MCC Chicago: Federal Detention Center in Downtown Chicago

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

MCC Chicago at a glance

MCC Chicago is the federal government’s jail in downtown Chicago: a single tower at 71 West Van Buren Street that held 507 men and women as of September 2026, most of them awaiting trial or sentencing in the Northern District of Illinois. It is an administrative-security institution a few blocks from the Dirksen federal courthouse.

Official name	Metropolitan Correctional Center, Chicago
BOP code	CCC
Security level	Administrative; men and women · holds people of every security level
Population	507 (as of September 2026)
Visiting	Sunday, Monday, Friday, and Saturday, 9:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m. · four-week unit rotation · see the rotation
Inmate mail	Inmate Name & Register Number · MCC Chicago · Metropolitan Correctional Center · 71 West Van Buren Street · Chicago, IL 60605
Send money	Lockbox · Western Union (code city FBOP, DC) · MoneyGram (receive code 7932)
Phone	312-322-0567 · Fax 312-347-4012
Street address	71 West Van Buren Street, Chicago, IL 60605 · Cook County
Judicial district	Northern District of Illinois
BOP region	North Central
Designated capacity	686
Housing	Multiple-occupancy cells and open dormitories · no single cells
Special Housing Unit	Yes · 22 segregation cells
RDAP	No · nearest at FCI Marion
UNICOR	No

MCC Chicago is in the Bureau’s North Central Region and is one of five federal institutions in Illinois, but it is not a prison in the sense that word usually carries. Its 2025 audit records an average stay of 155 days and 2,331 admissions in a year. The Bureau’s Pretrial Detention Legal Access Handbook names MCC Chicago as one of ten designated pretrial detention facilities and prints rules for reaching a lawyer here that apply nowhere else.

MCC Chicago is a federal jail. Three other Chicago lockups are not.

MCC Chicago is the Bureau of Prisons’ jail for federal cases in Chicago; Cook County Jail, the Illinois prison system, and the immigration facility in Broadview are run by other agencies, and each has its own search tool.

Where	Run by	How to find someone
MCC Chicago (this page)	Federal Bureau of Prisons, for the U.S. Marshals Service	BOP Inmate Locator
Cook County Jail, 26th and California	Cook County Sheriff	The Sheriff’s own inmate search — a state or county charge, not a federal one
Illinois Department of Corrections	State of Illinois	The IDOC offender search; state sentences, nothing to do with the federal system
The ICE facility in Broadview	U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement	ICE’s online detainee locator; a civil immigration process with its own rules

Two more distinctions. RRM Chicago is a Bureau office that manages halfway houses, not a place anyone is held. And Illinois has four federal prisons besides this one, all of them hours from the Loop:

Institution	Security	Population (as of September 2026)
MCC Chicago	Administrative, men and women	507
FCI Thomson	Low, men, with a camp	2,074
FCI Pekin	Medium, with a camp	1,288
FCI Greenville	Medium, with a camp	1,248
FCI Marion	Medium, men, with a camp	1,209

As of September 2026, Illinois holds 6,326 people in federal institutions; MCC Chicago is the smallest of the five and the only one that is a detention facility. The state picture is in our guide to federal prisons in Illinois.

Who is held at MCC Chicago?

Most people held at MCC Chicago have not been convicted of anything. The institution’s own handbook describes it as housing “male and female offenders of all security levels, who are facing federal charges in the Northern District of Illinois,” and the Inspector General, reporting on this building in March 2021, wrote that it “houses predominantly arrestees and pretrial detainees.” Which category a person falls into decides how many visitors they may have, whether they can be made to work, and whether anything they complete counts.

Status	Who that is	What changes
Pretrial	Detained by order of a judicial officer; also anyone awaiting a verdict, and anyone who has pleaded guilty but whose conviction the Bureau has not been notified of	Six-person visiting list. Three visitors at a time. No compelled work. Exempt from the literacy program and from Admission and Orientation
Holdover	Sentenced but not yet designated, or designated and waiting for transport	The same six-person list and three-visitor limit as pretrial
Cadre	A small number of sentenced people designated here to run the building; Unit 21 is the cadre unit	Immediate family plus ten friends and associates. Five visitors at a time. A job assignment is required
Court-ordered examinees	People committed for a competency or sanity examination under 18 U.S.C. §§ 4241, 4242, or 4243	Bureau policy treats them as pretrial inmates, with the same restrictions

A plea changes the paperwork and not the visiting list. On official notification of a plea or a finding of guilt, the Bureau’s pretrial rules, Program Statement 7331.05, say staff “must change the admission assignment from pretrial to unsentenced holdover immediately, pending sentencing” — but both statuses carry the same six-person list here, so a family expecting it to open up will find that it has not.

Work is optional here and almost nowhere else. Under 28 C.F.R. § 551.106, unless a detainee signs a waiver “the Warden may not require the inmate to work in any assignment other than housekeeping tasks in the inmate’s own cell and in the community living area.” The Bureau calls that waiver the Pretrial Inmate Work Waiver/Notice of Separation — one form doing two jobs, the second of which is acknowledging that separation from sentenced people may not be practicable.

The December 2025 PREA audit records that MCC Chicago holds people for the Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Marshals Service; the box for Immigration and Customs Enforcement is not ticked, and the count of people “detained solely for civil immigration purposes” on the audit’s first day was zero. Some federal detention centers hold ICE detainees; on the audit’s record, this one did not.

What is the security level at MCC Chicago?

MCC Chicago is an administrative-security institution. In the Bureau’s vocabulary that is not a rung between minimum and high — it means the institution takes people at every security level, because it exists to hold people for a court rather than to classify them for a sentence. A first-time fraud defendant and a racketeering defendant can be on the same floor, and neither has been scored for designation yet.

The December 2025 PREA audit counts the whole institution as one building: no perimeter, no fence, no yard, no compound. Everything happens vertically, in a tower on a Loop street corner. The Bureau publishes no floor count; the floors below are the ones the institution’s own documents name.

Floor	What is there
Basement	Recreation area, with equipment
7	Health Services — medical, dental, x-ray, and laboratory
8	The visiting room, capacity 86 chairs, and the attorney rooms
9	Education, the law and leisure libraries, classrooms, and Religious Services
11	Where legal visits for people in the Special Housing Unit are ordinarily held
12, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25	Housing units, each with its own visiting day on a four-week rotation. Unit 21 is the cadre unit
Roof	Recreation, weather permitting

Housing is mixed, and the Bureau’s own numbers do not reconcile. The December 2025 audit records nine housing units, then separately records nine multiple-occupancy cell units and two open dormitory units. It records no single-cell units and 22 segregation cells. The Inspector General, describing the same building in 2021, found “a combination of open dormitory units and surrounding units of cells for housing two to four inmates,” with beds in the dormitories “3–4 feet apart with no barriers between.”

