FCI Atlanta (formerly USP Atlanta): Visiting, Mail, Money

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

FCI Atlanta at a glance

FCI Atlanta is a low-security federal prison with an attached detention center at 601 McDonough Boulevard SE in Atlanta, holding 1,878 men as of September 2026. The Bureau called it USP Atlanta until April 4, 2024. It has no camp, and not everyone here is serving a sentence: it also holds federal pretrial detainees and, since February 2025, people held for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Official name	FCI Atlanta (Federal Correctional Institution, Atlanta)
BOP code	ATL
Security level	Low, with an attached detention center; men
Population	1,878 (as of September 2026)
Visiting	None published · see visiting hours
Inmate mail	Inmate Name & Register Number · FCI Atlanta · Federal Correctional Institution · P.O. Box 150160 · Atlanta, GA 30315
Send money	Lockbox · Western Union (code city FBOP, DC) · MoneyGram (receive code 7932)
Phone	404-635-5100 · Fax 404-331-2403
Street address	601 McDonough Boulevard SE, Atlanta, GA 30315 · Fulton County
Judicial district	Northern District of Georgia
BOP region	Southeast
Housing	6 units — three general population, two detention, one Special Housing Unit
Special Housing Unit	Yes
RDAP	No
UNICOR	Not listed
Camp	No

USP Atlanta is now FCI Atlanta: what changed and when

The Bureau renamed this institution on April 4, 2024, in a news item headed “Name Changes Approved for Seven FBOP Facilities.” The change was made under Program Statement 1001.14: recommended by the Bureau’s Population Management and Capacity Planning Committee in January 2024, approved in February, notified to Congress in March. Six penitentiaries became correctional institutions in that one action — Atlanta, Leavenworth, Lewisburg, Lompoc, Marion and Yazoo City — and FCI Morgantown became a camp.

The Bureau said the name was catching up to something already done: “The missions and security levels for these facilities had been previously changed but for a variety of reasons the names of the facilities were not.” The Inspector General dates the underlying change. A footnote in its February 2024 evaluation of inmate deaths records that “The BOP lowered USP Atlanta’s security level from medium to low as part of a series of infrastructure and security improvements made to the institution beginning in 2021.” So: medium-security penitentiary until 2021, low security after the rebuild, name corrected in April 2024.

The Bureau knows the old name persists. Its facility page carries a standing disclaimer that “the physical change to the facade of the structure may reflect the old name until a formal historical survey by the state in which it is located has been conducted and approved” — in plain terms, the sign on the building may still say penitentiary. Also known as: USP Atlanta, the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, the Atlanta Pen, Atlanta FCI. None of that matters for finding a person: the Bureau’s locator indexes people, not buildings, and returns “Atlanta FCI” for anyone held here.

The Bureau has not updated the documents it publishes for this facility. The visiting supplement on the FCI Atlanta page is dated April 18, 2011 and written for a penitentiary with a prison camp. The Admission & Orientation handbook is from January 2012 and opens “Welcome to United States Penitentiary (USP), Atlanta.” The main commissary form is headed “U.S.P ATLANTA COMMISSARY” and dated January 2022. The PREA link reads “USP Atlanta PREA Report.” Even the Bureau’s August 2026 First Step Act guide still lists the institution in its code table as “Atlanta USP.” Those are the Bureau’s current published guidance for this prison, and they describe a facility that no longer exists in that form.

What is the security level at FCI Atlanta?

Low. The Bureau’s live roster records FCI Atlanta as a Federal Correctional Institution at security level Low, with an attached detention center, no camp and no complex, and its published description reads: “A low security federal correctional institution with a detention center.”

A low-security institution normally means dormitory housing and a lower staff ratio than a penitentiary; what Atlanta has instead is cells. The 2024 PREA audit records three rehabilitated general-population units — Unit A with 534 beds, Unit B with 552, Unit D with 300 — all double-tiered and double-bunked, each cell with its own sink and toilet, six showers on each level. The Inspector General recorded in 2023 that part of the security work here was “limiting cells to no more than two bunks.” The audit lists custody levels held as Administrative, Low, Minimum, High and Maximum — not a contradiction of the designation, but a reflection of the detention side, which holds people of every classification in transit or awaiting court.

Whether a particular person lands here turns on his security point score and on whether any Public Safety Factor applies. A Public Safety Factor overrides the point total. Our guides to the intake process and preparing for prison cover what happens on arrival and before a self-surrender date.

There is no camp. The roster records none, and the Inspector General wrote in May 2023 that “The institution’s camp remains closed.” That matters, because the Bureau’s facility page still displays a mailing block headed “For inmates at the Camp” with “SATELLITE CAMP” on the second line. The box number is the same, so such mail still arrives — but no one is housed at a camp here, and listings that show one describe the prison as it was before 2021.

Who is held at FCI Atlanta?

Four different groups of men, under one roof, on different rules. The Bureau publishes a separate commissary form for each, which is the clearest public evidence of how this institution is organized. Most federal prisons publish one list.

Commissary list the Bureau publishes	Who it is for	What it allows
FCI Atlanta	Sentenced general population	Full list, weekly shopping day, monthly spending limit
FCI Atlanta Detention Center Unit	Detention Center Units 1 and 2	One page; one of each item; snacks, coffee, hygiene, over-the-counter medication
FCI Atlanta Pretrial	Pretrial detainees	One page; ten snack items maximum; stationery, security pens, shower shoes
FCI Atlanta Administrative Detention	Special Housing Unit	Headed “SHU Commissary List” — stamps, envelopes, a legal pad, greeting cards, over-the-counter medication. Nothing else

The sentenced population

Most of the 1,878 men here — the Bureau’s count published September 10, 2026 — are serving federal sentences at low security. The 2024 PREA audit recorded a facility population of 1,681 and counted 1,634 men on day one of the onsite visit, with an average daily population of 1,677 over the preceding year, and recorded no point in that year at which the facility was over capacity. The age range was 20 to 77. Of the 1,634 counted on day one, 326 were limited English proficient — one in five, a far higher share than most federal prisons.

