1178 incarcerated adults and was operating at 78 percent of the institution’s physical capacity,” the Bureau having moved from rated to physical and optimal capacity after a 2023 bedspace audit. Both numbers describe the same prison on the same day.

The lockdown finding matters most to a family planning a visit. “According to USP Coleman II’s Significant Incident Report, USP Coleman II was locked down three times between October 2022 and September 2023; however, most DC Code offenders interviewed reported frequent lockdowns at the facility, including routine lockdowns each weekend due to staffing shortages.” Reported lengths ran from one or two days to more than a month. The Council then checked the rationale against the incident data — a median of 4.5 serious incidents a month, most often assaults between residents without a weapon — and concluded that “[t]his relatively low number of serious incidents does not appear to directly support the idea that modified operations for multiple housing units is needed.” Lockdowns stop programming, religious services, telephone calls, visits and the law library.

• Staffing. Across the complex the Council counted 126 vacant senior officer specialist posts, seven lieutenant vacancies, sixteen health service positions and twelve education positions.
• Grievances. Eleven of the 22 men interviewed had filed one; six were about medical care and two about mental health care.

Medical and dental care

Demand for medical care is high: a footnote records that seventy percent of the population here requires chronic care, fourteen of the 22 men interviewed were on that caseload, and medical staff conduct an average of 201 visits a week. Nineteen of the 22 said health services does not answer a sick-call request within 48 hours; Bureau staff put the average wait at two weeks, with earlier appointments by medical acuity and emergencies seen immediately. Sixteen of the 22 were dissatisfied. The Council printed two of their answers: “[I am] afraid for my well-being because my disabilities limit my ability to take care of myself in basic ways and I’m not getting help,” and “this place will allow you to die.”

Mental health care is better resourced than the rest of this list suggests — eight psychologists seeing about 90 men a month, running anger management, dialectical behavior therapy, illness management and cognitive skills classes — with one gap that matters to anyone on psychiatric medication: no psychiatrists on site, appointments by telehealth.

On dentistry the report contradicts itself. The findings say “[t]here is one dentist and one dental hygienist at USP Coleman II who service 1,183 residents,” seeing about 25 men a week, and thirteen of the 22 had never seen a dentist here, seven of them after more than a year at Coleman. The Bureau’s response, in the same document, says the staffing “includes five dentists, one chief dentist handling administrative duties, and five dental hygienists,” plus four contract assistants. One dentist or five, in one report; a footnote adds that the 2017 accreditation report showed a two-year wait for routine dental care.

The transfer of James Bulger

The Inspector General has investigated one decision taken here, in a report published on December 7, 2022, and the result is the most detailed public description of Bureau practice at USP Coleman II.

James “Whitey” Bulger was transferred out of this penitentiary to USP Hazelton in West Virginia, arriving on October 29, 2018, and was killed there “less than 12 hours” later — 89 years old, in a wheelchair, with heart conditions for which doctors had repeatedly recommended hospitalization. The transfer rested on a determination that he needed a lower level of medical care than he was getting at Coleman. The Inspector General found no employee acted with malicious intent, and then found “serious job performance and management failures at multiples levels within the BOP”: that Bureau medical professionals “did not adequately review Bulger’s medical records, did not consider his ongoing cardiac and other medical incidents, and did not accurately represent his medical” condition in the transfer paperwork, and that the Medical Care Level Guidelines themselves “were flawed and lacked clarity.”

One paragraph in that report concerns this prison alone: “we found it deeply troubling that BOP personnel placed an 89-year-old BOP inmate who used a wheelchair and had serious heart conditions for which medical doctors frequently recommended hospitalization and surgery in a single cell in the SHU for 8 months while it was bureaucratically struggling with deciding how to transfer him to a new facility.” The SHU was this one: the report records “8 months in the SHU at Coleman” before the transfer, and says the placement “caused Bulger to state in a Psychology Services Suicide Risk Assessment that ‘he had lost the will to live.'” Eight months in segregation, not as punishment and not for his own protection, but because no one could work out where to send him. The Bureau agreed with all eleven recommendations.

That is a 2018 case reported in 2022 and it is not evidence about conditions today. It is evidence about a process — medical care level, transfer paperwork, administrative detention while a decision is pending — and every part of it is still in use. A family told a man is in the Special Housing Unit “pending transfer” should ask in writing, and repeatedly, what stage the transfer is at.