The Special Housing Unit runs on its own visiting calendar, under the Bureau’s Special Housing Unit rules. SHU social visits are Tuesday and Thursday mornings, 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. — three of the days when the rest of the institution has no social visiting at all — and they run by live video monitor from two securable rooms inside the eighth-floor visiting room, not face to face. Administrative detention gets two hours, disciplinary segregation one. Long-term administrative-detention cases may request one contact visit every 90 days, approved by the Warden.

Can a judge reopen or overturn the detention order?

Yes: a detention order can be reopened, reviewed by the district judge, or appealed. The Bureau of Prisons does not decide who is held at MCC Chicago; a judicial officer orders each detention, under 18 U.S.C. § 3142(e)(1), on a finding “that no condition or combination of conditions will reasonably assure the appearance of the person as required and the safety of any other person and the community.” That finding rests on a record, and records change.

Reopening. Section 3142(f) ends with this sentence: “[t]he hearing may be reopened, before or after a determination by the judicial officer, at any time before trial if the judicial officer finds that information exists that was not known to the movant at the time of the hearing and that has a material bearing on the issue whether there are conditions of release that will reasonably assure the appearance of such person as required and the safety of any other person and the community.” Two requirements apply: the information must have been unknown at the time, and it must bear on conditions. A relative who has now agreed to act as third-party custodian, a treatment bed that has now been offered, a job that now exists, a diagnosis that has now been made — those fit. Unhappiness with the first ruling does not.

Review by the district judge. Detention in Chicago is usually ordered by a magistrate judge. Section 3145(b) provides that where that has happened, “the person may file, with the court having original jurisdiction over the offense, a motion for revocation or amendment of the order. The motion shall be determined promptly.” That motion goes to the district judge assigned to the case, and it is a second look at the same question rather than an appeal in the ordinary sense.

Appeal. Under § 3145(c), an appeal from a detention order, or from an order refusing to revoke or amend one, is governed by 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and “shall be determined promptly” — one of very few pretrial rulings that can go to a court of appeals immediately. In United States v. Portes, 786 F.2d 758 (7th Cir. 1986), the Seventh Circuit joined the majority of circuits “in adopting the so-called ‘independent review’ standard,” reasoning that Congress had repealed the deferential standard of the 1966 Act and that the appellate rule requires written reasons and lets either side expand the record — features whose “very encompassing nature… suggests that the inquiry is to be probing.” That is the standard for the court of appeals’ own review; it says nothing about what a district judge does under § 3145(b).

Conditions inside can be part of the argument. In August 2026 counsel for a man held since February moved for conditional release, saying his client was detained at MCC Chicago in “extremely difficult conditions” with serious health problems that its “pretrial detention” could not “properly monitor, manage, or treat.” As of September 2026, the motion had not been ruled on. An argument like that stands or falls on the record built for it — a reason to document every missed appointment and unanswered sick-call slip from the first week.

The Bureau cannot release a pretrial detainee, cannot grant a furlough, and cannot place one in a community program without a court order. Nor is a detention center obliged to be comfortable. In Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520 (1979) — a case from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City, this building’s sister institution from the same 1970s program — the Supreme Court held that due process forbids punishing a detainee before guilt is decided, but that “[n]ot every disability imposed during pretrial detention amounts to ‘punishment’ in the constitutional sense.” A bail motion is almost always the faster road.

Does time at MCC Chicago count toward a sentence?

Time held at MCC Chicago ordinarily counts toward a federal sentence, but pretrial programming earns no First Step Act credit.

On the days: 18 U.S.C. § 3585(b) gives a defendant credit for time spent in official detention before the sentence begins, provided that time “has not been credited against another sentence.” Months spent on Van Buren Street waiting for trial are ordinarily credited. But the judge does not do the arithmetic, and a courtroom agreement about credit is not a computation. In United States v. Wilson, 503 U.S. 329 (1992), the Supreme Court held that “§ 3585(b) does not authorize a district court to compute the credit at sentencing,” because the statute is written in tenses that assume the time has already been served; the Attorney General, acting through the Bureau of Prisons, “must continue to compute the credit… as he did under the former § 3568,” since the Bureau has to know how much of the sentence remains. The Court also noted that federal regulations give prisoners administrative review of that computation, and that courts may review it once administrative remedies are exhausted.

The number appears weeks after sentencing, on a computation prepared by a records office under the Bureau’s sentence computation rules. Check it against the judgment the day it arrives; our page on challenging a Bureau sentence computation sets out the route, which runs through the administrative remedy process first.

On the programming: First Step Act earned time credits do not accrue in pretrial status. The Bureau’s time-credit rules, Program Statement 5410.01 (2022, amended in 2023), tie the start of earning to arrival at, or voluntary surrender to, the designated institution, and exclude time in U.S. Marshals Service custody before that day. An interim final rule published August 31, 2026 (91 Fed. Reg. 55740) removes that arrival clause from 28 C.F.R. § 523.42(a) effective September 30, 2026, so credits begin “after the inmate’s term of imprisonment commences”; the Bureau says people awaiting transfer may start approved programs, but credit still requires completing assigned ones. The stay here is long: the December 2025 audit recorded 2,331 admissions in twelve months, 932 of them lasting thirty days or more, and an average of 155 days. Somebody who spends five months here before sentencing, taking every class MCC Chicago offers, finishes with the credit balance they started with: none. What shortens the wait is not enrolling in something here. It is getting designated, correctly, somewhere that runs the programs the sentence will need.

Where does someone go after MCC Chicago?

Someone sentenced from MCC Chicago goes to an institution chosen in Grand Prairie, Texas, by the Designation and Sentence Computation Center, on paperwork generated by the court in Chicago. Staff at MCC Chicago do not choose it, which is why the unit team has no answer to give. The sequence in the Bureau’s security designation rules, Program Statement 5100.08, is short: the defendant is sentenced; the Clerk of the Court sends the judgment to the U.S. Marshals Service; the Marshals tell the Center the person is ready; Center staff assemble the presentence report, the judgment with its Statement of Reasons, the Marshals’ form USM-129, and any Central Inmate Monitoring paperwork. Once the file is complete, the Center “will ordinarily complete the initial designation within three working days.”

