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Security levels

Where you land changes a lot

You could have the same sentence as another person and be treated drastically different. You could have the same charge as someone in another facility and have a different experience. The difference is the facility.

Doing time at a low Facility-specific guides

One level is written up in full so far. The rest is below, and honestly marked.

First, the honest part

What I can and cannot tell you

I did eighteen months at a low. That is the level I can write about from the inside, and it is the one with a full guide. While I have talked to plenty of people who were at mediums and penitentiaries, writing a guide to a USP from a low would be exactly the kind of secondhand confidence I openly argue against.

Having said, the low guide is complete. The rest of this page is rather structural stuff, which is knowable from policy and from the facility-specific guides. I'm honest where the lived detail is missing. If you did time at a highly-political medium or a penitentiary and want to fix that, let's chat.

How you get one
Exhibit A

You do not pick your level, and neither does anyone you pay

The Bureau scores you into a security level with points on a scale. It takes into account your offense severity, criminal history, your sentence length, detainers, and your age. A person you didn't know exists decides what facility your time would be best served at using, criteria that is closed-source.

This means your PSR is the document that drives the score, which is why the before you go in guide spends so long on it. And nobody — not a consultant, not a lawyer, not me — can get you designated to a specific prison. That is the second most common way families get fleeced.

The levels
Exhibit B

What each one is

Four levels you can be scored into, lowest to highest. One of them has a guide.

Minimum

Camps

No fence, dormitory housing, work details that leave the compound. The lowest-point cases: mostly white collar, short sentences, no violence, no detainers. Most people picturing "federal prison camp" are picturing this and are mostly right.

Mostly a guide
Closest thing is getting to a camp from a low.
Low

Lows

A fence, cubicle or dorm housing, a real compound with cars, and a population that ranges much wider than a camp's. This is where I did my time and it is the one level on this site written from the inside.

Full guide
Thirteen parts, from eighteen months inside one.
Medium

Mediums

Cell housing, most weirdos, and a materially different social structure. Mediums are what most people imagine when they hear "prison" and less of what they imagine when they hear "federal."

Looking for contributors
Not my level. I will not guess at it.
High

Penitentiaries

Walls or reinforced fences, close staff supervision, cell housing, and the most politics in the system that carry consequences that do not exist elsewhere.

Looking for contributors
Not my level. I will not guess at it.

Administrative facilities are not a level. FDCs, SMUs, RHUs, and jails hold people pre-trial or in transit; referral-only units are nightmares; medical centers hold people who need care the ordinary compound cannot give. You can pass through one at any point in a sentence regardless of your score, and pre-trial detention is many people's first and worst experience of the system. Covered in passing in before you go in, not as its own guide.

The one that exists
Exhibit C

Doing time at a low

Thirteen parts, from eighteen months inside one. Read while you're in first if you have not; this is that guide narrowed to one level, not a replacement for it.

The low security guide

What a low actually is, the day, where you live, your first days, cars at a low, coexistence, staff, how conflict actually happens, shakedowns and the hole, the economy, jobs and programming, getting to a camp from a low, and an honest comparison against the other levels.
Regardless of level
Exhibit D

Look up the actual place

The level tells you the shape. The facility tells you the details, and those vary more than the level does.

The facility guide

Every facility by level, with things like stamp rates, housing style, photo rules, and honest unknowns where I do not have the intel.

Support groups, by facility

For a level I have not written up, the heroes in these groups know the specific compound better than any guide would.

Did time at a medium or a USP?

The gap on this page is real and I would rather fill it with somebody's actual experience than with my guesses. If you did time at a level I have not written up, tell me what the guide should say. Credit or anonymity, your call.

josh@federalprisondude.com

I answer in the order received, usually within a couple of days. I have a day job. If your situation genuinely needs more than an email, I take a limited number of consults, so say so and we'll work it out.

Pass it on

If this helped, it'll help someone else's family too.