Federal Correctional Complex, Terre Haute

The Federal Correctional Complex at Terre Haute, as seen from a nearby road.

United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute

The Federal Correctional Complex, Terre Haute, is a federal prison for adult males located at the intersection of State Road 63 and Springhill Drive, two miles (3 km) south of Terre Haute, Indiana United States . It falls under the jurisdiction of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

There are two facilities at FCC Terre Haute: Federal Correctional Institution, Terre Haute; and United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute. USP Terre Haute is currently the home of the only death chamber for federal death penalty recipients in the United States, where they receive lethal injection. Among those most recently executed at USP Terre Haute were Timothy McVeigh and Juan Raul Garza in 2001, and Louis Jones, Jr., in 2003. McVeigh, who was convicted for his responsibility for the Oklahoma City bombing, was the first prisoner executed by the U.S. Government since the moratorium on the death penalty was lifted in 1976.

United States Penitentiary

A new United States penitentiary was authorized by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938 and established in Terre Haute, Indiana in 1940 on 1,126 acres (4.56 km²) of land. The opening of the prison in this city was partly due to heavy promotion by Terre Haute’s Chamber of Commerce, which eventually went on to raise $50,000 to pay for the property on which the prison was built. The residents of Terre Haute initially embraced the prison due to the impression that it would provide jobs to local residents in addition to helping Terre Haute’s economy while only housing non-violent offenders. E.B. Swope was the prison’s first warden.

The U.S. Public Works Administration issued a $3 million grant to pay for construction of USP Terre Haute in 1938. Construction cost of the institution at the time that it was built was $2,150,000. The architectural design of the prison is a modified telephone pole design with all housing and other facilities opening onto a long central corridor. It was the first penitentiary for adult felons ever to be constructed without a wall. In 2004, the new USP was built on adjoining property, with the old penitentiary becoming a medium-security Federal Correctional Institution.

USP Terre Haute was one of the first federal prisons to emphasize rehabilitation by providing psychological and psychiatric treatment, referring to prisoners by names as opposed to numbers, and allowing prisoners to talk during meals instead of eating in silence. The institution initiated the use of the word "inmate" as opposed to other less-appealing labels such as "convict" or "criminal". It also became one of the first federal prisons to implement educational programs in prisons with sessions devoted to improving the inmates' skills in reading, writing, math, as well as trades.

USP Terre Haute is a Care Level 3 facility, which means that any inmate sent to Terre Haute who has serious health issues that are not major enough to warrant hospitalization is sent to the USP. This facility is also a tobacco-free institution. This part of the FCC contains six housing units. One of the six housing units is a faith-based unit that can house 125 inmates. When the inmates are not working, they are partaking in faith-based activities. All of the inmates in the USP are allotted seven visit-days a month and 300 minutes of telephone time, which they have to use in increments of 30 minutes or less. The inmates housed here can work at UNICOR, which is a prison industry that makes towels and other accessories for the military. Inmates employed here earn an average of $6.50 to $7.50 a day and some can make up to $12 a day if they are paid by piece as opposed to by the hour.

Camp

The Terre Haute Camp was built in 1960 with the purpose of housing non-violent felons to perform farm and maintenance duties. The camp has two, eight, and twelve-person rooms. Programs provided for inmates in this facility include GED, ESL, and drug education classes. Sports, cards, golf, and crafts are all different recreational activities in which the inmates may take part within the camp. A selected group of inmates at the camp take part in a community talk tour called "Choices", where these inmates visit schools and speak to children that are already involved in meth. The Federal Bureau of Prison’s National Bus Center is operated through this camp.

Among the most notorious inmates at the Camp is George Ryan, former governor of Illinois, who arrived on February 29, 2008, to serve his sentence for racketeering and public corruption. Ryan has been assigned to work in the prison greenhouse.

Death row

On July 19, 1993, the federal government designated USP Terre Haute as the site where federal death sentences would be carried out, including the establishment of the "Special Confinement Unit," the federal death row for men. The BOP modified USP Terre Haute in 1995 and 1996 so it could house death row functions. On July 13, 1999, the Special Confinement Unit at USP Terre Haute opened, and the BOP transferred male federal death row inmates from other federal prisons and from state prisons to USP Terre Haute. As of May 14, 2010, 52 death row prisoners were housed at USP Terre Haute. The federal government chose Terre Haute as the location of the men's death row due to its central location within the United States.

Communication Management Unit

On February 25, 2007, the Washington Post reported that the Justice Department had quietly created a medium security Communication Management Unit (CMU) housing 213 inmates in Terre Haute. The CMU monitors all telephone calls and mail, and requires that all inmate conversations occur in English unless special permission is arranged for conversations in other languages.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBP) created the CMU in response to criticism that it had not been adequately monitoring the communications of prisoners. It is one of two CMU, the other being the CMU at Marion. According to the FBP, "By concentrating resources in this fashion, it will greatly enhance the agency's capabilities for language translation, content analysis and intelligence sharing," according to the Bureau's summary of the CMU.

The CMU is located in the former death row, and was opened in December 2006. All but two of the inmates are Arab Muslims, leading the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to raise a concern about racial profiling.^{[citation needed]} The ACLU also charged that the communication restrictions are unduly harsh for prisoners who are not sufficiently serious security threats to warrant placement in ADX Florence, the Supermax facility in Colorado.^{[citation needed]}

Current inmates include the Lackawanna Six, Randall "Ismail" Royer, Enaam Arnaout, Rafil A. Dhafir, "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh, and Hal Turner.

Demographics

The USP Terre Haute total inmate population is 3,200. The racial breakdown of the USP is as follows: 57% of inmates are black, 39% are white, 4% are of other ethnicity. 26% of inmates were convicted for weapon violations, 25% for drug offenses, 25% for robbery charge, 10% for homicide offenses, and 14% for other offenses. The average sentencing length for the USP is 198 months, or 16.5 years. The median inmate age is 37 years old.

The Terre Haute Camp houses 429 inmates. The racial breakdown of the camp is as follows: 50% of inmates are white, 49% are black, and 1% are of other ethnicity. 71% of the inmates were sentenced for drug offenses, 14% for fraud/robbery/extortion, 9% for weapon-related offenses, and 6% for other offenses. The average sentencing length for the camp is 84 months, or 7 years.

The FCI Terre Haute total inmate population is 1,168. The racial breakdown of the FCI is as follows: 56% are black, 39% are white, and 5% are of other ethnicity. 43% of inmates were sentenced for drug-related offenses, 28% for weapon-related offenses, 13% for robbery offenses, and 16% for other offenses. The average sentencing length is 130 months, or 10.83 years. The median inmate age at the FCI is 36 years old.

Guantanamo connection

Camp 5, part of the Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba, is reported to have been based on the design of a maximum security facility in Terre Haute.

External links

• FCC Terre Haute Official Website