The 2026 audit and the allegation counts

FCC Coleman passed its most recent Prison Rape Elimination Act audit with four standards exceeded, 41 met and none unmet; the auditor was Cynthia Swier of Corrections Consulting Services, the visit ran July 14–16, 2026, and the report is dated August 20, 2026. The Bureau still serves the superseded 2023 audit from this penitentiary’s own directory; the current report sits in the FCI Coleman Low directory. The audit covers the campus — 90 buildings, 55 housing units, 362 segregation cells, no single-cell unit anywhere, ages 20 to 87 and 1,191 staff who may have contact with incarcerated people — and makes no finding about USP Coleman II on its own.

The Government Accountability Office’s report of May 5, 2026, is the only source that separates the four Coleman prisons. For USP Coleman II it records 104 allegations of sexual abuse with an incarcerated perpetrator across 2020 to 2024, counted by the year the incident occurred, and 39 with a staff perpetrator, counted by the year the allegation was reported. The two tables come from different Bureau systems with different cut-off dates and cannot be added together.

The Accountability Office attaches three cautions to those figures. They are allegations, not findings: nationally, from 2014 through 2022, most ended unsubstantiated, meaning the evidence did not establish that the incident did or did not occur rather than that the allegation was false. The report does not adjust for population anywhere, so no ranking can be built from the numbers. And a low count may just as easily mean that men do not report. The Bureau’s sexual abuse prevention policy and our guide to violence and sexual assault in prison cover the national rules.

The Inspector General’s record here

The DOJ Office of the Inspector General has not conducted an on-site inspection of this facility. On its own count, published in May 2026 in its inspection report on USP Canaan, it had inspected 14 federal prison institutions since 2023 — seven individual inspections, six in its concurrent food-service review and an ongoing effort at FCI Berlin. None of the four Coleman prisons is on that list, or on the list of inspections under way.

Its record names this penitentiary in criminal cases. On September 29, 2025, Cornelius Thompson, a correctional officer assigned to USP Coleman 2, was arrested after a grand jury indictment in the Middle District of Florida; on July 16, 2026, he pleaded guilty to receiving a bribe as a public official and to sexual abuse of a ward. The Inspector General’s account: “Thompson received bribery payments via Cash App for introducing narcotic contraband into USP Coleman 2, and providing them to an identified inmate, with whom he was engaged in a sexual relationship.” The arrest announcement dated the conduct between January 2020 and August 2023, and the investigation was run out of the Inspector General’s Ocala office.

The absence of an inspection does not mean no federal auditor has walked this campus. Two products record site visits to FCC Coleman: the Inspector General’s 2019 evaluation of sexual harassment of staff by prisoners, which says “we conducted site visits to Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Jesup, Federal Correctional Complex Coleman, and FCI Miami, where we spoke with BOP staff in various positions and a few inmates”; and its August 2024 audit of the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program, which chose FCC Coleman as one of three institutions for a site visit and a 73-file sample, finding 40 payment plans across the three that departed from the Bureau’s own formula with no reason recorded. That 2019 evaluation also carries the single largest fact published about this complex: a 2016 class action alleging that the Bureau “created a hostile work environment at FCC Coleman when it failed to correct known egregious sexual harassment perpetrated by inmates,” settled for $20 million with nine areas of corrective action — its first and largest settlement of the kind.

The rest is complex-level: a remote review of FCC Coleman by telephone and documents in 2020, and a September 2019 audit of the complex’s comprehensive medical services contract finding that the Bureau had not properly approved prices or overseen the contractor’s billings. Put together, the oversight position at this prison is one published inspection resting on 22 interviews, two site visits that produced no finding about it, allegation counts that stop at 2024, and one deep investigation into a single transfer eight years ago.

USP Coleman II in the news

Recent news about USP Coleman II centers on the July 2026 guilty plea of a former correctional officer and a September 2025 death; older items concern the March 2024 inspection report, the 2023 assault on Larry Nassar and the 2018 transfer of James “Whitey” Bulger.

