In 1895, the federal government opened a prison at Leavenworth, Kansas, for civilians convicted of violating federal law. Leavenworth had been a military prison, and control over the facility was transferred from the Department of the Army to the Department of Justice. By
1906, the Leavenworth facility had been expanded to a capacity of 1,200 inmates, and another federal prison—in Atlanta, Georgia—was built. McNeil Island Prison in Washington
State was also functioning by the early 1900s. The first federal prison for women opened in
1927 in Alderson, West Virginia. With the increasing complexity of the federal criminal code, the number of federal prisoners grew.102
On May 14, 1930, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) was created under the direction of
Sanford Bates. The BOP was charged with providing progressive and humane care for federal inmates, professionalizing the federal prison service, and ensuring consistent and centralized administration of the 11 federal prisons in operation at the time.103 The bureau inherited a system that was dramatically overcrowded. Many federal prisoners were among the most notorious criminals in the nation, and ideals of humane treatment and rehabilitation were all but lacking in the facilities of the 1920s. Bates began a program of improvements to relieve overcrowding and to increase the treatment capacity of the system. In 1933, the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners opened in Springfield, Missouri, with a capacity of around 1,000 inmates. Alcatraz Island began operations in 1934.
Most of the federal prison system’s growth since the mid-1980s has been the result of the
Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 (which established determinate sentencing, abolished parole, and reduced good time) and federal mandatory minimum sentences enacted in 1986,
1988, and 1990. From 1980 to 1989, the federal inmate population more than doubled, from just over 24,000 to almost 58,000. During the 1990s, the population more than doubled again, and it continued to grow throughout the early years of the twenty-first century, reaching approximately 209,030 prisoners (or 40% over capacity) by mid-October 2009.104