Everything a lawyer can do about where a sentence is served has to be done before that three-day window opens.

• The Statement of Reasons. Program Statement 5100.08 says why it matters: the procedures exist “to ensure the Bureau is following the intentions of the Court when designating a facility, as the SOR may contain information which overrides the PSR and may affect scoring decisions.” If a disputed presentence finding drives a security point, the place to fix it is the sentencing record.
• A judicial recommendation. The Bureau treats it as Management Variable B: “[t]he sentencing court may recommend a specific institution or program… When this is not feasible, the court is notified in writing with an explanation outlining the reasons for not satisfying that recommendation.” Not binding — but it forces a written answer to the judge.
• Distance. 18 U.S.C. § 3621(b), as amended by the First Step Act, directs placement as close as practicable to the prisoner’s primary residence and, to the extent practicable, within 500 driving miles of it, subject to bed space, security designation, program and medical needs, and the court’s recommendations.
• Public Safety Factors. A Public Safety Factor overrides a point score, which is why arguing about whether one applies is usually more productive than arguing about points. Our guides to the intake process and federal prison transfers cover what happens either side of the designation.

Who are the notable inmates at MCC Chicago?

As of September 2026, MCC Chicago holds Tommy Schaefer and Anosh Ahmed; the Bureau’s records also place Piper Kerman here. A detention center turns its population over roughly four times a year, so most lists of its inmates name people who left long ago. The table gives each person’s register number and states what the Bureau’s record actually shows, which is not always the same thing as where a person served. Two names often attached to this institution — Mel Reynolds and Kevin Trudeau — carry records that do not place them here at all.

Name	Status	Case
Tommy Schaefer	Held here. Register 27013-506; no projected release date, because he has not been sentenced	Charged in the Northern District of Illinois with conspiracy to kill a person in a foreign country, conspiracy to commit murder, and obstruction, over the 2014 killing of Sheila von Wiese-Mack in Bali. Deported to the United States in February 2026; trial set for January 2027
Anosh Ahmed	Held here. Register 27079-506	Former Loretto Hospital executive, under federal indictment in Chicago since 2024 and re-indicted on fraud charges; pleaded not guilty August 31, 2026
Joseph Banks	Former. Now at USP Florence ADMAX, Colorado, register 22652-424, release projected 2040	Escaped from an upper floor of this building by rope in December 2012, with a cellmate
Carleous Clay	Former. Now at USP Florence ADMAX, register 18864-040, serving life	Held here in 2017, when he attacked a case manager and held her at knifepoint
Piper Kerman	Former. Released March 4, 2005, register 11187-424; the Bureau’s record gives facility code CCC, type MCC — MCC Chicago	Author of the memoir that became Orange Is the New Black; moved here to testify
Mel Reynolds	Former. Released November 23, 2018, register 07476-424. The Bureau’s record gives facility code CCH, type RRM — the Chicago reentry office, not this institution	The former U.S. Representative, sentenced in 2018 to six months for failing to file tax returns. Where he served is not established by the Bureau’s record
Kevin Trudeau	Former. Released January 18, 2022, register 18046-036. The Bureau’s record gives facility code CCH, type RRM — the Chicago reentry office, not this institution	The infomercial marketer sentenced to ten years for criminal contempt. Where he served is not established by the Bureau’s record

Listings that place David Coleman Headley, the Mumbai attacks conspirator, at MCC Chicago are not supported by the Bureau’s records: its Inmate Locator shows no record for him under that name or under Daood Gilani. Other names often listed here are held elsewhere or released: Thomas Zajac is at FCI Cumberland, register 22313-424; Alfredo Vasquez-Hernandez is at FCI Allenwood Low, register 45111-424; and Tomas Arevalo-Renteria was released from FCI Oxford on March 18, 2026. Heather Mack, whose co-defendant is held here, is at FCI Hazelton, register 72776-509.

How do I find someone at MCC Chicago?

Search the Bureau’s free Inmate Locator by name or by the eight-digit register number; the number is the reliable key because the locator matches the committed name on the judgment, not the name anyone uses. For someone newly arrested in Chicago, register numbers ending in -424 are the Northern District of Illinois series.

A blank result here usually means one of four things: the arrest was by state or county officers, so the person is at Cook County Jail or in the Illinois system; the arrest was in the last day or two and they have not been booked into a Bureau facility; the committed name is spelled differently on the charging document; or the case is sealed. See how federal register numbers work for what the digits and the suffix mean.

Read a result carefully. Because most people here are not sentenced, the locator will show no projected release date — the field reads “UNKNOWN,” which is not an error and does not mean the sentence is indefinite. It means there is no sentence yet.

How do I write to someone at MCC Chicago?

Mail goes to the building itself — there is no post office box for this institution — and the first line has to carry the committed name and the eight-digit register number.

Inmate mail	Inmate Name & Register Number MCC Chicago Metropolitan Correctional Center 71 West Van Buren Street Chicago, IL 60605

The institution rejects mail on appearance. Envelopes and paper must be white. No glitter, stickers, lipstick, crayon, or marker; nothing stained, oily, or scented; no card stock, no homemade greeting cards, no mailing labels — addresses hand-written, typed, or stamped. Staff may strip the stamp and the envelope flap before handing the letter over. Mail is ordinarily delivered Monday to Friday, with no weekend or holiday service. See writing to someone in federal prison and the Bureau’s correspondence rules.

Legal mail follows a local rule your lawyer should know. Properly marked attorney mail is opened only in the addressee’s presence and is not read — but the handbook states that “[a]ll envelopes from incoming special or legal mail will be photocopied prior to delivery,” and that the person it is addressed to “will not receive the original envelope.” For marking to work, the sender must be identified on the outside and the front must be marked “Special Mail — Open only in the presence of the inmate.” The Bureau’s own pretrial handbook spells out how easily this fails: an attorney must write “Attorney” as their title, and “[w]riting ‘Law firm’ or ‘Esq.’ is not enough.” Anything short of that is opened, inspected, and read as ordinary mail. See attorney-client communication in the Bureau of Prisons for where the privilege holds and where it does not.

How do I send money to someone at MCC Chicago?

Money for someone at MCC Chicago goes to the Bureau’s national lockbox in Iowa or through one of two wire services, never to Van Buren Street. All three routes need the committed name and the eight-digit register number on the instrument and on the envelope; the Bureau’s money instructions give the details.