• July 2026 — Cornelius Thompson, a former correctional officer here, pleaded guilty in the Middle District of Florida to receiving a bribe as a public official and to sexual abuse of a ward, after taking Cash App payments to bring narcotics in for a man with whom he was in a sexual relationship. He had been arrested in September 2025; the charges covered conduct from January 2020 to August 2023.
• September 2025 — the Bureau reported that on Friday, September 19, 2025, at approximately 7:00 a.m., Austin Ray Sabb-Visga was found unresponsive at USP Coleman II. Responding employees initiated life-saving measures, emergency medical services took him to a local hospital, and on September 20, 2025, he was pronounced deceased by hospital personnel. The Federal Bureau of Investigation was notified. He was 31, serving a 600-month sentence from the Eastern District of Michigan, and had been at USP Coleman II since March 3, 2025.
• March 2024 — the Corrections Information Council published its inspection, recording an average of 129.2 percent of rated capacity, one dentist for 1,183 men on its own count, and no Imam for the prison’s Muslim population.
• July 2023 — Larry Nassar was stabbed here on Sunday, July 9. The Bureau confirmed that “an inmate was assaulted at the United States Penitentiary (USP) Coleman II, in Sumterville, Florida,” and that responding staff began life-saving measures. He has since been transferred to FCI Lewisburg.
• December 2022 — the Inspector General published its investigation into the transfer of James “Whitey” Bulger out of this prison, finding management failures at multiple levels and describing an eight-month placement in a single Special Housing Unit cell here as deeply troubling. The Bureau accepted all eleven recommendations.
• October 2020 and August 2022 — the Bureau posted two news releases reporting the deaths of people held at USP Coleman II; the Bureau’s releases are listed on its press release page.
• October 2018 — Bulger was transferred from here to USP Hazelton, where he was killed within twelve hours of arriving.

Frequently asked questions about USP Coleman II

Problems at USP Coleman II: where we can help

The problems that recur at USP Coleman II are the ones its own record documents, and several exist only because of what this prison is. Our page on problems in federal prison explains how we approach them.

• Protective custody and the Reintegration Housing Unit. A man who cannot safely return to general population has an alternative to indefinite segregation at three federal institutions and this is one, but only by referral from Unit Management and Psychology Services to the Designation and Sentence Computation Center. See protective custody.
• Indefinite Special Housing Unit placement while a transfer is pending. The Inspector General found a man held in a single cell here for eight months for exactly that reason and called it deeply troubling. Ask in writing what stage the transfer is at, and keep the answers. See Special Housing Units.
• Medical and dental care. Seventy percent of this population needs chronic care, nineteen of twenty-two men surveyed said sick call is not answered within 48 hours, and the institution’s own report cannot agree whether it has one dentist or five. Ask Health Services in writing, then run the administrative remedy process; see medical care in federal prison, and Federal Tort Claims Act claims where injury has already happened.
• RDAP screening and the section 3621(e) year. This is one of only two Coleman prisons that can deliver the program, so a man already here should be pressing for a place rather than a transfer.
• Lockdowns and lost programming hours. The Challenge Program pays 500 earned-time hours on completion and its clock stops during modified operations, with 170 men waiting behind it in October 2023. First Step Act credits turn on hours actually completed.
• Designation and transfer. Points, Public Safety Factors and Management Variables all decide whether a man stays in a penitentiary, and the Management Variable request must reach Grand Prairie within twenty-one days of the custody review. See our guides to designation and federal prison transfers.
• Disciplinary proceedings that threaten good conduct time or a place in a specialty unit, and staff misconduct, which at this prison has twice ended in a federal prosecution.
• First Step Act time credits, Inmate Financial Responsibility Program payment amounts, religious accommodation, halfway house placement through the reentry office for the release district (RRM Orlando for the Northern District of Florida; both Orlando and RRM Miami list the Middle District), compassionate release under the Bureau’s reduction-in-sentence rules, and sentence computation errors under its sentence computation rules. See our pages on early release from federal prison, halfway houses and home confinement.
• Challenges to the conviction or sentence itself, through a direct appeal or a § 2255 motion.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. handles federal criminal defense, appeals and post-conviction matters nationwide, and advises families on Bureau of Prisons issues at institutions across the system. Call (843) 620-1100 or contact us to talk through a specific situation.

Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, the firm’s Managing Director, writes and maintains the federal prison policy material on this site. He is not counsel of record; legal representation is provided by Elizabeth Franklin-Best.

