Federal facilities that house women

Facilities that never housed women

If you've heard one of these names and are trying to make sense of it, here's the honest, verified answer rather than silence.

FCI Coleman

Male-only. Every institution in the Coleman complex (USP Coleman I, USP Coleman II, FCI Coleman Low, FCI Coleman Medium) is listed in BOP's live directory as housing men, not women. If you've seen a claim that Coleman houses women, we could not verify it against BOP's own current data and recommend treating it as inaccurate unless BOP itself says otherwise.

How this directory was verified

The roster and every facility's location come from the Bureau of Prisons' own live facility data, pulled directly from bop.gov, which publishes a gender designation, security level, and coordinates for each institution. Because BOP's per-facility label reflects the main (usually men's) institution, we separately verified, against BOP's pages and reporting, which unit actually houses the women at each shared complex and at what level, so a woman headed to a minimum-security camp is never shown a men's medium-security headline. We did not rely on secondhand lists or press mentions alone. BOP is actively reassigning facilities in 2026 (FCI Aliceville is becoming a men's facility; FCI Estill was just converted to women's; FMC Lexington's women's camp is on a 2026 closure list), so every page carries a "last reviewed" date and flags anything in flux rather than presenting it as settled.

Frequently asked questions

How many federal facilities house women?

Verified against BOP's own live facility data, women are held across roughly 27 federal facilities nationwide, coast to coast. About 16 are institutions where women serve their sentences: a handful that hold women exclusively (FPC Alderson, FPC Bryan, FMC Carswell, FCI Waseca, FCI Estill) and about ten mixed complexes that house women in a specific unit alongside a separate men's population, whether a minimum-security camp, a low-security satellite, or the Secure Female Facility at Hazelton. The other 11 are detention centers that hold women short-term, pretrial, in transit, or on a holdover, rather than to serve a sentence. Most women who are sentenced serve their time in a minimum-security camp. A key caution: at a mixed complex, the security level that matters is the level of the unit the women are in, not the facility's headline (men's) level.

What is the difference between a federal prison and a federal detention center?

A federal prison is where a sentence is served. A federal detention center (the FDC, MDC, MCC and FTC facilities on this page) is where someone is held before that: while a case is pending and bail was denied, while she is in transit between facilities, or on a short holdover. The two feel very different. A detention center is usually an urban high-rise with far less movement, fewer programs, and no yard, and nobody there knows how long they are staying. If your loved one is at a detention center, she has not been designated yet, and the facility she is in now is very likely not the facility where she will serve a sentence.

Is FCI Dublin still open?

No. FCI Dublin does not appear in BOP's live facility directory, and its individual page on bop.gov no longer resolves. This matches widely reported coverage of the facility's closure following documented staff sexual-abuse scandals. If you were told your designation is Dublin, confirm the current facility directly with BOP or your attorney, because that address is no longer active.

Does FCI Coleman house women?

No. Every institution in the FCI/USP Coleman complex in Sumterville, Florida is listed in BOP's own live directory as housing men only. We could not find any current BOP data supporting a women's population at Coleman.