FCI Leavenworth (formerly USP Leavenworth), Kansas

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

FCI Leavenworth at a glance

FCI Leavenworth is a medium-security federal prison for men at 1300 Metropolitan Avenue in Leavenworth, Kansas, with an adjacent minimum-security satellite camp. It held 1,550 people on the Bureau of Prisons count published September 10, 2026 — 1,366 at the institution and 184 at the camp. Until April 4, 2024 the Bureau called it USP Leavenworth.

Official name	FCI Leavenworth (Federal Correctional Institution, Leavenworth)
BOP code	LVN
Security level	Medium; men · adjacent minimum-security satellite camp
Population	1,550 (as of September 2026) · 1,366 at the institution, 184 at the camp
Visiting	Institution: Saturday and Sunday, Monday for pretrial, Friday for immigration detainees, 8:00 a.m.–2:45 p.m. · Camp: Saturday and Sunday, 8:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m. · see visiting hours
Inmate mail	FCI: Inmate Name & Register Number · FCI Leavenworth · Federal Correctional Institution · P.O. Box 1000 · Leavenworth, KS 66048 Camp: Inmate Name & Register Number · FCI Leavenworth · Federal Correctional Institution · Satellite Camp · P.O. Box 1000 · Leavenworth, KS 66048
Send money	Lockbox · Western Union (code city FBOP, DC)
Phone	913-682-8700 · Fax 913-578-1010
Street address	1300 Metropolitan Avenue, Leavenworth, KS 66048 · Leavenworth County
BOP region	North Central
Housing	17 housing units; cellhouses
Special Housing Unit	Yes · video visiting only
RDAP	At the camp, not the institution
Camp	Yes · minimum security, adjacent

It is the only Bureau of Prisons institution in Kansas, it sits in the Bureau’s North Central Region, and it is one of five federal prisons designated under a February 2025 agreement to hold detainees for Immigration and Customs Enforcement — which is why its own visiting supplement sets aside a separate day of the week for immigration visits. The walls and most of the internet still say USP Leavenworth.

Three prisons called Leavenworth: which one is this?

This is the Bureau of Prisons institution at 1300 Metropolitan Avenue. Two other prisons sit in the same small Kansas city, one of them now holding immigration detainees under the same ICE field office as this one, and confusing them is the commonest mistake made about Leavenworth. Settle it first: it decides which locator you search, which address you write to and which number you call.

Prison	Run by	Where	How to find someone
FCI Leavenworth (this page)	Federal Bureau of Prisons	1300 Metropolitan Avenue; mail to P.O. Box 1000	BOP Inmate Locator; call 913-682-8700
Midwest Regional Reception Center	Owned by the Department of Homeland Security since August 2026; managed by CoreCivic under contract to ICE	100 Highway Terrace	ICE Online Detainee Locator System; call (913) 727-3246
United States Disciplinary Barracks	U.S. Army	Fort Leavenworth, the Army post north of the city	Neither federal locator. The Army holds its own records

The CoreCivic facility, and what happened to it

The Midwest Regional Reception Center is not a Bureau of Prisons prison and never has been. CoreCivic opened it in 1992 and ran it for the United States Marshals Service, mostly holding pretrial detainees. When the Justice Department declined to renew those contracts the company stopped holding anyone: the Kansas Court of Appeals recorded that “[a]s of January 1, 2022, CoreCivic entirely stopped housing detainees at the MRRC,” and that in March 2025 “CoreCivic’s own website listed the MRRC as being ‘currently inactive.’”

The zoning fight that followed ran for a year. CoreCivic applied to the City of Leavenworth on February 21, 2025 for a special use permit, telling the city the facility would “house approximately 1,000 detained noncitizens” held “approximately 51 days as they are processed through the immigration system, including through removal hearings held at the facility.” On March 13 it withdrew the application and said it did not need a permit. The City Commission passed Resolution No. B-2394 rescinding the facility’s grandfathered status; the city sued; and on June 4, 2025 a Leavenworth County district judge issued a temporary injunction.

The Kansas Court of Appeals affirmed on February 27, 2026, holding that CoreCivic’s Supremacy Clause defense failed because the city was enforcing zoning rules that “impose requirements on every entity regardless of its status as a contractor with the federal government.” The court added: “The temporary injunction does not represent a determination of the outcome of the lawsuit.” Two weeks later the city commission voted 4 to 1 to grant the permit, and the facility reopened as an ICE detention center. City of Leavenworth v. CoreCivic, Inc., No. 129,466 (Kan. Ct. App. Feb. 27, 2026).

Then the ownership changed. On August 5, 2026 CoreCivic announced it had sold the 1,033-bed facility “to the United States of America and its assigns, by and through the Department of Homeland Security” for $238.4 million, said it “currently expects to continue to operate” it under the existing ICE management contract, and added that it could “provide no assurance that it will continue to manage” it. The City of Leavenworth published its own statement noting it had had “no direct communication with DHS or ICE regarding the sale.”

None of that touches this page. The Midwest Regional Reception Center is not on the Bureau’s roster, and the BOP Inmate Locator will never find anyone held there: use ICE’s detainee locator, address mail to 100 Highway Terrace with the last four digits of the A-number, and call (913) 727-3246 rather than the Bureau’s number.

The Disciplinary Barracks is a third thing

The United States Disciplinary Barracks sits on Fort Leavenworth, the Army post immediately north of the city, and it is a military prison. The Army describes it as “the only maximum-security facility in the Department of War and the oldest correctional institution in the Federal system,” and it holds male service members convicted at court-martial. It has no connection to the Bureau of Prisons, and a person sentenced in a United States District Court does not go there.

That confusion explains why so many sources call this prison “Fort Leavenworth Prison.” Prisoners from the original Disciplinary Barracks built the federal penitentiary, on land the War Department deeded to the Justice Department in 1897. The two have been separate ever since, and the Bureau’s own directions make the geography plain: FCI Leavenworth is “on the right-hand side, just past Fort Leavenworth.” Past it, not on it.

Why the Bureau renamed USP Leavenworth in 2024

Because the name had been wrong for nearly twenty years. The Bureau announced the change on April 4, 2024 in a news item headed “Name Changes Approved for Seven FBOP Facilities.” Its Population Management and Capacity Planning Committee recommended it in January 2024 under Program Statement 1001.14, Naming Bureau Property; the Executive Team approved it in February; Congress was notified in March. One action redesignated six penitentiaries as correctional institutions — Leavenworth, Atlanta, Lewisburg, Lompoc, Marion and Yazoo City — while the seventh facility, FCI Morgantown, became a camp.