The Detention Center Unit, pretrial and holdover

FCI Atlanta runs a detention center inside the prison. The roster flags it, the published description says so, and the PREA auditor wrote: “USP Atlanta operates both a Federal prison and a Federal Detention Center.” The detention side is two housing units, each able to hold up to 295 men. People charged in the Northern District of Georgia and ordered detained can be held here, alongside holdovers in transit. The Bureau links a Pretrial Detention Legal Access Handbook from this page in twenty-four languages, and the institution staffs a Jail Administrator — a post that exists at detention facilities, not ordinary prisons.

The rules differ from the sentenced side. Under the 2011 supplement, holdovers ordinarily wait thirty days before they may have visitors, and both holdovers and pretrial detainees are limited to immediate family until an approved list exists — though pretrial detainees are expressly exempt from the thirty-day wait. A pretrial detainee buys from the one-page Pretrial list, and he is not earning First Step Act time credits, not in programming and not being considered for halfway house placement, because none of that starts until there is a sentence. The Bureau’s pretrial rules govern the rest.

Immigration detainees held for ICE

The Bureau and ICE signed an inter-agency agreement on February 6, 2025 covering five Bureau facilities and providing for the use of up to two housing units at FCI Atlanta. A Bureau spokesman confirmed publicly on May 1, 2025 that the Bureau “has entered an interagency agreement that allows Ice to place detainees in five BoP facilities.” ICE’s published count for this facility was 57 people as of July 17, 2025.

ICE maintains its own facility page for FCI Atlanta, last updated August 6, 2026, under the Atlanta Field Office. Detainee information runs through the field office at 404-893-1290, not the prison; case correspondence goes to atl-ICECorrespondence@bop.gov; letters must carry the last four digits of the A-number. If you do not know whether someone is in Bureau or ICE custody, that distinction decides which agency answers your questions and which court hears the case.

Administrative detention and the Special Housing Unit

The sixth housing unit is the Special Housing Unit, double-tiered and double-bunked with a shower in each cell, recorded by the 2024 audit as used for disciplinary and administrative confinement. Its commissary form is one page: postage stamps, a large brown envelope, a legal pad, white envelopes, greeting cards at 65 cents, and a short list of over-the-counter medications, one each. That form is what a month in the Special Housing Unit here consists of.

Who are the notable inmates at FCI Atlanta?

No one widely known is held at FCI Atlanta today. Every name on the widely copied lists has been released, transferred or has died, on the Bureau’s own records. This institution’s fame is historical: the Bureau’s handbook dates the prison’s opening to 1902, and the Inspector General’s 2023 maintenance audit describes the main building as “built in 1905.”

Name — all former	Why the name is known, and the Atlanta connection
Eugene V. Debs	Socialist candidate for President, convicted of sedition for a speech opposing the First World War. Held here as inmate 9653; ran for President from a cell here in 1920; sentence commuted, released Christmas Day 1921
Charles Ponzi	The man the Ponzi scheme is named for — who served time here not for the scheme but on an earlier immigrant-smuggling conviction
Marcus Garvey	Founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, convicted of mail fraud; sentence commuted, deported
Al Capone	Convicted of tax evasion in 1931; held here until his 1934 transfer to Alcatraz
Rudolf Abel (William Fisher)	Soviet intelligence officer convicted of espionage; four years here before the 1962 exchange for U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers
James “Whitey” Bulger	Boston crime boss, here 1956–1959. Bureau records show he died October 30, 2018, at USP Hazelton
Charles Harrelson	Contract killer convicted of murdering a federal judge; tried to escape over a wall here in 1995
Nicodemo Scarfo	Philadelphia crime boss. Bureau records show he died January 14, 2017, at FCI Butner Medium I

History from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s account of the penitentiary’s best-known prisoners, updated July 28, 2022. Custody status from the Bureau of Prisons Inmate Locator.

Four names are widely attached to this institution and do not belong to it. Enrique Tarrio, the Proud Boys leader convicted of seditious conspiracy, is listed here on several sites; Bureau records place his January 21, 2025 release at FCI Pollock in Louisiana. Alan Li, listed as currently serving here, is recorded at FCI Fort Dix, projected release November 18, 2029. Christopher Jeburk, listed here on a life sentence, is at USP McCreary. Vincent “the Chin” Gigante and Bernard Madoff are both sometimes attached to this institution; no Bureau record places either man here.

How do I find someone at FCI Atlanta?

Use the Bureau’s free public Inmate Locator. Search by the eight-digit register number where you have it, because the locator matches the committed name on the judgment rather than the name a family uses. A person held here returns as “Atlanta FCI.” 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.

If it finds nothing, the usual reasons are state rather than federal custody, detention in a county jail under contract to the U.S. Marshals Service, or a different spelling on the judgment. Our guide to how federal register numbers work explains how the number is assigned. For someone held for ICE, the Bureau’s locator will show them once a register number is assigned, but immigration case questions go to the ICE Atlanta Field Office at 404-893-1290, which will want the full name including hyphenated names, any aliases, date of birth and country of birth.

How do I write to someone at FCI Atlanta?

Mail goes to a post office box, not to McDonough Boulevard. Put the committed name and the eight-digit register number on the first line; mail without a register number is returned.

The address the Bureau publishes for this institution
INMATE NAME & REGISTER NUMBER FCI Atlanta FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION P.O. BOX 150160 ATLANTA, GA 30315

Two cautions. The Bureau’s page also renders a block headed “For inmates at the Camp” with “SATELLITE CAMP” on its own line; there is no camp, and the box number is identical, so nothing is lost — but do not go looking for one. And for someone held for ICE, ICE’s instructions add the last four digits of the A-number to the same block.

General correspondence is opened, inspected and may be read under the Bureau’s correspondence rules. Legal mail is different, but only if marked correctly: the envelope must identify the sender as an attorney and the front must read “Special Mail — Open Only in the Presence of the Inmate.” The institution’s handbook puts the burden on the prisoner — “It is the responsibility of the inmate to advise their attorney about this policy. If the legal mail is not properly marked, it will be opened as general correspondence.” See our guides to attorney-client communication in the Bureau of Prisons and writing to someone in federal prison.

Outgoing legal mail is hand-delivered by the prisoner, with his commissary card, at Legal Mail Call — Monday to Friday before work call, never on holidays. Ordinary outgoing mail may not be sealed, and there is no mail service on weekends. Publications are capped at five magazines, none more than sixty days old; hardcover books only from a publisher or book club. Never put money in a letter: it is returned, and with no return address it goes to the Treasury.

How do I send money to someone at FCI Atlanta?