Route	Where it goes	How fast it posts
Postal money order or cashier’s check	Federal Bureau of Prisons Committed Name Eight-Digit Register Number Post Office Box 474701 Des Moines, Iowa 50947-0001	Postal money orders post without a hold; non-postal money orders and non-government checks carry an automatic 15-day hold
Western Union Quick Collect	Code city FBOP, DC	Two to four hours for funds sent between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. Eastern; otherwise by 7:00 a.m. the next day
MoneyGram ExpressPayment	Receive code 7932, company Federal Bureau of Prisons, Washington, DC. Up to $300 online	Same as Western Union

Two local details before you send a large amount. Commissary spending is capped under the Bureau’s trust fund rules (see below), so money beyond the cap sits in the account rather than buying anything. And the December 2022 order form requires: “MONEY MUST BE AVAILABLE 48 HOURS PRIOR TO ORDERING.”

What are the visiting hours at MCC Chicago?

Social visiting runs Sunday, Monday, Friday, and Saturday, 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. The supplement adds: “There are no social visits Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.” The schedule comes from Institution Supplement CCC 5267.09F, dated November 12, 2025, which replaced the September 2024 version under the Bureau’s visiting regulations.

The institution also runs a four-week rotation in which each housing unit gets one visiting day in its week and two across the whole cycle, so find out which week is which before booking travel.

Week	Sunday	Monday	Friday	Saturday
1	Unit 23	Unit 15	Unit 19	Unit 13
2	Unit 17	Unit 21	Unit 25	Unit 12
3	Unit 15	Unit 23	Unit 13	Unit 19
4	Unit 21	Unit 17	Unit 12	Unit 25

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are marked “Legal Only” in every week. The supplement says the rotation is continuous and that any deviation must be approved by the administration; call 312-322-0567 to confirm the week before you travel.

Two timing rules also matter. Processing stops an hour before visiting ends: visitors “must be in the front lobby one (1) hour prior to the conclusion of visiting to be processed for a visit. Any visitor arriving after that time will not be allowed to visit.” And the eighth-floor room holds 86 chairs; when it fills, visits end first-in, first-out on the Institution Duty Officer’s decision. Every visitor is guaranteed an hour, and every person held here a minimum of four hours’ visiting a month.

Who can visit, and how many

• Pretrial and holdover lists are limited to immediate family — spouse, mother, father, sister, brother, children — plus one non-immediate person, who may be a grandparent, in-law, aunt, uncle, or friend. The list is capped at six people aged 16 and over, and relationship documents such as marriage or birth certificates must be produced before anyone is added.
• Sentenced cadre lists hold immediate family plus ten friends and associates aged 16 and over. Cadre housed on a floor other than Unit 21 visit with the unit they live in.
• Three visitors at a time, including children, for anyone pretrial or holdover. Five for sentenced men and for all women. A child small enough to sit on an adult’s lap does not count toward the limit.
• Routine changes to a visiting list are accommodated once every six months. The 2022 handbook still says once every 90 days; the 2025 supplement controls.

What visitors can wear and bring

The lobby desk enforces the dress code. Not allowed: shorts and sleeveless garments except on children up to four; halter, tube, crop, and backless tops; low-cut blouses and dresses; see-through, tight, or form-fitting clothing and spandex; skirts more than two inches above the knee; sweatpants, sweatshirts, sundresses, and leotards; hats, caps, headbands, scarves, hooded garments, wigs, and sunglasses; coats and jackets; athletic jerseys of any kind; uniforms of any kind, medical scrubs included; sandals, flip-flops, and open-toe or open-heel shoes; and anything orange, green, or camouflage, because that is what people inside wear.

Two clauses affect women in particular. Undergarments containing metal — an underwire bra — are not permitted, and the metal detector will find one; and the supplement states in capitals that undergarments are required for admission. Plan the outfit around the detector, not just the dress code.

You may bring a small clear coin purse holding no more than $20 in notes no larger than $5, for the vending machines, and for an infant three diapers, wipes in a clear bag, one receiving blanket, and three feeding bottles. Nothing else: no purses or diaper bags, no carriers or strollers, no photographs, books, magazines, or religious materials, no cosmetics, no gum or food, no electronics of any type, and no watches of any kind. Everything goes in a lobby locker. Only life-supporting medication comes past the lobby, and only after duty medical staff agree.

Identification, screening, and the eighth-floor escort

Everyone 16 and over completes a Notification to Visitor form at the lobby and shows photo identification: a driver’s license, a government ID, a consular-issued ID card, or a passport. Under-16s must be with an adult on the approved list; a 16- or 17-year-old visiting alone needs a parent’s or guardian’s signature on the visitor information form.

Screening is a walk-through metal detector and then a hand wand. A social visitor who still reads positive may leave and return in different clothing — but “[i]f the same individual fails the second time, after a change of clothing, they will not be allowed to enter for that day.” Pat searches are voluntary and refusal means no entry. Religious headwear is not ordinarily removed for a pat search; that needs the Warden’s authorization except in an emergency.

Visitors are also escorted: “[a]ll inmate visitors will be escorted by visiting room or front lobby staff to and from the eighth floor. Visitors will not ride the elevator without a staff escort.” When staff are short, that escort is the bottleneck, and it is one reason the one-hour processing cutoff matters. See searches, shakedowns, and contraband and the Bureau’s rules on searching visitors.

Getting there

The institution is at 71 West Van Buren Street, on the corner of Clark Street in the Loop, a few blocks from the Dirksen federal courthouse. The institution’s handbook gives the only directions the Bureau publishes: the building “is accessible via I-290, 55, 90, and 94, based on the direction of travel,” and “[t]ransportation is available via Metra, CTA/PACE bus, and private taxi service.” The visiting supplement itself prints no directions at all — it says only that the information is available from the unit team. There is no visitor parking lot; this is a downtown block, and you will be parking in a commercial garage.

How does a lawyer reach a client at MCC Chicago?

Lawyers reach clients at MCC Chicago through legal visits seven days a week, a direct legal phone, and a scheduled 30-minute weekday call, because this is one of ten buildings the Bureau treats as a designated pretrial facility. Its Pretrial Detention Legal Access Handbook lists them — MDC Brooklyn, MCC Chicago, MDC Guaynabo, FDC Honolulu, FDC Houston, MDC Los Angeles, FDC Miami, FDC Philadelphia, FDC SeaTac, and MCC San Diego — and prints three rules that apply to MCC Chicago by name. The Bureau links that handbook, in twenty-five languages, from this institution’s own page.