The Bureau said: “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.” At Leavenworth the underlying change is datable. The City of Leavenworth’s own record of the penitentiary says it “was the largest maximum-security prison in the United States until 2005 when it was downgraded to medium-security.” So: maximum-security penitentiary until 2005, medium-security institution from 2005, and the sign on the gate corrected nineteen years later.

The Bureau anticipates that the building itself will lag: its pages for renamed institutions carry a standing note that the facade may reflect the old name until a state historical survey has been completed. Also known as: USP Leavenworth, Leavenworth Penitentiary, the Big House, the Hot House. No “USP Leavenworth” record exists anywhere in the Bureau’s 165-record roster.

The rename left a live trap in the Bureau’s own paperwork. The Admission & Orientation handbook the institution issued in May 2026 — two years after the change — prints the incoming mail block as “U.S. Penitentiary, P.O. Box 1000, Leavenworth, KS 66048,” and requires an outgoing return address spelling out “U.S. Penitentiary” or “Federal Correctional Institution” rather than “FCI.” ICE’s own page for the institution gives the block the other way. Both reach the same post office box. The part that actually routes the letter is the register number, and mail without one comes back.

What is the security level at FCI Leavenworth?

The main institution is medium security. Beside it stands a minimum-security satellite camp. They share a post office box, a commissary contract and a warden, and they are entirely different places to serve a sentence.

The 2023 Prison Rape Elimination Act audit records the custody levels actually held here as Administrative, Medium and Minimum, across 17 housing units, with an age range of 19 to 82. “Administrative” is not a fourth security level; it reflects the pretrial, holdover and detainee populations described below. The audit put designed capacity at 1,341 and recorded that the facility had been over capacity at some point in the preceding twelve months.

Whether a particular person lands at the institution or the camp turns on his security point score and on whether any Public Safety Factor applies. A Public Safety Factor overrides the point total and keeps a man out of a camp however low he scores. Our guides to the intake process and to preparing for prison cover what happens on arrival and before a self-surrender date.

Arrival is not immediate placement. The May 2026 handbook says new arrivals “may be housed in the Special Housing Unit until they are seen before the Captain’s Review Panel,” which decides general-population suitability and single-cell need. Admission & Orientation runs in the first two weeks and must be completed within 30 days; a job assignment follows if the man has been medically cleared.

Who is held at FCI Leavenworth?

Four populations share one compound: men serving federal sentences, men awaiting trial, men in holdover status, and men detained for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That mix is unusual for a medium-security institution, and it changes almost everything downstream — which day your visit falls on, which commissary list applies, which schedule governs the move to the dining hall.

You can read the mix straight off the Bureau’s own documents. It publishes a separate pretrial commissary order form with its own possession limits. Its visiting supplement opens with a section headed “Pretrial/Holdover/Detainee Procedures.” Its daily movement schedule runs a separate pretrial line to the dining hall at 6:40 a.m. and again after dinner.

The immigration detention unit

FCI Leavenworth is one of five Bureau of Prisons facilities designated to hold ICE detainees under a memorandum of understanding signed on February 6, 2025, alongside FDC Miami, FDC Philadelphia, FCI Atlanta and FCI Berlin. Under that agreement the Bureau keeps the final say on who comes in, ICE posts at least two officers at each designated facility, and no female detainees are held in Bureau custody.

ICE maintains its own facility page for FCI Leavenworth, under its Chicago Field Office, listing the Bureau’s phone number, the Bureau’s post office box, and a Bureau mailbox — LVN-ICEscheduling-S@bop.gov — for case information requests. It states: “You can only visit a detainee at this facility, if the detainee has placed you on their visitor list and you have been cleared by BOP.” There is no walking up. The institution’s own supplement sets Friday aside for immigration visits.

The unit is small and the stays are short. ICE data covering the year to July 2025 put the average daily immigration population at Leavenworth at about 35 men, with an average stay of 25 days. People in ICE custody here live under Bureau of Prisons rules rather than ICE detention standards, which is a real difference: the Bureau’s regime on movement, property and discipline is stricter than most ICE facilities, and the men are held alongside people awaiting trial and serving sentences.

Who are the notable inmates at FCI Leavenworth?

No one currently held here can be named from the public record, and the lists that say otherwise are wrong. The Bureau’s own inmate records, for every name commonly attached to this prison, show two things that contradict almost every other page about Leavenworth.

Name	What the Bureau’s records show, September 2026	Case
Tom Petters	Not here. Register number 14170-041, currently held at FCI Milan, Michigan, projected release May 13, 2050	Minnesota businessman convicted in 2008 of wire fraud, mail fraud, conspiracy and money laundering in a $3.65 billion scheme; sentenced to 50 years
Michael Vick	Former. Register number 33765-183; Bureau records show his release on July 20, 2009 through RRM Raleigh, the Bureau’s North Carolina reentry office, not from this institution	NFL quarterback; pleaded guilty in 2007 in the Eastern District of Virginia to conspiracy in an interstate dogfighting enterprise
Antonio Fernandez	Cannot be confirmed. The locator returns eight men of that name, none at Leavenworth and none matchable to the Latin Kings figure directory sites list here	—

Tom Petters is the correction that matters most: he is at FCI Milan in Michigan, and a family planning a trip on the strength of a directory listing would drive to the wrong state.

The famous Leavenworth names belong to the penitentiary, not to the prison that exists now, and they are old enough that the Bureau’s locator — which reaches back to 1982 — cannot confirm them. The City of Leavenworth’s own visitor bureau lists Machine Gun Kelly, Carl Panzram, George “Bugs” Moran, Robert Stroud, Tom Pendergast and James Earl Ray among former inmates. That is a city tourism page, not a custody record. The historic Leavenworth inmate case files are held by the National Archives at Kansas City.

How do I find someone at FCI Leavenworth?

Start with the Bureau’s public Inmate Locator, which is free. Search by the eight-digit register number if you have it, because the number is exact and names are not: the locator matches the committed name on the judgment, not the name anyone actually uses. It covers everyone in federal custody since 1982: for someone still held it gives the facility and a projected release date, and for someone released it shows “Not in BOP Custody as of” and a date, with no facility.