Money never goes to the prison. It goes to the Bureau’s trust fund lockbox in Iowa or through one of two wire services. All three need the committed name and eight-digit register number on the instrument and envelope.

Route	Where it goes	How it posts
Postal money order or cashier’s check	Federal Bureau of Prisons Eight-Digit Register Number Committed Name P.O. Box 474701 Des Moines, IA 50947-0001	U.S. postal money orders post without a hold; most other instruments carry an automatic 15-day hold, foreign instruments payable in U.S. dollars 45 days
Western Union Quick Collect	Company FBOP, city Washington, state DC	Ordinarily within two hours if sent 7:00 a.m.–9:00 p.m. Eastern; otherwise 7:00 a.m. next day (PS 4500.13)
MoneyGram Express Payment	Company FBOP, Washington, DC, receive code 7932	Same as Western Union

No cash and no personal checks. Visitors may not hand money over or leave it for deposit. Our full guide to sending money to a federal prisoner compares every route and its cost.

Commissary spending across the Bureau is capped at $460 a month under Program Statement 4500.13 (2026), rising by $50 for the November–December holiday period, for no more than one validation period. Money beyond the cap sits in the account — except that postage stamps, over-the-counter medications and vitamins, nicotine replacement patches and lozenges, and copy cards and paper are excluded and can be bought on top of it.

What are the visiting hours at FCI Atlanta?

The Bureau does not publish a visiting schedule for FCI Atlanta. Its facility page carries a visiting section with no hours in it, and the Bureau publishes none for any of its 118 institutions. The only official document it offers for this prison is a supplement written for a penitentiary that no longer exists.

Call 404-635-5100 before you travel and have the hours confirmed by a person. For completeness: Institution Supplement ATL 5267.08E of April 18, 2011 set visiting at 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Friday through Sunday and on federal holidays, with no entry before 7:45 a.m., processing ending at 2:00 p.m., an even-and-odd weekend rotation keyed to the fifth digit of the register number, and five visits a month. That document is fifteen years old and describes a security level, a camp and a mission this institution has since lost.

Who can visit, and how many

• Up to ten friends and associates on the list in addition to immediate family; the list can be changed every ninety days, and the 2012 handbook asks for requests at least three weeks ahead.
• Four adults and three children at one time; more needs prior written approval from the unit team. Everyone except immediate family needs a background investigation, and all visitors must ordinarily have known the person before he was incarcerated.
• Holdovers ordinarily wait thirty days for visitors. Pretrial detainees are subject to the same rules but expressly exempt from that wait.
• When the room is crowded, visits are cut to two hours — and the supplement says staff apply that limit first to visitors living within 200 miles of Atlanta, then to whoever has had the most visits that month. A long drive is, for once, an advantage.

Dress and property rules in the same supplement are enforced at the door: skirts and dresses no more than three inches above the knee; no shorts (children under twelve excepted), see-through clothing, halter, tube or tank tops, bare midriffs, hooded shirts or skin-tight clothing; bras required; no khaki or gray clothing, because it resembles the institution uniform; no coats or jackets in the visiting room. Everything you carry in must fit one clear plastic container no larger than eight inches by six; food, drink, reading matter, cameras and children’s toys stay in a lobby locker; diaper bags are not permitted, though two spare diapers and one bottle are.

Screening is tight for a low-security prison, a holdover from the penitentiary era; the Bureau’s visiting regulations and search rules set the floor. Two forms of identification, at least one with a laminated photograph, carried at all times inside. Every visitor is marked on the hand with an invisible-ink stamp checked under black light on entry and again before leaving. Ion scan sanctions escalate: a positive test costs 48 hours of visiting on a first offense, 30 days on a second, 90 days on a third and 180 days on a fourth. General-population prisoners are strip searched entering and leaving the visiting room every time. See searches, shakedowns and contraband and our guide to federal prison visitation.

Attorney and legal visits

This is the one part of visiting here with a current published schedule, and it comes from the detention side. A memorandum from the institution’s Jail Administrator dated April 26, 2024, reproduced on the ICE facility page as last updated August 6, 2026, sets attorney visiting at Saturdays, Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., without advance notice, and at all other days and times by appointment. Attorneys must arrive before 2 p.m. to be processed into the institution.

Computers are provided in the legal visitation room; electronic files must be on a read-only disk or USB drive; laptops are allowed only Monday through Friday and only with the Warden’s approval. Legal visits, calls and video conferences are all scheduled by email to ATL-JailAdministrator-S@bop.gov, with a subject line in the form “Legal visit request for inmate [full name], [BOP Register Number]” and a body giving the attorney’s name, bar number, jurisdiction, a way to verify it and a telephone number. Video conferences must run on a secure line with a SIP number; Zoom for Government and Webex are accepted, standard Zoom is not.

Under the 2011 supplement, attorney visits do not count against the five monthly visits, take place in a private conference room when one is free, and are visually but not audibly monitored. An attorney may not take out or leave behind papers he did not bring in without permission from the Unit Manager or Legal Liaison. Consular visits are permitted at any time, including in the Special Housing Unit.

Getting to FCI Atlanta

The institution is at 601 McDonough Boulevard SE. The Bureau’s own written directions, in the visiting supplement, are to take Interstate 20 and exit at Boulevard; the institution is two miles south of I-20 at the intersection of Boulevard and McDonough Boulevard. The supplement notes the airport is about fifteen minutes away by taxi and that MARTA rail and bus serve the area. Unlike most federal prisons, this one sits inside a major city and is reachable without a car.

One landmark nearby: RRM Atlanta, a Bureau Residential Reentry Management office, is at 719 McDonough Boulevard SE — the same street, a few hundred yards away. Its districts are Northern, Middle and Southern Georgia and South Carolina; halfway house placement runs through the office for the district a man is releasing to, not the one nearest the prison.

How do phone calls and email work at FCI Atlanta?

Calls are placed by the person inside; you cannot call in. The Bureau-wide allowance is 510 minutes per calendar month under the Bureau’s telephone regulations, Program Statement 5264.09, issued September 3, 2026: 300 free to anyone eligible for First Step Act telephone incentives, and a further 210 that may be purchased once those 300 are exhausted, whether or not a person is eligible for the incentive. The institution’s handbook still prints 300, because it predates the reissue; the program statement is national policy and it is the later document, so 510 governs. A single call should generally not exceed fifteen minutes, and the handbook records a sixty-minute wait required between calls — a local rule that catches families out when a call ends mid-sentence.