Legal visits and the 30-minute legal call

Attorney visiting is seven days a week, 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., and counsel arriving during social hours is processed ahead of social visitors. Counsel presents a bar card and photo identification; if there is no bar card the lobby officer calls the Legal Department to verify. General-population attorney visits are ordinarily held on the eighth floor in rooms allocated first come, first served; when they are full, counsel is offered the main visiting room instead, which is not a private space.

The three MCC Chicago provisions are these. First, the direct legal phone: the handbook states that the ten designated pretrial facilities “have a phone on the pretrial units for legal calls,” allowing “brief, direct, unmonitored, calls to pre-programmed and verified phone numbers of defense counsel.” A 2023 Justice Department review found dedicated legal phones at eight of the ten, this one included, and recorded that because those phones sit in the common area of the housing unit they “do not enable detainees to engage in confidential communications with counsel.” An unmonitored line is not a confidential one. Federal Defender clients “should be able to” use it; other clients “may be able to” and should ask the unit team. Second, the local scheduled call: “If you are housed in MCC Chicago, your attorney can ask for a legal call with you on a weekday. Each call is limited to 30 minutes. Your attorney must schedule these calls.” Third, the Special Housing Unit: a legal access request from SHU at this building goes to the SHU Lieutenant by name, not to the unit team.

A longer unmonitored call under the Bureau’s telephone regulations has to be asked for on form BP-A0148, and it is given only where the lawyer can show that letters, visits, and recorded calls will not do the job. Email is not an alternative: TRULINCS messages to an attorney are expressly not confidential. Non-attorney members of a defense team are admitted as legal assistants on form BP-A0243, renewed annually with a background check unless the person is a credentialed Federal Public Defender employee — and this institution’s supplement adds a local carve-out, that investigators, mitigation specialists, and paralegals from the Federal Defender Program “are not required to appear on the authorized list but must show their Federal Defender credentials.”

Discovery, the law library, and the presentence report

Electronic discovery here follows a two-track rule the handbook sets out for this facility by name. Once the Legal Department approves it, ordinary electronic discovery goes to the housing unit. Protected or sensitive discovery does not: “[y]ou can only have protected or sensitive electronic discovery in the Education Department. You can check it out from the Education Supervisor. You can schedule time to review your protected or sensitive discovery with the Education Supervisor.” That makes the Education Supervisor’s calendar, not the unit team’s, the thing that governs how much time a client gets with a protective-order production.

The law library, run under the Bureau’s legal activities rules, is on the ninth floor, and time there is limited: it “is available for use for a minimum of 3 hours per week/per unit.” More time is requested from the institution’s Legal Department with a case number and a reason — an imminent trial date, or pro se status — and Education does the scheduling. The electronic law library is also on the housing-unit computers, and every pretrial facility’s Special Housing Unit is supposed to have both a discovery terminal and an electronic law library terminal. Copies come off a debit-card machine in Education; the card costs $6.50 from the commissary.

One deadline is easy to miss. A pretrial detainee may hold a copy of their own presentence report and review it up to the day of sentencing. Afterward no one in Bureau custody may possess one, and a copy found later can draw an incident report. Whatever needs correcting in that document has to be read before the sentencing hearing, while the client is still allowed to hold it.

How do phone calls and email work at MCC Chicago?

Calls from MCC Chicago go out only; no one can call in. The handbook sets the window at this institution: “[t]he hours of telephone operation begin at 6:00 a.m. and end no later than 10:00 p.m.” Under the Bureau’s telephone regulations, Program Statement 5264.09, issued September 3, 2026, a person gets 510 minutes a calendar month: 300 free to anyone eligible for First Step Act telephone incentives, and 210 more that anyone who uses up those 300, eligible or not, may buy. A single call should generally not exceed 15 minutes, at least 30 minutes must pass between completed calls, and the monthly limit does not apply to unmonitored legal calls. The extra 100 minutes in November and December came from the 2008 policy and ended when it was replaced. Every number has to be on an approved list managed through TRULINCS, and every call except a properly arranged legal call is monitored and recorded.

Before anyone can call anywhere, they need a nine-digit phone access code and a completed voice-verification registration. New arrivals can lose days to this, which is often why a family hears nothing in the first week. See our guide to federal inmate phone calls for how the system and its charges work.

Email runs on TRULINCS, which families reach through CorrLinks; the same system carries requests to staff, the law library, a Local Document Service posting the institution’s own menus and schedules, and a mailbox for reporting sexual abuse straight to the Inspector General under the Bureau’s sexual abuse prevention rules. See CorrLinks and TRULINCS for what each message costs.

Email with a lawyer is not privileged, and the Bureau says so in its own pretrial handbook: messages sent and received on TRULINCS “are NOT confidential. This means other people can access and read them.” Anything privileged goes by marked legal mail or a scheduled unmonitored call.

What can people buy at the MCC Chicago commissary?

People at MCC Chicago can spend up to $460 a month at the commissary under the Bureau’s trust fund rules: Program Statement 4500.13, issued May 7, 2026, raised the limit from $360. The limit rises by $50 during the November and December holiday period, for no more than one validation period. Stamps, copy cards, and over-the-counter medications are among the items excluded from the cap.

MCC Chicago’s own September 2022 handbook says “[t]he National Spending Limit is $320.00 but may be further restricted at the local level.” That figure is out of date, as is the $360 limit that applied until May 2026.

The institution publishes two order forms in one document — a general housing list and a separate female housing list — both dated December 2022 and still the order forms the Bureau publishes. Treat the prices with caution, as the form itself warns twice in capitals; the category caps are the useful part, because they decide what a monthly budget buys: seven soups, six starches, six fish, six snacks, four food items, three crackers or cookies, two bags of chips, four kosher meals, five over-the-counter medications, one of each sundry item, shoes once a year, and a radio, tablet, or watch once a year. The caps are possession limits, not just purchase limits. And money must be in the account 48 hours before an order.

The category marked LEGAL is capped at five items in total: legal envelopes at 20 cents, a legal writing pad at $2.55, ink-jet paper at $7.80, a typing ribbon at $9.70, and correction tape at $2.40. The Bureau’s pretrial handbook tells detainees to buy their own typewriter ribbons, correction tape, and typing paper from the commissary, and lets indigent detainees ask Education for a ribbon, tape, and a few free copies. See the federal prison commissary for how the national list is built.

What programs are available at MCC Chicago?