The locator shows the prison by a short name, and at Leavenworth that short name is “Leavenworth FCI.” If you see anything else — another name, another city — the person has moved. See how register numbers work for what the digits mean and where the number comes from.

If the locator returns nothing he may be in state custody rather than federal, or in pretrial detention held for the U.S. Marshals Service somewhere the Bureau does not index. Or — and in Leavenworth this is the live one — he may be at the Midwest Regional Reception Center, in which case he is in ICE’s detainee locator, searchable by alien registration number.

How do I write to someone at FCI Leavenworth?

The institution and the camp share one post office box: the Bureau’s live address feed gives the same P.O. Box 1000 for “Inmate Mail/Parcels” and for “Inmate Mail/Parcels — Camp.” The register number, not the line naming the camp, routes the letter.

For someone at the FCI	For someone at the satellite camp
Inmate Name & Register Number FCI Leavenworth Federal Correctional Institution P.O. Box 1000 Leavenworth, KS 66048	Inmate Name & Register Number FCI Leavenworth Federal Correctional Institution Satellite Camp P.O. Box 1000 Leavenworth, KS 66048

Leavenworth’s incoming mail rules are stricter than most. The May 2026 handbook rejects mail on heavy bond, cardstock, parchment, wax, grid, carbon or transfer paper, on any paper that is not white, and in envelopes that are not white or manila. It rejects anything with glitter, stickers, lipstick, strong odors or stains. It rejects mail with no return address, which is “deemed voluntarily abandoned and will be destroyed.” And it says flatly: “Greeting cards are not authorized to be received.” A birthday card will not arrive.

At the FCI, publications come only from a publisher, book club or bookstore (at the camp, softcover books and magazines may come from any source; hardcovers and newspapers may not), and a man may keep no more than six magazines and five books, because everything has to fit in his locker. There is no mail service on weekends or holidays. For the rules that apply everywhere, see our guide to writing to someone in federal prison and the Bureau’s correspondence rules.

Legal mail is treated differently, but only when it is marked correctly. It is opened in front of the man it is addressed to and not read — provided the sender is clearly identified as an attorney on the envelope and the front carries the words “Special Mail — Open only in the presence of the inmate.” Without that, the handbook says, “the mail may be opened, read, and inspected.” Our page on attorney-client communication in the Bureau of Prisons covers the privilege question.

Two rules apply on the outgoing side. Every piece of mail leaving general population — “This includes legal mail” — must carry a TRULINCS mailing label. And outgoing legal mail has to be carried to the mail room in person during “Open House,” with an identification card. Never put money in a letter: funds that arrive at the facility mail room are returned to the sender.

How do I send money to someone at FCI Leavenworth?

Not to the prison. Money goes to the Bureau’s national lockbox in Iowa or through a wire service, and both need the committed name and register number exactly as they appear in the case file.

Route	Where it goes	How fast it posts
Postal money order or cashier’s check	Federal Bureau of Prisons Inmate’s Name Inmate’s Register Number P.O. Box 474701 Des Moines, Iowa 50947-0001	Enclose nothing but the negotiable instrument — no letters, no photographs
Western Union Quick Collect	Pay to: Bureau of Prisons. City code FBOP, state code DC. Sender’s account name must contain the register number and committed name	Two to four hours if received between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. Eastern; otherwise by 7:00 a.m. Eastern the next morning (the handbook says 9:00 a.m.)
MoneyGram	Not listed in this institution’s handbook, though the Bureau’s national manual treats it as an equivalent route	—

That MoneyGram row is not a drafting oversight. Program Statement 4500.13 describes the “Western Union Quick Collect/MoneyGram Program” as one national route. Leavenworth’s own May 2026 handbook tells families to use the lockbox or Western Union and does not mention MoneyGram at all. If you have used it at another institution, confirm with the trust fund office here first.

If the register number or name is wrong and the funds are accepted anyway, the handbook warns, “the funds will not be returned.” Our full guide to sending money to a federal prisoner compares every route and its cost.

Commissary spending here is capped at $460 a month, and at $25 a month for anyone delinquent under the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program, so money above the cap sits in the account.

What are the visiting hours at FCI Leavenworth?

Visiting at the institution runs 8:00 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. on four days a week, and which four depends on who you are visiting. General population visits on Saturday and Sunday. Pretrial visits are on Monday. Immigration detainee visits are on Friday. The camp runs its own hours, 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, first come, first served. This is from institution supplement LVN-5267.09G, dated June 12, 2026.

Two things in that supplement will cost you a visit if you do not know them. The visiting room stops processing visitors at 1:30 p.m. — arrive at two and you will not get in, even though the room stays open until 2:45. And on weekends and federal holidays the room closes from 9:30 a.m. until about 11:00 a.m. for the ten o’clock count, with no one in or out during that window, at the FCI and the camp alike.

Two current Bureau documents conflict. The Admission & Orientation handbook the institution issued in May 2026 — one month before the supplement — says the FCI visits “Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and all Federal Holidays” from 8:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., and makes no mention of Friday. The two also state the point system differently. The supplement is the later document and is the institution supplement that governs visiting, so the page above follows it. Call 913-682-8700 before you book anything.

Special Housing Unit visits and holdover visits are not in the visiting room at all: both run on the institution’s non-contact video visiting system, and a man in the Special Housing Unit may have one adult visitor for no more than two hours. Legal visits run seven days a week, ordinarily by appointment, and the supplement says an unscheduled legal visit “will be accommodated.”

Who can visit, and how many

• The visiting list holds a maximum of twenty people, of whom ten may be friends. A friend must have had a relationship with the man before he was incarcerated; an exception needs a written request to the unit team and a decision by the Warden.
• A maximum of five visitors at one time, children included. The May 2026 handbook adds a limit of three adults at any one time and gives worked examples; the June supplement gives only the figure of five.
• Each man gets 24 points a month, which is 24 hours of visiting: one point an hour Sunday through Saturday, two on a federal holiday. Points do not carry over, and a visit shorter than an hour is charged as a full hour.
• Pretrial and holdover men are approved at a minimum for immediate family — mother, father, stepparents, foster parents, brothers and sisters, spouse and children — and a holdover’s list is reviewed within seven working days of arrival. Everyone requesting to visit is run through NCIC.
• No one may visit two different men on the same occasion without an approved exception. Once you leave the visiting room you may not come back that day.
• When the room is crowded a two-hour maximum applies and terminations run first in, first out. The supplement adds: “Mileage will not be considered in this matter unless previously approved by the Captain.” The visiting room holds 58 people on the main floor.