The person inside submits a telephone request to his counselor and is issued a nine-digit Personal Access Code. Credits are bought through the phone; dialing 118 reaches the account menu, and credit transfers can only be made after the 4:00 p.m. count on weekdays, or all day on weekends. People in disciplinary segregation and administrative detention get a limited number of calls. All calls except properly arranged legal calls are recorded and monitored; an unmonitored attorney call must be set up in advance in writing through the counselor or case manager, or on the detention side through the Jail Administrator’s office. See our guide to federal inmate phone calls.

Email runs on TRULINCS, which families reach through CorrLinks: the person inside must add your address before you can accept the invitation. ICE confirms on its own facility page that people held here for immigration purposes use the same system. Email with a lawyer is not privileged — privileged written communication goes by properly marked special mail, or through an arranged unmonitored call or legal visit.

One caution specific to this institution. A coalition of immigration legal organizations wrote to the Field Office Director and the Acting Warden on August 1, 2025 reporting that legal calls for people held here for ICE “happen in an office setting with a guard in the room,” and that attorneys could not fax documents in. If you are arranging a call that needs to be confidential, say so when you book it.

What can people buy at the FCI Atlanta commissary?

That depends entirely on which of the four lists applies, and the gap is stark. On the full institution list a man can buy a Casio G-Shock watch at $85.40, an MP3 player at $88.40 and an AM/FM radio at $38.95. On the Special Housing Unit list he can buy stamps, three kinds of envelope, a legal pad, a greeting card and a bottle of Rolaids.

The spending limit is $460 a month, set nationally by Program Statement 4500.13, issued May 7, 2026, and rising by $50 for the November–December holiday period, in effect for no more than one validation period. Many sources — including this firm’s own previous page for this prison, and the Bureau’s 2012 handbook for this institution, which states $320 “effective March 1, 2011” — still print an older figure. Those figures are obsolete. The institution’s own form confirms the exclusion rule in its own words: “Stamps and medical / OTC products do not affect your monthly spending limit.”

The main list is headed “U.S.P ATLANTA COMMISSARY” and dated January 2022, so treat its prices as indicative. Shopping is once a week on the housing unit’s posted day, and the rules are unforgiving: “You must turn in your own list and have proper identification to shop. If you are not in the commissary area when your name is called, you will lose your shopping privileges for the week.” No changes or substitutions at the window, out-of-stock items checked before the sheet goes in, all sales final, accounts validated on the 1st and the 15th. The form caps quantities by category — 24 soups in total, four of each candy or drink, five of each chip, three of each rice or pasta item, two of each sauce, twelve tins of Spam, twenty-four of mackerel — and marks roughly sixty kosher lines with an asterisk. Three prayer oils are stocked: frankincense and majmua at $5.40, green musk at $10.40.

Two details fill in the rest: Swintech typewriter ribbons and print wheels and IBM Wheelwriter supplies are still stocked, at up to $23.50 for a print wheel; and the only musical instrument a man may own, per the handbook, is a harmonica. Our page on the federal prison commissary covers the national rules.

The three detention lists are one page each and headed “ALL ITEMS LIMITED TO ONE EACH EXCEPT AS NOTED.” The Pretrial list allows ten snack items in total — soup at 30 cents, tuna, mackerel, rice, chips, two candy bars — plus coffee, security pens at 25 cents, a legal pad, envelopes and one pair of shower shoes. All four carry the signature of Sylvester L. Jenkins as Warden; the Bureau’s more recent records for this institution name a different one — the May 2024 PREA audit gives the warden as A. Thomas III.

What programs are available at FCI Atlanta?

Less than at a comparable low-security institution. The Bureau’s First Step Act Approved Programs Guide of August 2026 lists FCI Atlanta for the residential Mental Health Step Down Program. It does not list this institution for Federal Prison Industries, and it does not list it for the Residential Drug Abuse Program.

Drug treatment, and why RDAP is not offered here

There is no Residential Drug Abuse Program at FCI Atlanta, the Bureau’s residential psychology treatment program. The Bureau’s current list of RDAP locations, updated June 4, 2026 and printed in the August 2026 First Step Act Approved Programs Guide, records 57 residential programs at 50 locations and does not include Atlanta anywhere in the Southeast Region list. The institution’s handbook says the same from the inside: a man who asks to be interviewed is told that “If eligible and the inmate agrees to participate, he will be transferred to an RDAP institution.”

Completing RDAP can mean up to a year off a sentence for a non-violent offense under 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e). A designation to Atlanta means a transfer has to happen first, and transfers take time a sentence may not have. The handbook records two hard bars: fewer than twenty-four months left to serve, or an unresolved detainer. What is offered here is the non-residential track — Drug Education at twelve to fifteen hours, and the Non-Residential Drug Abuse Program in 120-minute sessions, twelve sessions to a twelve-week course and four cycles to finish.

The PREA auditor who visited in May 2024 refers in passing to daily access to “the residential drug abuse unit” here; the Bureau’s current program list, updated June 4, 2026, does not include Atlanta. The program list is the more specific and more recent document — but if RDAP is central to your case, confirm with the unit team and the Designation and Sentence Computation Center.

Mental health and the Step Down Program

This is what FCI Atlanta has that most institutions do not. The August 2026 First Step Act guide lists the residential Mental Health Step Down Program at five institutions in the entire Bureau: USP Allenwood, FCI Atlanta, FCC Butner, FMC Fort Worth and FCI Sheridan. It is for people with serious mental illness who need more than outpatient care but not a medical center, and must be delivered by Psychology Services under the Bureau’s mental illness treatment and care policy, Program Statement 5330.11.

Its history here is documented. The Inspector General reported in July 2017 that Step Down was activated at this institution in October 2013, that it had capacity for thirty participants but staffing for twenty-one as of August 2015, and that as of October 2016 no participant had completed it despite an eighteen-month target duration. Those figures are a decade old and the institution has been rebuilt since; the question to put to the unit team is not whether the program exists but when the next cohort starts. General psychology services include an intake screening on arrival, individual and group psychotherapy, and groups that have included anger management, victim impact and relapse prevention, requested on an Inmate Request to Staff form.