MCC Chicago offers less programming than a prison, by design. This is a short-stay detention facility: the December 2025 audit puts the average stay at 155 days, most people here are exempt from the programs the Bureau mandates for sentenced prisoners, and the credits programming earns elsewhere do not accrue in pretrial status at all.

There is no Residential Drug Abuse Program: MCC Chicago does not appear on the RDAP locations list inside the Bureau’s August 2026 First Step Act Approved Programs Guide, a list updated in June 2026 and totaling 57 programs at 50 locations. The nearest in this state is at FCI Marion. There is no UNICOR factory, no apprenticeship trade program, and no residential mental-health or sex-offender treatment unit. What the institution offers instead is drug education and the non-residential drug abuse program, run by a department the handbook describes as “typically staffed by one Chief Psychologist, four clinical psychologists, and one Drug Treatment Specialist.”

The guide names MCC Chicago, or the code CCC, in none of its program descriptions, but its programs-by-institution table marks the institution for anger management, basic cognitive skills, criminal thinking, the literacy program, national parenting, family programming, Threshold, Seeking Safety, the occupational education categories, and non-residential drug treatment. It leaves the institution unmarked for residential drug treatment, Life Connections, post-secondary education, and Federal Prison Industries, which matches the absence of all four from the institution’s own handbook.

Education is on the ninth floor with the libraries and classrooms: GED and English-as-a-second-language classes, Adult Continuing Education, and a parenting program with a classroom and a visiting component. The literacy requirement of 240 instructional hours carries an exemption: “[u]nless exempt (pre-trial, holdover, etc.), inmates must participate in the literacy program.” Most people here are exempt, which means most are not in class unless they ask. See prison education and vocational training for what these tracks lead to.

Psychology treats arrivals differently by status. It automatically interviews anyone designated to serve a sentence here. Everyone else must ask: “[i]nmates arriving to the MCC under any other status (pretrial detainee, holdover, supervised release violation, etc) will need to notify psychology of their mental health or drug abuse programming needs.” A detainee who needs mental health care should ask for it.

What is daily life like at MCC Chicago?

Daily life at MCC Chicago is confined mostly to one floor. There is no yard to walk to, no dining hall to cross a compound for, and no work detail to fill the day unless someone has volunteered for one. The schedule below comes from the institution’s 2022 handbook; treat it as the rhythm, not a guarantee.

	When
Cell inspection-ready, bed made, trash out	7:30 a.m.
Breakfast, lunch, dinner	6:15–7:00 a.m.; 11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.; 4:15–5:00 p.m.
Uniform required	Monday to Friday, 7:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Counts	Five a day at a minimum: midnight, 3:00 and 5:00 a.m., 4:00 p.m., and 10:00 p.m., with an added 11:30 a.m. count on weekends and holidays. The last three are stand-up counts
Pill line, on your own floor	6:30 a.m. weekdays and 8:30 a.m. on weekends; noon; 5:00 p.m.
Telephones	6:00 a.m. – 10:00 p.m.
Next day’s call-outs posted	After 4:00 p.m.

Meals arrive at the door. “There is no centralized dining room at MCC Chicago,” the handbook states. “All meals are provided by satellite meal service (individual food trays) delivered to each unit.” Sections are called in turn; food may not be taken to a cell or eaten in one. The menu is a “BOP authorized standardized High Rise National Menu,” reviewed by the Bureau’s national dietician. Designated inmates wear a tucked-in shirt, with green pants and shirt in the visiting room; “[a]ll other inmates will wear orange jumpsuits.”

Health Services is on the seventh floor. Sick-call forms are collected Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, and you are either triaged upstairs that day or given a later call-out; missing a medical call-out can draw an incident report. There is a $2.00 co-pay, waived for referrals, chronic-condition follow-up, preventive care, emergencies, prenatal care, mental health, and substance abuse treatment. Our page on medical care in federal prison explains how to escalate when it stalls, and the Bureau’s patient care rules set the standard.

Dental care depends on status, and the handbook states the rule: “Non-sentenced inmates are only eligible for urgent care. Sentenced inmates, or non-sentenced inmates in BOP custody more than a year, are eligible for routine care and must request to be added to the national wait list.” Someone held here eleven months with a cracked molar gets urgent care and nothing else.

What do inspectors say about conditions at MCC Chicago?

The Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General has both inspected MCC Chicago on site, without warning, and published a report naming it as the sole subject, and an independent PREA audit in December 2025 found no unmet standard. On the Inspector General’s own count in May 2026, in its inspection of USP Canaan (E&I Report 26-055), the office has inspected fourteen Bureau institutions since 2023: seven individual facility inspections, six in the concurrent food service round, and an ongoing effort at FCI Berlin. MCC Chicago is one of the fourteen. The Bureau told the Inspector General in March 2025 that it runs 121 institutions.

The June 2024 food service inspection

Inspectors arrived unannounced at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, June 4, 2024, and stayed through Thursday, June 6, as one of six teams entering six institutions — one per Bureau region — at the same hour. The six were USP McCreary, FCI Marianna, FCC Pollock, MCC Chicago, FCC Allenwood, and FCI Mendota, chosen “based on their relative scores from the OIG’s prison inspection risk assessment tool, as well as the volume and nature of complaints submitted to the OIG regarding institution operations.” The results appeared on June 17, 2025, as E&I Report 25-062.

MCC Chicago came out well. “During our inspection,” the report says, “we found areas under the control of the Food Service Department to be clean and did not identify any obvious indications that the food served to inmates was unsafe,” and the summary records that “FCC Allenwood and MCC Chicago had the fewest deficiencies of the institutions we inspected.” That result came with qualifications.

• The kitchen was gone. “Due to broken water pipes and poor drainage that damaged the floor of MCC Chicago’s kitchen, the kitchen was undergoing a complete renovation with an anticipated cost of at least $700,000.” The Bureau had budgeted $300,000.
• The menu could not be cooked. All meals were being prepared in a temporary kitchen where “portable ovens were the only equipment available,” so “the institution could not always prepare and cook certain items required by the BOP’s National Menu. For example, without a stovetop or a cook kettle, food service employees and inmates could not prepare rice or beans and without a fryer, they could not deep-fry chicken.” Baked potatoes stood in for rice, oven-baked chicken for fried.
• Staffing. Food Service was at 87 percent — seven of eight posts filled, one of those seven working elsewhere in the building. The administrator described frequent compensatory hours; an employee “felt outnumbered in relation to the number of inmates they were required to supervise.” By May 2025 the Bureau reported all eight filled.
• Contraband. Nutmeg, which can intoxicate in quantity and which policy requires be locked away, “was stored in an unlocked container that could be accessed by inmates who work in food service.” The report prints a photograph. The Bureau replied that the institution no longer keeps nutmeg at all.
• Cameras. MCC Chicago was one of five of the six with no cameras inside its food warehouse — but “unlike the other institutions, MCC Chicago’s warehouse is located 10 miles from the institution and inmates do not work there, thus mitigating the risk.” The Bureau’s own freight listing sends parcels for this institution to a business center on South Laramie Avenue.