What visitors can wear and bring

The dress code applies to all genders and all ages, and to legal visits too. Prohibited: sleeveless clothing of any kind, bib overalls, wrap-around skirts, shorts, camouflage, hooded or zippered tops, transparent clothing, anything low-cut or backless, cropped tops — and “a jacket cannot be worn to cover an unauthorized top.” No spandex, leggings, yoga pants, sweatpants, joggers or pajama pants. No scrubs. No tears, holes, cut-offs or slits, jeans included. Skirts and dresses must fall below the knee while standing. No open-toed or backless shoes. No hats, coats, sunglasses, gloves, scarves, bandanas or do-rags, except religious or medical headwear. Female visitors must wear a bra.

The color rules are where visitors get turned away. No khakis — that is the inmate uniform here. No plain yellow or orange tops or bottoms, no plain khaki or gray sweat tops, no white undershirt worn on its own. Children under ten may wear shorts, but no more than two inches above the knee. A refused visitor may change and return only “provided the Visiting Room is not at capacity”; staff “will not ‘hold’ a place.”

You may bring a clear wallet or clear change purse no bigger than a quart bag, holding no more than $20 in change. Paper currency is prohibited in the visiting room outright, which surprises people who have visited elsewhere. No cell phones, smart watches or any electronic device. Everything else goes in a locker at the front entrance, issued against your identification and returned when you hand the key back.

Infant care is tightly specified: pre-mixed formula and other liquids or foods in sealed original containers only, three clear nursing bottles, three diapers, wet wipes and a clear diaper bag. No toys, no books, no blankets. No car seats, no strollers and no wearable carriers — plan for carrying the baby. Nursing mothers check out a bathroom key from the visiting room officer.

Physical contact is limited to an embrace or a kiss “within the bounds of good taste” at the start and end of the visit, and only in what the supplement calls the “Embrace Box Area.” Nothing else, including handholding, and children may not sit on a man’s lap. Visitors sit in chairs against the wall with the man opposite, and “[a] table barrier will remain between visitors and inmates for the entire duration of the visit.”

Identification and screening

Everyone sixteen and over needs current photo identification: a driver’s license, a state identification card, a military identification or a passport. A foreign driver’s license is accepted here, which is not true everywhere. Credit cards, store cards, school identification, birth certificates, Social Security cards and bank cards are not.

Your photograph is taken at processing and compared against your identification every time you come back, everything carried in is x-rayed and searched, and refusing a search means the visit is denied. Children under sixteen must be supervised throughout, and a disruptive child can end the visit. On how screening rules are applied generally, see searches, shakedowns and contraband; on the system-wide visiting rules, see federal prison visitation and the Bureau’s visiting regulations.

One line applies to the man, not the visitor, and explains a delay at the end: “All inmates exiting the visitation area will be body scanned before returning to their assigned unit.”

Getting to FCI Leavenworth

The institution’s own directions start from Kansas City. Take Interstate 29 north to the Platte City exit, turn left, and follow the road through Platte City. After the Platte River bridge a sign directs you to the Leavenworth turn-off, Highway 92. The prison is about twelve miles west of Platte City; once you cross the blue bridge it is on the right-hand side of Metropolitan Avenue, just past Fort Leavenworth. For the camp, stay on Metropolitan past the institution, take the Santa Fe exit on the right, turn right at the stop sign, and the camp is the next right.

There is no public transport. The supplement says so in terms — “There is no metropolitan mass transit available, however, taxis and rental cars are available throughout the metro area” — so budget for a car. Park only in marked visitor parking; accessible spaces in staff lots need a current permit displayed. On schedule changes the supplement sends families to the Bureau’s facility page for this institution, which it says will carry notice “of any deviations from normal visiting procedures.”

How do phone calls and email work at FCI Leavenworth?

Calls go out, never in. The man places the call to a number on his approved list, which holds up to 30 numbers, and a single call should generally not exceed 15 minutes, with a 30-minute wait before the next. Before he can call at all he has to register his voice on the TRUFONE voice-recognition system; until that is done no call will connect, which is why a newly arrived man may go silent for a few days.

On the monthly allowance, two Bureau documents used to disagree and the difference was 210 minutes. Leavenworth’s May 2026 handbook says twice that “[i]nmates are only authorized to make up to 510 minutes of calls per month.” National policy has now caught up with it: Program Statement 5264.09, dated September 3, 2026, rescinded the 2008 edition and sets the same 510 minutes per calendar month, of which 300 are free to anyone eligible for First Step Act telephone incentives; a man who exhausts those 300 may purchase the remaining 210. Handbook and program statement now agree, and the 2008 policy’s extra 100 minutes in November and December did not survive its rescission. Immigration detainees here were separately reported in August 2025 as limited to 300.

Phones run Monday to Friday from 6:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., but only two windows are full use: 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. On weekends and on holidays they are open throughout. A man in the Special Housing Unit with no telephone restriction gets one fifteen-minute call every thirty days. Calls are recorded around the clock, and three-way calling is detected and disciplined. Our guide to federal inmate phone calls covers the national rules and the costs.

Email runs on TRULINCS, which families reach through CorrLinks, at five cents a minute; it is text only and a man may hold 100 contacts. Three failed log-in attempts lock the account, and locked accounts are “normally unlocked daily, excluding weekends and holidays” — so a Friday-night lockout costs the whole weekend.

Email with a lawyer is not privileged. Leavenworth’s handbook permits attorney numbers and addresses on the contact list “with the understanding these calls/e-mails are subject to monitoring.” An unmonitored attorney call must be arranged in advance through the unit team, and the supplement adds a clause worth remembering after a lockdown: men “will be able to request legal calls from unit team employees to contact legal counsel as soon as it is safely possible after a facility issue or other disruptive events.” See CorrLinks and TRULINCS.

What can people buy at the FCI Leavenworth commissary?