Education, work and UNICOR

The education department runs literacy, GED and English-as-a-second-language classes, adult continuing education, parenting, release preparation and testing, and houses the leisure library and the law library. Literacy carries the Bureau’s standard 240 mandatory instructional hours, and promotion beyond entry grade in any institution job or in UNICOR depends on completing it. The library is open Monday through Saturday with an inmate law clerk and a copier run off a commissary card; legal materials also reach people in detention or segregation status. Our guides to prison education and vocational training explain how these programs work system-wide.

UNICOR is not listed for this institution in the August 2026 guide, which names the Federal Prison Industries institutions by code and does not name ATL among them; the August revision also removed the GenEdge Lean Six-Sigma Green Belt certification from the guide altogether. The 2012 handbook described the factories here as mattress, mailbag and battle dress uniform operations, with prior UNICOR experience giving priority on the waiting list; whether any of that still runs is a question for the institution. UNICOR pay in that handbook ran from 23 cents to $1.15 an hour; ordinary institution work paid 12 to 40 cents an hour, or $5.25 a month at maintenance grade, for at most seven hours a day. Work and performance pay is set nationally, and a man in refusal status under the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program cannot earn above maintenance pay or work for UNICOR at all.

Faith-based and reentry programming

Religious Services administers the chapel, the religious diet program and clergy visits, which may happen at any time by arrangement with the chaplain. The 2024 PREA audit recorded twenty-three volunteers with inmate contact and four individual contractors authorized to enter — small numbers for a prison this size, and a fair proxy for how much outside programming reaches the compound. In August 2026 the institution began a four-month pilot of the Frederick Douglass Project’s Prison Visitation Program; the first session, on August 11, 2026, involved fifteen participants and included tours of a housing unit, psychology services, education and culinary arts.

A standing caution about First Step Act programming. The Bureau’s guide lists what an institution is approved to offer. Approval is not delivery. Whether a class is running this month, and how long the waiting list is, is a question for the unit team.

What is daily life like at FCI Atlanta?

The shape of the day below comes from the institution’s Admission & Orientation handbook, revised January 2012, when this was a penitentiary of roughly 2,500 men. The security-driven parts — counts, controlled movement, lockdown — are Bureau-wide patterns and are unlikely to have changed much. Treat it as the rhythm of the place, not a timetable.

	Weekdays	Weekends and holidays
Wake-up	6:00 a.m.	6:00 a.m.
Official counts	Midnight, 3:00 a.m., 5:00 a.m., 4:00 p.m., 10:00 p.m.	Midnight, 3:00, 5:00 and 10:00 a.m., 4:00 and 10:00 p.m.
Stand-up counts	4:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m.	10:00 a.m., 4:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m.
Census counts	8:00–8:30 a.m. and 12:30–1:00 p.m.	—
Controlled movement	On the hour for ten minutes, announced over the public address system	First move after the morning meal
Call-out roster posted	After the 4:00 p.m. count	After the 4:00 p.m. count
Cells locked	Before the 4:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. counts	Before the 4:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. counts
Lockdown	9:45 p.m.	9:45 p.m.

Source: FCI Atlanta Admission & Orientation Handbook, revised January 2012. Schedules change without notice.

Housing is cells, not dormitories. The 2024 PREA audit describes Units A, B and D as completely rehabilitated: where the old penitentiary had multi-tier blocks with open gates, the rebuilt units have closed cells with doors and access slots, updated plumbing and smoke alarms. A and B are double units with a separation down the middle for safety. Every cell is two-bunked with its own sink and toilet; showers run along one wall, six on each level, with a door covering about three-quarters of the front. Men on the high-security accountability list check in with a supervisor every two hours from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. and carry a pass they surrender whenever they leave an assignment.

Food service runs on the usual rules, with religious diets through the chaplain. Clothing issue is five shirts, five pairs of pants, seven sets of underwear and socks, boots, a coat and linen through a centralized laundry. Recreation covers arts and crafts and intramural softball, basketball, soccer and volleyball; see our guide to recreation in federal prison. Sick call sign-up is in the Health Services waiting room between 6:30 and 7:00 a.m.; acute problems are seen the same day, emergency care runs around the clock, and medical staff tour the Special Housing Unit at least once every twenty-four hours.

What do inspectors say about conditions at FCI Atlanta?

More has been published about conditions at this prison than about almost any other in the federal system. A Senate subcommittee investigated it for ten months and held a public hearing on it; the Justice Department’s Inspector General has examined it by name in nine separate products, doing fieldwork inside the building in seven of them, the most recent in April 2025; it has been through four PREA audits; and a coalition of legal organizations wrote to its warden in 2025 about the immigration detainees now held here.

The Senate investigation, 2021 to 2022

This investigation is routinely attributed to the Inspector General. It was the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, chaired by Senator Jon Ossoff, and it culminated in a public hearing on July 26, 2022 titled “Corruption, Abuse, and Misconduct at U.S. Penitentiary Atlanta.” No standalone staff report on Atlanta was published; the record is the hearing and its printed transcript. The witnesses were the institution’s former chief psychologist, Erika Ramirez, its former jail administrator, Terri Whitehead, Rebecca Shepard of the Federal Defender Program, Inc., and then Bureau Director Michael Carvajal.

The chair described what the ten-month bipartisan investigation found: “stunning long-term failures of federal prison administration that likely contributed to loss of life”; that “gross misconduct persisted at this prison for at least nine years” and was “known to BOP and accessible to BOP leadership during that period”; that prisoners were “denied proper nutrition, access to clean drinking water, and hygiene products” and lacked medical care, with “rats and roaches in their food and cells”; that “Vast quantities of contraband, including weapons and narcotics, flowed through the prison, enabled by staff corruption”; and that the prison “has led the nation’s federal prison facilities in suicides.”

What triggered the 2021 shutdown

The fullest account is a Justice Department Inspector General limited-scope review published May 4, 2023, opened because conditions here and at MCC New York had become bad enough that the Bureau limited operations at one and closed the other.