The renovation finished in November 2024, according to the Bureau: a new drainage system and floor, twelve ovens, a mixer, a dishwasher, four cook kettles, and a waste disposal system. Complaints about the food in 2024 reflected these conditions, which the Bureau reports it has since fixed.

The 2021 remote inspection

MCC Chicago is the named subject of Pandemic Response Report 21-053, published in March 2021. Its fieldwork ran from April 23 to May 1, 2020, by telephone interview and document review.

• “As of May 8, 2020, MCC Chicago inmates testing positive for COVID-19 approximated 18 percent (110 of 608) of the institution’s population.”
• The “high-rise architecture, with a combination of open dormitory units and surrounding units of cells for housing two to four inmates, created challenges for social distancing,” and in the two open dormitories “inmate beds are 3–4 feet apart with no barriers between.” From April 13, 2020, staff spent two weeks building floor-to-ceiling plexiglass walls to seal those units off and subdivide them.
• Of 199 MCC Chicago staff invited to the Inspector General’s survey, 62 responded. Among them 73 percent — 38 of the 52 who answered — said they needed more space to quarantine inmates, against 23 percent of staff across Bureau institutions; 69 percent named more staff to cover posts as an immediate need, against 39 percent Bureau-wide.
• The Special Housing Unit was used first for intake quarantine and then for medical isolation until April 21, 2020. The Federal Defenders told the Inspector General that may have discouraged people from reporting symptoms — and institution officials agreed, saying it “delayed and made it more difficult for medical staff to identify symptomatic inmates because inmates were reluctant to report symptoms.”
• With in-person legal visits suspended, “inmates were able to contact legal representatives using one of the eight iPads donated to the institution by the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Illinois.”

The report sums up the institution’s position: “because MCC Chicago houses predominantly arrestees and pretrial detainees, there is a constant introduction of new inmates from the community or transferred from local correctional and detention facilities.”

The December 2025 PREA audit

An independent auditor, Cassandra McGilbra of Corrections Consulting Services, was in the building on December 16–18, 2025, and signed her final report on January 29, 2026. The institution passed: two standards exceeded — 115.81 and 115.82, on medical and mental-health screening and access to emergency services — forty-three met, none unmet, no corrective action.

Designated capacity	686
Population on day one	516; average over 12 months, 502
Admissions in 12 months	2,331 — 2,009 stayed 72 hours or more, 932 stayed 30 days or more
Average length of stay	155 days
Age range	18 to 85
Buildings	1
Housing units	Recorded as 9 — and separately as 9 multiple-occupancy cell units plus 2 open dormitory units. No single-cell units
Segregation cells	22
Staff who may have inmate contact	190, with 16 hired in the previous year; 5 contractors and 22 volunteers
Accredited in the past three years	No

The housing-unit figures do not add up, so treat the total as unsettled. The audit also answers no on accreditation, which is not true of every Bureau institution. Its tick-box saying the facility has no video monitoring system conflicts with other records: the institution’s own supplement says the visiting room “will be monitored through electronic surveillance” and runs Special Housing Unit visits by live video, and the Inspector General reviewed camera footage here in 2024.

On the day the auditor arrived the institution held 126 people with limited English — roughly one in four — and 59 who had disclosed prior sexual victimization during risk screening. Sexual assault forensic examinations happen off site, at a local hospital. In the twelve months before the audit, under the Bureau’s sexual abuse prevention rules, there were no criminal investigations of sexual abuse or harassment, and two administrative investigations of inmate-on-inmate sexual abuse: one open, one unsubstantiated.

Staff prosecutions and the sexual-abuse record

A PREA audit covers twelve months; a prosecution and federal data cover longer periods.

On March 4, 2025, a federal grand jury in the Northern District of Illinois indicted Brittany Hall, a former MCC Chicago correctional officer, on five counts of sexual abuse of a ward and three counts of abusive sexual contact, alleging sexual acts with four inmates between about December 4 and 29, 2023; she had resigned after the investigation began. The Inspector General’s Chicago office and the FBI investigated. No public disposition had been reported as of September 2026, and an indictment is an allegation.

The Government Accountability Office published per-facility numbers in May 2026. In Improvements Needed to Prevent, Detect, and Address Sexual Abuse (GAO-26-107343), its appendices give Bureau data by institution for 2020 through 2024. MCC Chicago recorded 19 reported allegations of sexual abuse where the alleged perpetrator was another incarcerated person, and 17 where the alleged perpetrator was a Bureau employee. Neither number is a finding. GAO counts the first in the year the incident occurred and the second, as it says in terms, “in the year it was reported, not in the year the incident occurred.” They are two different measures of two different things and should not be added together. The largest total in the incarcerated-perpetrator table is 113, at USP Tucson; in the employee table it is 260, at FCI Dublin.

A case about medical care here is before the Supreme Court. In Watkins v. Mohan, No. 24-1151 (7th Cir. July 16, 2025), the Seventh Circuit reversed a dismissal by the Northern District of Illinois and held that a man’s claims about care at this institution “fall well within the right of action recognized by the Supreme Court in Carlson v. Green,” and that dismissal of his Federal Tort Claims Act claim was premature. He had been here as a pretrial detainee from October 2018, had hernia surgery at an outside hospital in June 2019, and alleged that staff called severe post-operative pain and swelling routine, refused the follow-up his surgeons ordered, and cleared him for transfer anyway. The court added in a footnote that on remand he might amend his complaint “to clarify that treatment of a federal pretrial detainee is governed by the Fifth Amendment rather than the Fourteenth.” The Solicitor General petitioned for certiorari; the docket in Mohan v. Watkins, No. 25-952, shows the case distributed for conference on June 11 and 18, 2026, with no order entered as of September 2026. Where negligence has caused injury, Federal Tort Claims Act claims run on their own deadlines under the Bureau’s tort claim rules.

MCC Chicago in the news

Recent news about MCC Chicago centers on a detainee’s motion for release over conditions, the 2025 visiting supplement, the Watkins medical-care appeal, the Inspector General’s food service inspection, and a staff indictment; the oldest item is a 2012 escape.