The monthly spending limit is $460, stated in the institution’s own May 2026 handbook. Many sources still say $360. That figure is obsolete: Program Statement 4500.13, dated May 7, 2026, records the increase from $360 to $460 and adds $50 more during the November and December holiday period, in effect for no more than one validation period. Stamps, over-the-counter medications, vitamins, copy cards, footwear, mattresses and a secured media device are excluded from the limit.

One wrinkle for anyone quoting the handbook in a filing: it prints the correct $460 figure but attributes it to “Program Statement 4500.12,” the manual the May 2026 edition superseded. The number is right; the authority cited for it is not.

Anyone delinquent under the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program is cut to $25 a month, cannot work for UNICOR and cannot earn performance pay above maintenance level. That consequence is decided at the unit team, not by a court.

Sales run Monday through Wednesday, general population from 10:45 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. and food service workers from 6:15 to 7:10 a.m. A man shops once a week on the day set by the last two digits of his register number, and his limit revalidates on the day set by the fifth digit. Once the receipt is signed and he has left the window the sale is final.

The Bureau publishes three order forms for this one institution, all revised in June 2026: the general list, a pretrial list with possession limits as well as purchase limits, and a Special Housing Unit list. The last is one page long and shows what a month in segregation buys: a single 3-in-1 soap, shampoo and conditioner at $1.30, marked “DO NOT SUB,” and one deodorant at $3.90.

On the general list, stamps are capped at 20 at 78 cents each, and stamps, copy cards and photo tickets “must be verbally asked for at the window first.” Category caps run to 24 soups, 12 candies, ten sauces, eight cookies, six razors and five coffees. The expensive items are a tablet at $141.70, a G-Shock watch at $99.45 and a digital radio at $68.90. And then the writing shelf: a yellow legal pad at $1.50, typing paper at $1.95, legal file folders at $2.50 and a correction ribbon at $8.55. Typewriter ribbons are still stocked here in 2026.

What programs are available at FCI Leavenworth?

RDAP and drug treatment

The Residential Drug Abuse Program at Leavenworth runs at the camp, not at the institution. The Bureau’s own RDAP location list, printed inside the August 2026 First Step Act Approved Programs Guide and dated June 4, 2026, names “SCP Leavenworth” — the satellite camp. That list totals 57 programs at 50 locations and supersedes the older standalone list showing 65 at 53. For a man designated to the medium-security institution who needs RDAP, this is the fact that shapes the whole sentence: the program is on the other side of the fence, and getting to it is a transfer question.

The timing rule is local and narrow. Leavenworth’s handbook says a man must “have a PRD that is 22 months or more away but no more than 48 months on their earliest release method” to be transferred or interviewed for RDAP. Miss that window in either direction and the interview does not happen. Under 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e) completion can take up to a year off a sentence for a non-violent offense, and it requires the community transition component as well as the unit-based one.

The psychology department is staffed for the work: a Chief Psychologist, an Advanced Care Level Psychologist, two staff psychologists, two Drug Abuse Program Coordinators, eight Residential Drug Treatment Specialists and one Non-residential Drug Treatment Specialist, open weekdays 7:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. by appointment, with an on-call psychologist after hours. Drug Abuse Education and a non-residential program are also offered, and the daily schedule runs a medication-assisted treatment line at midday.

Education and vocational training

GED and English-as-a-second-language classes run in English and Spanish, with 240 mandatory instructional hours for anyone without a verified high school diploma. Literacy programming generally begins within 120 days of arrival, waitlist permitting, and men within five years of release get priority. Completing the GED or ESL carries a $25 commissary award. Without a diploma a man cannot be paid above pay grade 4 unless the Supervisor of Education recommends an exemption after 480 hours of effort.

Adult Continuing Education runs on weekday evenings from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. in two- and four-week blocks, and the course list includes commercial driver’s license preparation. Post-secondary study is self-funded through accredited correspondence programs. Vocational training and Department of Labor apprenticeships run through the Apprenticeship Coordinator. Our guides to prison education and vocational training set out how these tracks work across the system.

One scheduling detail here is unusual and easy to use. The Education Department runs a Saturday out-count, 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.: a man signs up in the Education main office at 2:00 p.m. on Friday and can then stay in the leisure library straight through the ten o’clock Saturday count. On Sundays Education is closed and Recreation runs an auxiliary leisure library. The electronic law library sits in Education, so a man who needs it on a Saturday has to have remembered on Friday afternoon.

Faith-based and reentry programming

Religious Services posts a chapel schedule of the faiths that meet, and staff chaplains work with contract and volunteer representatives of other traditions; religious diets, holiday observances and crisis intervention all run through the chaplain’s office. Suicide-watch companion work is open to men with no 100-series incident report in three years who have been here at least twelve months and are not in financial-responsibility, drug-education or GED refusal status.

The Bureau’s August 2026 guide lists which programs are approved to be offered at each institution, and approval is not delivery: whether a class is running is a question for the unit team. The guide’s programs-by-institution table marks Leavenworth for 27 evidence-based recidivism reduction programs and 35 productive activities, including Anger Management, Criminal Thinking, Resolve, Seeking Safety, Threshold, Post Secondary Education and Federal Prison Industries. But the same guide contradicts itself about one: the narrative page for the residential Life Connections Program names five institutions and Leavenworth is not among them, while the table marks it here. The narrative page is the half the Bureau itself quotes. Ask the unit team in writing and keep the answer.

Halfway house and home confinement placement runs through the reentry office for the release district; for Kansas, RRM Kansas City.

What is daily life like at FCI Leavenworth?

The day is built around counts and five-minute controlled moves, and the vocabulary in the schedule tells you what kind of building this is. Men move from “the Institutional Flats” to “2nd/3rd Floor Rec” by cellhouse — CCH-3, ACH-2, ACH-3 — which is the language of a 1903 penitentiary, not a modern campus.

	Weekdays	Weekends and holidays
Breakfast mainline	6:30 a.m. cellhouse; 6:40 a.m. pretrial; 6:45 a.m. general population	6:30 a.m. cellhouse; 6:40 a.m. pretrial; 6:45 a.m. general population
Institutional stand-up count	4:00 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.	10:00 a.m., 4:00 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.
Lunch mainline	10:45 a.m.	11:10 a.m., after the count clears at 10:50
Medication-assisted treatment line	12:00 noon	12:10 p.m.
Recreation yard	7:30–10:30 a.m., 12:30–3:00 p.m., 5:00–8:30 p.m.	7:30–9:45 a.m., 11:00 a.m.–3:45 p.m., 5:00–8:30 p.m.
Institution recall, all return to units	8:30 p.m., with the pill line

Schedules move; read this as the shape of the day.

