Federal Bureau of Prisons: Historical Information (agency overview)

The overview says Congress established the Federal Bureau of Prisons within the Department of Justice by the Act of May 14, 1930 (Pub. L. No. 71-218, 46 Stat. 325), charging it with the “management and regulation of all Federal penal and correctional institutions.” It says the federal prison system had already existed for nearly forty years under the Three Prisons Act (1891), which authorized the first three federal penitentiaries, USP Leavenworth, USP Atlanta and USP McNeil Island, and had grown to 11 federal prisons by 1930, with wardens who acted largely on their own under a Department of Justice Superintendent of Prisons.

It credits Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker Willebrandt with pressing for central administration, and a 1928 study by James V. Bennett of the Bureau of Efficiency, later the Bureau’s second Director, with prompting the 1930 Act. By the end of 1930 the Bureau operated 14 facilities for a population just over 13,000. “In 1932, the first penitentiary built by the newly established agency, USP Lewisburg, was opened.” By 1940 it had 24 facilities and 24,360 prisoners.

The page does not discuss Alcatraz beyond a navigation link to the Alcatraz page. The Bureau’s history pages opened for this archive carry no separate history of Leavenworth, Atlanta, Lewisburg, Terminal Island or Marion; those addresses returned errors, and the institution pages for Leavenworth, Atlanta, Lewisburg and Marion have no history section. The timeline is filed separately.