Federal Correctional Institution, Atlanta
The Federal Correctional Institution, Atlanta is a low-security United States federal prison for male inmates in Atlanta, Georgia. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice. The facility also has a satellite prison camp for minimum-security male inmates, a detention center for male pretrial inmates, and also has an additional high and/or maximum security detention center unit .
History
In 1899, President William McKinley authorized the construction of a new federal prison in Atlanta, Georgia.Georgia Congressman Leonidas F. Livingston advocated placing the prison in Atlanta. William S. Eames, an architect from St. Louis, Missouri; and United States Attorney General John W. Griggs, on April 18, 1899, traveled to Atlanta to select the prison site.
Construction was completed in January 1902 and the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary opened with the transfer of six convicts from the Sing Sing Correctional Facility in upstate New York. They were the beneficiaries of the Three Prisons Act of 1891, which established penitentiaries in Leavenworth, Kansas; Atlanta, Georgia; and McNeil Island, Washington. The first two remain open today, the third closed in 1976. The Atlanta site was the largest Federal prison, with a capacity of 3,000 inmates. Inmate case files presented "mini-biographies of men confined in the penitentiary. Prison officials recorded every detail of their lives - their medical treatments, their visitors, their letters to and from the outside world"
The main prison building was designed by the St. Louis, Missouri architect firm of Eames & Young, which also designed the main building at the United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth. It encompassed and had a capacity of 1200 inmates. The facility was subsequently renamed the United States Penitentiary, Atlanta when US government created the Federal Bureau of Prisons in 1930.
In the 1980s, USP Atlanta was used as a detention center for Cuban refugees from the Mariel boatlift who were ineligible for release into American society.
USP Atlanta was one of several facilities, including the Federal Transfer Center, Oklahoma City, that were used to house prisoners who are being transferred between prisons.