The 2023 PREA audit counted 17 housing units. Recreation is unusually broad for a medium: hobby craft in art, beading, ceramics, crochet, leather and painting; wellness programs including Walk With Ease, Managing Your Diabetes and yoga at two levels; and unstructured basketball, handball, soccer, bocce ball, horseshoes, pickleball, chess, daily movies and music. The 2nd and 3rd floor recreation areas open at 6:00 a.m. on weekends, ninety minutes before the yard.

Health services carry a $2.00 co-pay for sick call, after-hours care and anything requested through a staff member; there is none for a chronic care appointment the provider schedules. Sick call is held at the institution Monday through Thursday at 7:30 a.m. and at the camp Tuesday through Friday at 6:30 a.m., never on weekends, and a man may sign up for medical or dental on a given day, not both. The handbook says: “If you fail to show up for the scheduled callouts two times in a row, the appointment will be canceled as a presumed refusal for services.” See medical care in federal prison for how to push back when that happens.

What do inspectors say about conditions at FCI Leavenworth?

Very little, and none of it recently. The DOJ Office of the Inspector General has not conducted an on-site inspection of this facility. Nor has the District of Columbia’s Corrections Information Council, whose reports are the only independent account of conditions some federal institutions have ever had, ever come here. The last independent examination of any kind was a Prison Rape Elimination Act audit whose on-site visit took place in May 2023, and its scope is sexual safety, not conditions generally.

The most detailed public account of how this prison is run in 2026 is therefore not an inspection at all, but a warden’s letter answering a coalition of civil rights lawyers about one small unit.

The 2023 PREA audit

An independent auditor, Lynni O’Haver, subcontracted by PREA Auditors of America, was on site from May 23 to 25, 2023; the final report is dated December 7, 2023. It is captioned “USP Leavenworth,” because it predates the rename by ten months. It passed, with 45 standards met, none exceeded and none unmet. It is also the most detailed public description of the physical plant and the population that exists.

Designed capacity	1,341
Population reported in the pre-audit questionnaire	1,841
Over capacity at any point in the prior 12 months	Yes
Population on day one of the on-site audit	1,582
Inmate housing units	17
Custody levels held	Administrative, Medium, Minimum
Age range	19 to 82
Limited English proficient, day one	28
Disclosed prior sexual victimization at risk screening, day one	224

Those population numbers are answers to different questions; the 1,341 designed capacity is the one to hold on to, because every other figure in the table is larger than it.

Two findings deserve to travel with any citation of the pass. In the twelve months before the audit the facility reported twelve allegations of sexual abuse — ten inmate-on-inmate and two staff-on-inmate — and none of sexual harassment. All twelve went to administrative investigation and none to criminal investigation. Yet the report’s own outcomes table records zero in every column: zero ongoing, zero unfounded, zero unsubstantiated, zero substantiated. Twelve allegations, twelve files the auditor says she reviewed, and no recorded result for any of them.

The second is about cameras. The auditor observed convex mirrors and security cameras throughout the compound. But the facility’s own pre-audit questionnaire “indicated the facility has not updated or installed video monitoring and electronic surveillance since the last PREA audit.” In a building whose cellhouses date from between 1906 and the mid-1920s, that is a fact about sightlines.

Conditions in the immigration unit

In May and June 2025 a coalition including the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project wrote to the warden describing unsanitary and crowded quarters, extended lockdowns, delayed and costly medical treatment, restricted family contact, no access to religious services, and attempted suicides among the men held for ICE.

Warden Crystal Carter answered on June 20, 2025, and the answer conceded a good deal. The prison eliminated a $2 fee that people in ICE custody had been charged for certain health visits and ordered staff to reverse the charges already taken; created medical request slips in Spanish; added law library resources that, in the reporting of the response, ICE itself had failed to provide; and implemented new recreation hours. Carter also recorded one lockdown of 72 hours in the unit and another of more than eight.

The $2 medical co-pay was removed for men in immigration custody; the May 2026 handbook still charges it to every sentenced man at this institution for sick call, after-hours care and any care requested through a staff member. The same building, the same clinic, two different rules.

The federal docket in Kansas reflects the pressure. Between August 2025 and March 2026 the District of Kansas docketed a steady run of habeas petitions naming the Leavenworth warden as respondent — among them Manago v. Carter, No. 5:25-cv-03183 (filed September 3, 2025) and Sidikov v. Carter, No. 5:26-cv-03041 (filed March 5, 2026). Those are filings, not rulings; a petition establishes only that the question was put.

An earlier petition has been decided on appeal, and it is the most useful decision about this prison for anyone counting First Step Act time. In Harris v. Warden, FCI – Leavenworth, No. 25-3086 (10th Cir. Apr. 28, 2026) (unpublished), a man held here argued that his time credits should have started when he was sentenced in April 2021 rather than when he reached his designated prison that November — the start point in 28 C.F.R. § 523.42(a) until that clause is deleted, effective September 30, 2026 (91 Fed. Reg. 55740). The Tenth Circuit did not decide that question — it said it “has yet to pass upon” it — and affirmed on a narrower ground: he had not shown that he actually participated in any qualifying programming, and credits are earned by participation rather than by the passage of time. Keep the paperwork that proves participation.

What the Inspector General has and has not done here

The Inspector General’s staff have been inside this prison, twice, but not to inspect it. Leavenworth was one of nine facilities visited for the 2014 audit of the Bureau’s procurement of x-ray screening equipment (Report 14-27), where it appears as “United States Penitentiary (USP) Leavenworth.” It was also examined in the review of the UNICOR electronic-waste recycling program, which looked at “staff and inmate exposures to toxic metals, primarily cadmium and lead,” with fieldwork from November 2006 to February 2009 (OIG report E2006005). Both are Bureau-wide reviews that happen to include a stop here; neither makes a finding about conditions, and both are old.

For scale: on the Inspector General’s own count in May 2026, in Report 26-055, it had conducted inspections at 14 Bureau institutions since 2023 — seven individual facility inspections, six in its concurrent review of food service operations, and an ongoing effort at FCI Berlin. Leavenworth is not one of the fourteen, and it is not on the Inspector General’s list of inspections under way.