When	What the Inspector General found
January 2020	A Bureau internal program review found thirteen deficiencies and four further areas of concern in Correctional Services — and rated the area “Acceptable.” Executive staff, including the then Director, later called that rating inappropriate
August 2020	“USP Atlanta present[ed] significant security concern for the Southeast Region”; “both national and local policies are being violated on a regular basis”; 142 of 263 cameras inoperable or working improperly; over 170 delinquent misconduct investigations; “no consequences for staff not performing their duties in accordance with policy”
Sept. 2020 – Mar. 2021	The warden was reassigned within a week of that report; acting wardens followed, each a few weeks, until the end of March 2021 — a change prompted, per that acting warden, by the institution allowing 225 coronavirus vaccine doses to expire
May 2021	The Special Investigative Services department had not inventoried or kept a chain of custody for 1,050 cell phones, various narcotics and other contraband
June 3 – July 31, 2021	After a man died by suicide under the influence of methamphetamine, the acting warden put the institution on a lockdown; the Director sent 45 extra staff on June 12. The search recovered 705 cell phones, 134 inmate-fashioned weapons and 103 packages of narcotics, including 1,014 grams of marijuana and 170 of methamphetamine. The official who led it called the volume unprecedented in a twenty-year career; men had hidden contraband inside interior walls
After the search	About forty supervisors were reassigned, including three associate wardens, and about 1,200 men transferred out. By April 2023 the population was back to roughly 1,450

Deaths, cameras and defibrillators

The Inspector General posted an evaluation of inmate deaths across the federal system, E&I Report 24-041, on February 15, 2024; the report’s own cover gives only the month. Of every institution in the Bureau, USP Atlanta had the most deaths in the eight fiscal years from 2014 through 2021: seventeen, against fourteen each at USP Terre Haute and USP Hazelton, both high-security penitentiaries. Atlanta’s fiscal 2018 population was 1,864 — about what it is today. Cameras were a specific failure: of the 64 instances system-wide in which the OIG tied a camera problem to an inmate death, seven were at Atlanta, the largest share of any institution. By September 2023 the Bureau reported more than forty percent of the new digital cameras installed and more than sixty percent of the supporting fiber in.

One finding matters for anyone whose relative here has a heart condition. The OIG identified five recommendations about automated external defibrillators made to this institution between fiscal 2014 and fiscal 2021, four of them in the final three years — three about placing defibrillators in or near housing units, the fourth about staff refresher training on where the Special Housing Unit’s defibrillator was kept and on retrieving it immediately on finding an unresponsive person.

The Inspector General site visit, April 2022

OIG staff visited on April 26, 2022 for an audit of the Bureau’s prison maintenance and construction, published May 2023, and published photographs of what they saw. Their account: “In the summer of 2021, the majority of USP Atlanta’s inmates were transferred elsewhere and the facility then underwent a rehabilitation and security re-alignment from medium-security to low. While some medium-security inmates remain, the institution now primarily houses low-security inmates. The institution’s camp remains closed.” They recorded a rated capacity of 1,440 and security work that included replacing light fixtures in which contraband had been concealed.

The photographs are neither flattering nor catastrophic: classrooms, the chapel, the main corridor and food services “appeared in good condition,” while the images of problems show shower units in disrepair, ceiling damage from water intrusion, equipment leaking onto a floor and cracked glass in a secure entry area. The conclusion: “While USP Atlanta does not currently have the same level of critical need we noted at MCC New York or CI Taft, the need for repairs was evident in some areas.”

The two most recent audits: food, and money

The newest Inspector General work here is about what is on the tray. For its audit of the Bureau’s compliance with the National Menu (Report 26-021, published February 11, 2026), auditors made FCI Atlanta the anchor institution: fourteen weeks of as-served menus tested here against one week each at five other prisons, and a meal watched in the dining hall on April 7, 2025. Of the certified religious meals sampled from Atlanta’s records, 68 percent were missing documentation that a required vegetable had been served — the best figure of the six, which otherwise clustered at 71 percent. The dinner the auditors photographed that day held a fish fillet with tomato sauce, white rice and lima beans; three of the four appear nowhere on this institution’s as-served menu for the date. Their conclusion: missing documentation “does not necessarily mean the items were not served (as demonstrated by our observations at FCI Atlanta).” The recommendation went to the Bureau’s national record-keeping system, not to this kitchen.

The other recent visit concerned money taken out of a man’s account. For its audit of the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program (Report 24-089, August 7, 2024) the Inspector General “visited United States Penitentiary (USP) Atlanta to gain an understanding of IFRP administration at the institutional level.” The audit’s sample of 73 men and their payment files came from FCC Coleman, FCI Fort Dix and USP McCreary. Atlanta is where the auditors learned how the program is run, not where they checked the arithmetic.

The 2024 PREA audit

FCI Atlanta was audited under the Prison Rape Elimination Act on site from May 7 to 9, 2024 by an independent auditor, James Kenney; the Bureau posted the report on July 8, 2024, still titled “USP Atlanta” a month after the rename. The facility passed: forty standards met, one exceeded (115.65, coordinated response), none unmet. It was the fourth audit here, and the institution has been found compliant each time since 2015. In the twelve months before it, the institution reported fifteen allegations of inmate-on-inmate sexual abuse and two of sexual harassment, and none of staff-on-inmate abuse at all; of the fifteen abuse allegations, four were unfounded, eleven unsubstantiated and none substantiated, with no criminal investigation opened; of the two harassment allegations, one was unsubstantiated and one was substantiated. The audit is also the most detailed public description of the physical plant and population that exists.

Designed capacity	2,270
Population	1,634 counted on day one; facility population 1,681; average daily population 1,677
Housing units	6 — Units A (534 beds), B (552) and D (300); two detention units of up to 295 each; one Special Housing Unit
Age range / custody levels held	20 to 77 / Administrative, Low, Minimum, High, Maximum
Staff who may have inmate contact	391, plus 4 contractors and 23 volunteers
Limited English proficient	326
Physical / cognitive or functional disability	21 / 22
Blind or low vision / Deaf or hard of hearing	18 / 16
Transgender or intersex / disclosed prior victimization	7 / 29

Two auditor observations. He noted “a greater use of mirrors throughout the institution, which may be an indication that the video monitoring system did not have great coverage and was outdated” — consistent with the Inspector General. And he recorded that the Bureau “has embarked on a very large rehabilitation program to upgrade the housing units,” so the configuration in older documents may already have changed again.