Sources and currency

Bureau of Prisons documents

• USP Coleman II, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Address, contact details, mailing addresses and posted documents.
• Visiting Regulations, Institution Supplement COC 5267.09E, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCC Coleman, 2024. Visiting days and hours, the four-weekend rotation, points, dress, permitted items, searches, attorney visits and directions.
• USP2 Coleman Commissary List, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2021. Item prices and commissary rules.
• Reglamentos de Visita, Complex Supplement COC 5267.09, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCC Coleman, 2016. Superseded Spanish edition of the visiting rules, not linked from the facility page.
• USP Coleman II Admission and Orientation Handbook, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2013. Daily schedule, telephone, commissary, laundry, recreation and halfway-house review timing.
• Trust Fund/Deposit Fund Manual, Program Statement 4500.13, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Commissary spending limit and its exclusions, deposit routes and wire posting times.
• Inmate Security Designation and Custody Classification, Program Statement 5100.08, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2006. Security points, Public Safety Factors and Management Variables.
• Inmate Telephone Regulations, Program Statement 5264.09, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Monthly minute allowance and call rules; replaced Program Statement 5264.08 (2008).
• Reintegration Housing Unit (RHU) Activation Procedures, Operations Memorandum 003-2016, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2016. No longer published by the Bureau; quoted in the Corrections Information Council’s 2019 USP Atwater report.
• First Step Act Approved Programs Guide, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Reentry Services Division, 2026. Programs by institution, including the RDAP locations list.
• Community Ties: Sending Money, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Deposit routes and wire posting times.
• RRM Orlando, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The judicial districts the office serves.
• RRM Miami, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The judicial districts the office serves.
• Death at USP Coleman II, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2025.
• Press Releases, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2022. Includes the October 2020 and August 2022 releases reporting deaths at USP Coleman II.

Audits and inspections

• PREA Audit Report: FCC Coleman, Cynthia Swier, Corrections Consulting Services, 2026.
• 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 Inspector General’s count of institutions inspected since 2023.
• Federal Prisons: Improvements Needed to Prevent, Detect, and Address Sexual Abuse (GAO-26-107343), U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2026. Per-institution allegation counts.
• Inspected Facilities, District of Columbia Corrections Information Council, 2026. Lists the March 2015 inspection of USP Coleman II.
• Audit of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Inmate Financial Responsibility Program (Report 24-089), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2024. Payment files sampled at three institutions, including FCC Coleman.
• USP Coleman II: Report on Findings and Recommendations, District of Columbia Corrections Information Council, 2024. The October 2023 inspection, with the Bureau of Prisons’ responses.
• PREA Facility Audit Report: FCC Coleman, Marc Coudriet, PREA Auditors of America, 2023. Superseded by the 2026 audit.
• Evaluation of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Efforts to Address Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault Committed by Inmates Toward Staff (Report 23-034), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2023.
• Investigation and Review of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Handling of the Transfer of Inmate James “Whitey” Bulger (Report 23-007), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2022.
• Remote Inspection of Federal Correctional Complex Coleman (Pandemic Response Report 21-026), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2021.
• Annual Report 2019, District of Columbia Corrections Information Council, 2019. Records the decision not to publish the 2015 FCC Coleman report.
• Audit of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Contract Awarded to Correct Care Solutions, LLC for the Federal Correctional Complex in Coleman, Florida (Audit Report 19-37), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2019.
• USP Atwater Inspection Report, District of Columbia Corrections Information Council, 2019. Quotes Operations Memorandum 003-2016 and its three locations.

Court records

• BOP Correctional Officer Pled Guilty to Bribery and Sexual Abuse, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2026. Cornelius Thompson’s guilty plea.
• Federal Correctional Officer Arrested for Sexual Abuse of a Federal Inmate and Receipt of a Bribe by a Public Official, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Middle District of Florida, 2025. Cornelius Thompson’s arrest; published by the Office of the Inspector General.
• Defendant to Serve Life in Prison for Kidnapping, Murder of Visiting Chinese Scholar, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Central District of Illinois, 2019. Brendt Christensen’s life sentence.
• Juarez Drug Cartel Leader Pleads Guilty to Charges Related to U.S. Consulate Murders and Is Sentenced to Life in Prison, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, 2012. José Antonio Acosta-Hernández’s plea and sentences.

News and other sources

• 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