Two Inspector General press releases from January and February 2022, about correctional officers who pleaded guilty to smuggling contraband, are filed against Leavenworth in the Bureau-code indexes and are sometimes repeated as misconduct at this prison. Both describe officers at the “Leavenworth Detention Center, a privately run, maximum-security federal prison” — the CoreCivic facility. They are not about the Bureau of Prisons institution.

The new prison rising next door

A replacement campus has been under construction immediately east of the existing prison since October 2023, and the contractor says it is finished to the point of certification. Anyone with a relative here should know it exists, because it will eventually change where he lives and possibly where he is.

Congress appropriated $532 million. At the groundbreaking on October 30, 2023, Senator Jerry Moran said the penitentiary’s “internal components, the mechanical, electrician, and plumbing have long ago reached their end of useful life,” and “the existing facility was built at a time when philosophies of incarceration were different than they are today.” The design-build contractor, Clark Construction, describes 23 buildings totalling about 630,000 square feet across a 200-acre campus; reporting on its LEED Silver certification in September 2026 breaks the beds down as a 1,152-bed medium-security institution and a 256-bed camp, staffed by about 340 people.

The new campus is designed for 1,408 people. The Bureau’s count for September 10, 2026 is 1,550. If those numbers hold, roughly 140 men will not fit, and in the Bureau the way people stop fitting is a transfer. The Bureau has announced nothing of the kind — but a man with a reason to stay near Kansas City should be raising designation and Management Variable arguments with his unit team now, not after a list appears.

The funding is no longer settled either. The Justice Department’s fiscal 2027 buildings and facilities submission to Congress proposes canceling “$40.0 million from the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Leavenworth construction project.”

Until the Bureau says otherwise, nothing about your mail or your visit changes. The roster still gives the address as 1300 Metropolitan Avenue and the mailing address as P.O. Box 1000, and the population is still reported as a single facility.

The old penitentiary, dated

The history here is famous and almost entirely irrelevant to a man designated to Leavenworth in 2026. It is set out because a family reading about Machine Gun Kelly should know they are reading about a different institution in all but the stone.

• 1897 — by special act of Congress the reservation is deeded by the War Department to the Justice Department to build a federal penitentiary at Leavenworth.
• 1903 — military prisoners from the original Disciplinary Barracks, who did the first phase of construction, become the first prisoners incarcerated there.
• 1906 — the first cellhouse opens.
• mid-1920s — the penitentiary is completed. The wall runs 3,030 feet, stands 40 feet high and goes 40 feet below ground, enclosing almost 23 acres.
• 1930 — Carl Panzram is hanged at the penitentiary.
• 2005 — Leavenworth, until then the largest maximum-security prison in the United States, is downgraded to medium security.
• 2023 — ground is broken on a $532 million replacement.
• April 4, 2024 — the name catches up: USP Leavenworth becomes FCI Leavenworth.

FCI Leavenworth in the news

Recent news about FCI Leavenworth centers on the private immigration facility across town and on the prison’s own immigration unit; older items concern the 2024 rename and the deaths the Bureau has reported here. Items about this institution, newest first:

• March 10, 2026 — after a year of litigation the Leavenworth City Commission votes 4 to 1 to grant CoreCivic a special use permit, clearing the way for the Midwest Regional Reception Center to reopen for ICE.
• February 27, 2026 — the Kansas Court of Appeals affirms the injunction that had kept CoreCivic closed, holding that the city could rescind a grandfathered special use after a discontinuance of more than twelve months.
• January 31, 2026 — the Bureau reported that Leslie Bruce Larcade, 61, “was found unresponsive” here at approximately 12:15 a.m., that responding employees “initiated life-saving measures” while “life-saving efforts continued,” and that he was “subsequently pronounced deceased by EMS personnel.” He was serving a 360-month sentence from the Western District of Arkansas for conspiracy to commit kidnapping and had been at FCI Leavenworth since August 12, 2025. The Federal Bureau of Investigation was notified.
• August 1, 2025 — the warden’s response to civil rights lawyers is reported: the prison eliminates the $2 medical fee for men in ICE custody, reverses past charges, adds Spanish-language request forms and law library resources, and records two lockdowns in the immigration unit.
• February 6, 2025 — the Bureau of Prisons and ICE sign a memorandum of understanding designating five federal prisons, FCI Leavenworth among them, to hold male immigration detainees.
• April 4, 2024 — renamed. USP Leavenworth becomes FCI Leavenworth in a seven-facility action.
• January 2021 to May 2022 — the Bureau posted four news releases reporting the deaths of people held at USP Leavenworth and its satellite camp, as the institution was then named; the Bureau’s releases are listed on its press release page.

Frequently asked questions about FCI Leavenworth

Problems at FCI Leavenworth: where we can help

The problems that recur at this institution are visible in its own records. Four populations share one nineteenth-century compound, the programs a man needs are often on the other side of the fence, and the Bureau’s paperwork for this prison contradicts itself on the questions that matter most. These are the issues that come up here:

• Getting to the camp. RDAP at Leavenworth runs at the satellite camp, and the transfer window is narrow: a projected release date between 22 and 48 months out. A Public Safety Factor or a stale Management Variable can close the door. Our guides to federal prison transfers and to security designation and custody classification explain what is arguable.
• Immigration detention inside a Bureau prison. A man held here for ICE lives under Bureau rules, is counted, moved and disciplined like a sentenced prisoner, and cannot be visited without BOP clearance. The 2025 correspondence with this warden shows what changed when lawyers pressed, and what did not.
• First Step Act time credits — whether they are being earned, calculated and applied, and whether a program the Bureau’s own guide contradicts itself about is actually running. See First Step Act time credits.
• Medical care that stops before it starts. Sick call runs four mornings a week, one request a day, medical or dental but not both — and two missed call-outs in a row are recorded as a refusal of services, which turns a transport delay into a closed file. Our pages on medical care in federal prison, on medical designations and care levels and on Federal Tort Claims Act claims set out the routes.
• Financial responsibility. Delinquency here means a $25 monthly commissary limit, no UNICOR work and no performance pay above maintenance level, and it is decided at the unit team. See the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program.
• Disciplinary proceedings that threaten good conduct time, and Special Housing Unit placements that outlast their justification. At Leavenworth the SHU also means one adult visitor by video, two hours, and a single fifteen-minute phone call every thirty days.
• Halfway house and home confinement placement, which follows the release district (for Kansas, RRM Kansas City).
• Compassionate release under the Bureau’s reduction-in-sentence policy, sentence computation errors, and the administrative remedy process that has a clock on every rung and that a court will ask about before it reads anything else.
• 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 Leavenworth, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The Bureau’s facility page, with the address, contact details, region and population.
• Visiting Regulations, Institution Supplement LVN-5267.09G, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Visiting days and hours, the point system, visitor limits, the dress code, identification, screening, infant care, directions, and Special Housing Unit and holdover video visiting.
• FCI Leavenworth Admission and Orientation Handbook, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Intake, the daily movement schedule, commissary rules and limits, telephone and TRULINCS, mail and publications, health services, education, psychology and RDAP.
• FCI Leavenworth Commissary List, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Prices and category caps.
• FCI Leavenworth Pre-Trial Commissary Order Form, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The separate list for men awaiting trial, with possession limits as well as purchase limits.
• FCI Leavenworth SHU Commissary Order Form, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The one-page segregation list.
• RRM Kansas City, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The reentry office for Kansas and the districts it serves.
• Death at FCI Leavenworth, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The release reporting the death of a man held here on January 31, 2026.
• Press Releases, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The Bureau’s list of news releases, including the four it posted about deaths here between January 2021 and May 2022.
• Name Changes Approved for Seven FBOP Facilities, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2024. The April 2024 rename and the committee process behind it.
• Naming Bureau Property, Program Statement 1001.14, Federal Bureau of Prisons. The naming authority the Bureau cites for the rename; it is not posted on the Bureau’s policy page.
• Trust Fund/Deposit Fund Manual, Program Statement 4500.13, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The $460 monthly commissary limit, the exclusions, and the Western Union and MoneyGram routes.
• Inmate Telephone Regulations, Program Statement 5264.09, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Replaced Program Statement 5264.08 (2008).
• Community Corrections Center (CCC) Utilization and Transfer Procedure, Program Statement 7310.04, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 1998. Halfway house referral by release district.
• First Step Act Approved Programs Guide, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Reentry Services Division, 2026. Program availability by institution, the Life Connections detail page, and the RDAP locations list that names the satellite camp.

Audits and inspections

• PREA Facility Audit Report: USP Leavenworth, PREA Auditors of America, 2023. On-site audit of May 23–25, 2023 by Lynni O’Haver; capacity, housing units, custody levels, population characteristics, allegation and investigation data, and video monitoring.
• Inspection of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ U.S. Penitentiary Canaan, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2026. Report 26-055, which counts the Bureau institutions the Inspector General has inspected since 2023.
• Audit of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ September 2011 Procurement of X-Ray Equipment, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2014. Report 14-27; Leavenworth was one of nine facilities visited.
• Staff Perceptions of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Management of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic: A Follow-Up Survey of BOP Staff, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2021. Report 21-126, the staff survey.
• A Review of Federal Prison Industries’ Electronic-Waste Recycling Program, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2010. Staff and inmate exposure to cadmium and lead, with fieldwork that included this institution.

Court records

• Harris v. Warden, FCI – Leavenworth, No. 25-3086 (10th Cir.), U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, 2026. Unpublished; First Step Act time credits are earned by participation, and the court expressly reserved the question when eligibility begins.
• Harris v. Warden, No. 5:25-cv-03006 (D. Kan.), U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas, 2025. The docket below.
• City of Leavenworth v. CoreCivic, Inc., No. 129,466, Kansas Court of Appeals, 2026. Affirming the temporary injunction; the history of the CoreCivic facility from 1992, Resolution No. B-2394, and the Supremacy Clause holding.
• City of Leavenworth v. CoreCivic, Inc., No. 2:25-cv-02169 (D. Kan.), 2025 WL 1474124, U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas, 2025. Dismissed for want of subject-matter jurisdiction.

News and other sources

• Leavenworth Officials Approve Permit for CoreCivic to Reopen Prison, Kansas Reflector, 2026. The March 2026 commission vote.
• FCI Leavenworth, Clark Construction, 2026. The replacement campus: 23 buildings, about 630,000 square feet on 200 acres, 1,152 institution beds and 256 camp beds, and its LEED Silver certification.
• City of Leavenworth Statement Regarding Sale of Midwest Regional Reception Center, City of Leavenworth, Kansas, 2026.
• CoreCivic Sells Two Additional Detention Facilities, CoreCivic, Inc., 2026. Exhibit 99.1 to the company’s filing: the sale of the 1,033-bed Midwest Regional Reception Center to the United States through the Department of Homeland Security for $238.4 million.
• Federal Prison System Buildings and Facilities FY 2027 Performance Budget Congressional Submission, U.S. Department of Justice, 2026. The proposed cancellation of $40.0 million from the construction project.
• FCI Leavenworth, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 2026. The detention facility page, under the Chicago Field Office, with visiting and mail procedures.
• Midwest Regional Reception Center, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 2026. The detention facility page for the separate CoreCivic-run facility.
• Federal Leavenworth Prison Modifies Conditions for Migrants After Letters Reveal Squalor, Kansas Reflector, 2025. Warden Crystal Carter’s June 2025 response, the immigration population and length of stay, and the lockdowns.
• Males Detained by ICE to Be Housed in Federal Prisons, New Memo Says, ABC News, 2025. The February 2025 memorandum of understanding.
• Kansas Leaders Break Ground on New Leavenworth Penitentiary, FOX4 Kansas City, 2023. The $532 million appropriation and the remarks of Senator Jerry Moran.
• United States Federal Penitentiary, Leavenworth Convention and Visitors Bureau, 2026. The city’s own record of the 1897 transfer, the 1903, 1906 and mid-1920s construction, the wall dimensions, the 2005 downgrade to medium security and the former inmates it lists.
• First Step Act Time Credits—Revisions, 91 Fed. Reg. 55,740, Federal Register, 2026. Interim final rule effective September 30, 2026.
• 18 U.S.C. § 3621(e), Imprisonment of a convicted person, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).
• 28 C.F.R. § 523.42, Earning First Step Act Time Credits, Code of Federal Regulations (Legal Information Institute).
• 28 C.F.R. § 540.71, Procedures, Code of Federal Regulations (Legal Information Institute).

Sources reviewed September 2026.

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