Record
Agency history
1891/2026
Federal Bureau of Prisons
Federal Bureau of Prisons: Historical Information, Timeline
The Bureau of Prisons' timeline entries for the Three Prisons Act (1891), the Bureau's founding and first Director (1930), USP Lewisburg (1932), USP Alcatraz as the first maximum security prison (1934) and James V. Bennett (1937).
- Date
- 1891/2026
- Kind
- agency-history
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-12
- Rights
- Text published by the Federal Bureau of Prisons on bop.gov. A United States government work, public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105. The page carries no date; 2026 is the year it was read.
The entries relevant to this archive, as the timeline prints them. 1891: Congress passes the “Three Prisons Act,” which established the federal prison system; the first three prisons, USP Leavenworth, USP Atlanta and USP McNeil Island, “are operated with limited oversight by the Department of Justice.” 1930: the Bureau is established, and Sanford Bates becomes the first Director. 1932: “USP Lewisburg opens, becoming the first penitentiary built by the BOP,” with an “original design that incorporated many new correctional concepts (e.g., housing for different security levels in the same institution).”
1934: “The first maximum security prison, USP Alcatraz, opens housing the most violent, disruptive, and escape-prone inmates in the Federal system. USP Alcatraz was the precursor to USP Marion and ADX Florence.” 1937: James V. Bennett becomes the second Director. The timeline text read for this archive has no entry for the closure of Alcatraz or the opening of Marion; the closure date, 21 March 1963, is on the Alcatraz page. The timeline gives no opening date for Marion, and no record opened for this archive does.