• August 2026 — Tommy Schaefer, awaiting a January 2027 trial over the 2014 Bali killing of a Chicago woman, moved for conditional release, telling the court that conditions at MCC Chicago were not adequate to manage his health problems.
• November 2025 — Institution Supplement CCC 5267.09F took effect, replacing the September 2024 visiting regulations.
• July 2025 — the Seventh Circuit revived a former detainee’s claims over medical care at this institution in Watkins v. Mohan; the Solicitor General sought Supreme Court review in February 2026.
• June 2025 — the Inspector General published the results of its unannounced June 2024 inspection of food service here.
• March 2025 — a former correctional officer was indicted on eight counts arising from alleged sexual acts with four inmates in December 2023.
• December 2012 — two men escaped from an upper floor by rope. One of them, Joseph Banks, is now at the federal supermax in Colorado.

Frequently asked questions about MCC Chicago

Problems at MCC Chicago: where we can help

Most problems at MCC Chicago are custody and deadline problems rather than program problems, and this institution’s own record points at the same handful of issues:

• The detention order itself — reopening under 18 U.S.C. § 3142(f) when the facts change, review by the district judge under § 3145(b), appeal under § 3145(c), or temporary release under § 3142(i). It is the only place a release decision can be made.
• Medical and dental care. Non-sentenced detainees here are entitled to urgent dental care only until they have been in Bureau custody a year; the Seventh Circuit revived claims in 2025 over post-surgical care at this institution, and the Supreme Court is being asked to take the case. See medical care in federal prison and, where negligence caused injury, Federal Tort Claims Act claims.
• Access to counsel — the 30-minute weekday legal call, unmonitored-call requests on form BP-A0148, Education Department scheduling for protected discovery, and legal-access requests from the Special Housing Unit, which here go to the SHU Lieutenant.
• Designation. The three-working-day window after sentencing is short, and the Statement of Reasons, a judicial recommendation, and any Public Safety Factor are argued before it opens, not after. See federal prison transfers and the Bureau’s designation rules. A correct designation is also what makes First Step Act time credits and RDAP reachable once the sentence begins.
• Sentence computation under § 3585(b), including custody credit that a records office has miscounted. See our early-release work.
• Special Housing Unit placements that outlast their justification, and disciplinary proceedings that follow a detainee to the institution they are designated to.
• Reporting and safety. A December 2025 audit found no unmet standard; GAO counted 19 reported allegations against incarcerated people here from 2020 to 2024, and 17 against employees. Reports go through the unit team, the administrative remedy program (see how to file a BP-9), or the Inspector General mailbox on TRULINCS.
• 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

• MCC Chicago, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026.
• Visiting Regulations, Institution Supplement CCC 5267.09F, Federal Bureau of Prisons, MCC Chicago, 2025. Replaced Institution Supplement CCC 5267.09E (2024).
• MCC Chicago Admission & Orientation Handbook, Federal Bureau of Prisons, MCC Chicago, 2022.
• MCC Chicago General Housing and Female Housing Commissary Order Forms, Federal Bureau of Prisons, MCC Chicago, 2022.
• Pretrial Detention Legal Access Handbook, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2024. Designated pretrial facilities, legal calls, discovery review, and legal access from the Special Housing Unit.
• Community Ties: Sending Money, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Deposit routes and wire posting times.
• Trust Fund/Deposit Fund Manual, Program Statement 4500.13, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Commissary spending limit.
• Inmate Security Designation and Custody Classification, Program Statement 5100.08, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2006, as amended in 2026.
• Inmate Telephone Regulations, Program Statement 5264.09, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Monthly minute allowance and call rules; replaced Program Statement 5264.08 (2008).
• First Step Act of 2018 – Time Credits: Procedures for Implementation of 18 U.S.C. § 3632(d)(4), Program Statement 5410.01, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2022, as amended in 2023. When time credits begin to accrue.
• Pretrial Inmates, Program Statement 7331.05, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2023, as amended in 2025.
• First Step Act Time Credits—Revisions, Federal Bureau of Prisons (Federal Register), 2026. Interim final rule, 91 Federal Register 55740, revising 28 C.F.R. § 523.42(a) effective September 30, 2026.
• First Step Act Approved Programs Guide, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Reentry Services Division, 2026. Programs by institution and the RDAP locations list.

Audits and inspections

• 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. Counts the Bureau institutions the Inspector General has inspected since 2023.
• Federal Prisons: Improvements Needed to Prevent, Detect, and Address Sexual Abuse (GAO-26-107343), U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2026. Reported allegations by institution, 2020–2024.
• PREA Audit Report: MCC Chicago, Corrections Consulting Services, LLC, 2026. Auditor Cassandra McGilbra.
• Concurrent Inspections of BOP Food Service Operations (Report 25-062), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2025.
• Report and Recommendations Concerning Access to Counsel at the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Pretrial Facilities, U.S. Department of Justice, 2023.
• Remote Inspection of Metropolitan Correctional Center Chicago (Pandemic Response Report 21-053), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2021.

Court records

• Mohan v. Watkins, No. 25-952 (docket), Supreme Court of the United States, 2026. Petition for certiorari.
• Watkins v. Mohan, No. 24-1151, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, 2025.
• Former BOP Correctional Officer Indicted for Sexual Abuse of a Ward and Abusive Sexual Contact, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2025. Brittany Hall’s indictment.
• United States v. Wilson, 503 U.S. 329, Supreme Court of the United States, 1992.
• United States v. Portes, 786 F.2d 758, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, 1986.
• Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, Supreme Court of the United States, 1979.

News and other sources

• Ex-Loretto Exec Anosh Ahmed Pleads Not Guilty on Fraud Charges, WTTW News, 2026.
• Tommy Schaefer, Accused With Heather Mack in Bali Suitcase Murder, Seeks Release From Custody, WTTW News, 2026.
• 18 U.S.C. § 3142(e)(1), (f), (i), Release or detention of a defendant pending trial, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).
• 18 U.S.C. § 3145(b)–(c), Review and appeal of a release or detention order, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).
• 18 U.S.C. § 3585(b), Calculation of a term of imprisonment, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).
• 18 U.S.C. § 3621(b), Imprisonment of a convicted person, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).
• 28 C.F.R. §§ 551.100–551.107, Pretrial Inmates, Code of Federal Regulations (Legal Information Institute).

Sources reviewed September 2026.

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