The 2014 District of Columbia inspection

The District of Columbia’s Corrections Information Council inspected this institution on February 10, 2014 and published on November 3, 2014; it inspects federal prisons because people sentenced under the D.C. Code serve their sentences in Bureau custody. Its findings rest on interviews with twelve of the forty D.C. residents the Council recorded as held here in January 2014, in a population of 1,641 — a very small denominator. Its central finding was distance: “Atlanta is over 600 miles from DC; this distance does not facilitate visitation. Five out of 12 DC inmates reported concerns with visitation or access to visitation,” and the Council recommended video visitation. Three of the twelve reported problems with the administrative remedy process. The Council recommended programming in the Special Housing Unit, and recorded that “the staff at USP Atlanta is the most diverse the CIC has seen in a FBOP facility thus far.” The Bureau published no response. That is the only independent inspection of conditions here by an outside body other than the PREA auditors, and the visit is more than twelve years old; the Inspector General has examined this institution repeatedly in audits and evaluations, but the DOJ Office of the Inspector General has not conducted an on-site inspection of this facility.

Conditions reported by immigration lawyers

On August 1, 2025 seven organizations — Asian Americans Advancing Justice–Atlanta, Project South, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, the National Immigration Project, the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Georgia — wrote jointly to the ICE Atlanta Field Office Director and the institution’s Acting Warden about conditions for people held here for immigration purposes. These are allegations in an advocacy letter, not an inspector’s findings. They are also the only detailed contemporary account of this side of the institution.

• No transport to immigration court and no video access to hearings: a hearing means a drive of two and a half hours to Stewart Detention Center or five and a half to Folkston, and the letter describes people missing hearings entirely as a result.
• No access to a law library, immigration legal reference materials or a posted list of free legal service providers; legal calls taken “in an office setting with a guard in the room”; no way to fax documents in; and one pre-scheduled weekend legal visit refused for lack of staff despite falling inside the institution’s own published attorney window.
• Two-person cells for upwards of twenty hours a day, one reported 82-hour lockdown before a routine ICE visit, and recreation restricted to an enclosed courtyard.
• Exclusion from the education and recreation available to people in Bureau custody, and interpretation used only in limited circumstances such as some medical appointments — in a facility where the PREA auditor counted 326 limited-English-proficient men a year earlier.

Senator Ossoff’s staff separately inspected FCI Atlanta as part of his oversight of immigration detention; the report, published January 27, 2026, lists this institution among the facilities visited. At least forty-nine dockets captioned against the Warden of FCI Atlanta appear in CourtListener’s mirror of Northern District of Georgia records for January 1, 2025 to September 14, 2026. A petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 naming the warden is the standard vehicle both for challenging the execution of a federal sentence and for challenging immigration detention.

FCI Atlanta in the news

Recent news about FCI Atlanta centers on contraband prosecutions, the immigration detainees now held here and a new visitation pilot; older items concern the 2021 shutdown and re-mission, the Senate hearing that followed, and the 1987 uprising. Newest first:

• August 2026. The institution ran the first session of a four-month pilot of the Frederick Douglass Project’s Prison Visitation Program on August 11, with fifteen participants.
• June 2026 — drone smuggling indictment. On June 24 the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Georgia unsealed a seventeen-count indictment charging twelve people with using six drones to drop contraband at least 38 times into ten federal prisons in eight states between September 2023 and May 2026. FCI Atlanta is the first institution named. The contraband alleged included methamphetamine, marijuana, cell phones, tobacco and saw blades “designed and intended to be used as weapons and to facilitate escape.” Prosecutors called it the largest federal prosecution to date involving coordinated drone operations against prisons.
• April 2026 — correctional officer convicted. A federal jury convicted Patrick Shackelford, a former correctional officer and the institution’s plumbing supervisor, of bribery, smuggling and drug conspiracy. Between June 2018 and February 2019 he took $5,000 and pain pills to let prisoners use a hidden void beside the visiting room, into which visitors pushed contraband through a hole under a restroom sink. What followed was, in the Justice Department’s words, “one of the largest contraband recoveries in the history of USP-Atlanta.” Three inmate co-defendants pleaded guilty.
• January 2026. Senator Ossoff’s staff inspected FCI Atlanta as part of a twelve-month investigation into immigration detention, reported January 27, 2026.
• August 2025. Seven civil rights and immigration organizations wrote to ICE and the Acting Warden about conditions for immigration detainees here, and asked that the agreement covering this institution be discontinued.
• February 2025 — ICE detainees arrive. Under an agreement signed February 6, 2025 the Bureau opened up to two housing units here to Immigration and Customs Enforcement; transfers from Stewart Detention Center and Folkston began within days.
• July 2024. The Bureau posted the May 2024 PREA audit: forty standards met, one exceeded, none unmet.
• April 2024 — renamed. USP Atlanta became FCI Atlanta in a seven-facility action announced April 4, 2024.
• February 2024. The Inspector General’s evaluation of inmate deaths found this institution had more deaths than any other federal prison from fiscal 2014 through fiscal 2021.
• July 2022 — Senate hearing. The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations held “Corruption, Abuse, and Misconduct at U.S. Penitentiary Atlanta.”
• Summer 2021 — the shutdown. A two-month contraband search recovered 705 cell phones and 134 weapons; about 1,200 men were transferred out and the institution was re-missioned to low security.
• January 2021 — the Bureau posted one news release reporting the death of a person held at USP Atlanta; the Bureau’s releases are listed on its press release page.
• August 2020 — the Bureau posted one news release reporting the death of a person held at USP Atlanta.
• November–December 1987 — the uprising. After the United States and Cuba agreed to return Cuban nationals, about 1,400 Cuban detainees held here took more than 100 staff hostage on November 23 and held the prison for eleven days, causing over $35 million in damage; one man died in a shootout with a guard. The siege ended December 3, and President Reagan issued a statement the following day thanking the agencies involved.

Frequently asked questions about FCI Atlanta

Problems at FCI Atlanta: where we can help

This institution has been examined more closely than almost any other. The list below is what its two standing problems — a building whose systems fail, and a population split between sentenced men and immigration detainees — produce in individual cases, and most of these have a filing deadline attached.

• Designation, transfer and RDAP eligibility. Because there is no RDAP here and no camp, two of the commonest reasons to seek a transfer apply to almost everyone at Atlanta. See our guide to federal prison transfers.
• Access to the Mental Health Step Down Program, or to adequate mental health care short of it, at one of only five institutions approved to run the residential program.
• Medical care that is not happening. The route is a written request to staff, then the administrative remedy process, and every rung of it has a clock. See medical care in federal prison and, where negligence has caused injury, Federal Tort Claims Act claims (how to file one).
• Pretrial detention problems — attorney access, discovery review, confidential calls and conditions in the detention units, which run on different rules from the sentenced side.
• First Step Act time credits: whether they are being earned, calculated and applied, and whether a pretrial period has been counted correctly.
• Halfway house and home confinement placement procedures, through the reentry office for the release district — RRM Atlanta, a few hundred yards down the same street, for Georgia and South Carolina.
• Disciplinary proceedings that threaten good conduct time (see how a hearing runs), and Special Housing Unit placements that outlast their justification, including protective custody.
• Compassionate release (a reduction in sentence) and sentence computation errors.
• 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 Atlanta, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The Bureau’s facility page, with address, contact details, published resources and the population figure.
• FCI Atlanta Commissary List, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCI Atlanta, 2022. The general-population list, headed “U.S.P Atlanta Commissary.”
• FCI Atlanta Detention Center Unit Commissary List, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCI Atlanta, 2022.
• FCI Atlanta Pretrial Commissary List, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCI Atlanta, 2022.
• FCI Atlanta Administrative Detention Commissary List, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FCI Atlanta, 2022. The Special Housing Unit list.
• USP Atlanta Admission and Orientation Handbook, Federal Bureau of Prisons, USP Atlanta, 2012. The daily schedule, mail and telephone rules, work and pay rates, and the drug and psychology programs.
• Institution Supplement ATL 5267.08E, Visiting Regulations, Federal Bureau of Prisons, USP Atlanta, 2011. Visiting schedule, visitor numbers, dress code, ion-scan sanctions, attorney visits and directions.
• Trust Fund/Deposit Fund Manual, Program Statement 4500.13, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The $460 monthly commissary limit, the holiday increase and the excluded items.
• 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. The RDAP and Female Integrated Treatment locations, the Mental Health Step Down institutions and the programs-by-institution table.
• Residential Drug Abuse Programs and Locations, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2025. The superseded standalone locations list, identical as to Atlanta.
• Name Changes Approved for Seven FBOP Facilities, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2024.
• FCI Atlanta Pilots New Prison Visitation Program, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026.
• Press Releases, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The Bureau’s list of news releases, including the two reporting deaths at this institution.

Audits and inspections

• Audit of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Documentation of Its Compliance with Select National Menu Requirements, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2026. Report 26-021. FCI Atlanta was the anchor institution, with an on-site meal observation on April 7, 2025.
• Over 1,000 Credible Reports of Human Rights Abuses in U.S. Immigration Detention, Office of U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff, 2026. Lists FCI Atlanta among the facilities his staff visited.
• Audit of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Inmate Financial Responsibility Program, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2024. Report 24-089. The institutional-level visit was to USP Atlanta; the payment-file sample was drawn at FCC Coleman, FCI Fort Dix and USP McCreary.
• PREA Facility Audit Report: USP Atlanta, PREA Auditors of America, 2024. Auditor James Kenney; on site May 7–9, 2024. The fullest public description of the physical plant and population.
• Evaluation of Issues Surrounding Inmate Deaths in Federal Bureau of Prisons Institutions, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2024. Report 24-041. USP Atlanta had the most deaths of any institution in fiscal years 2014 through 2021.
• Limited-Scope Review of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Strategies to Identify, Communicate, and Remedy Operational Issues, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2023. Report 23-065. The fullest account of what led to the 2021 shutdown.
• The Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Efforts to Maintain and Construct Institutions, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2023.
• Site-visit record for USP Atlanta, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2023. The interactive product from the maintenance audit, with the April 26, 2022 photographs and the rated capacity of 1,440.
• Corruption, Abuse, and Misconduct at U.S. Penitentiary Atlanta, U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, 2022. The hearing of July 26, 2022, and its printed record.
• Chair Ossoff Opening Statement in PSI Hearing Investigating Corruption, Abuse, and Misconduct at USP Atlanta, U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, 2022.
• Review of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Use of Restrictive Housing for Inmates with Mental Illness, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2017. E&I Report 17-05. The source for the Mental Health Step Down figures here.
• USP Atlanta Inspection Report, District of Columbia Corrections Information Council, 2014. The inspection of February 10, 2014.
• Audit of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Efforts to Improve Acquisition Through Strategic Sourcing, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2014. Report 14-17.
• The Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Efforts to Manage Inmate Health Care, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2008. Report 08-08; 251 men sampled at this institution.
• Criminal Calls: A Review of the Bureau of Prisons’ Management of Inmate Telephone Privileges, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 1999. One of nine institutions visited.

Court records

• Federal Correctional Officer Convicted of Bribery, Smuggling, and Drug Conspiracy, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of Georgia, 2026. Patrick Shackelford’s conviction.
• Twelve Indicted in Alleged Drone Smuggling Conspiracy at Ten Prisons, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Middle District of Georgia, 2026. The June 24, 2026 indictment naming FCI Atlanta first.

News and other sources

• FCI Atlanta, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 2026. The ICE detention-facility page, with the field office number, mail instructions and the attorney-visiting memorandum.
• Sen. Ossoff Investigation Uncovers Over 1,000 Credible Reports of Human Rights Abuses in Immigration Detention, Office of U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff, 2026.
• Inhumane Conditions of ICE Detention at FCI Atlanta, Asian Americans Advancing Justice–Atlanta, 2025. The joint letter of August 1, 2025 to LaDeon Francis, ICE/ERO Atlanta Field Office Director, and Tamer Abdelaziz, Acting Warden of FCI Atlanta.
• Moldy Food, Used Underwear: Inside the US Prisons Where Trump Is Jailing Immigrants, Sam Levin, The Guardian, 2025. Carries the Bureau statement on the inter-agency agreement.
• The Atlanta Federal Penitentiary’s Hollywood Connections, Pete Corson, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 2022. The account of the penitentiary’s best-known prisoners.
• Pandemonium at the Pen: Cuban Refugees Riot to Stay in the U.S., Tiffany Harte, Atlanta History Center, 2021. The 1987 uprising.
• Statement on the Cuban Inmate Riots in Georgia and Louisiana, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, 1987.
• 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e), Imprisonment of a convicted person, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).
• 28 U.S.C. § 2241, Power to grant writ, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).

Sources reviewed September 2026.

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