FCI Terminal Island (low-security)

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Population (Nov. 2025)

Federal Correctional Institution, Terminal Island (FCI Terminal Island) is a low-security United States federal prison for male inmates in San Pedro, a district of Los Angeles, California. The prison sits on Terminal Island, at the entrance to Los Angeles Harbor between San Pedro and Long Beach. It is run by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, part of the United States Department of Justice. The facility opened in 1938.

In November 2025 the Bureau of Prisons announced it would suspend operations at the prison and move its population elsewhere. The agency cited failing infrastructure, including falling concrete in the underground tunnels that carry the steam lines.

Overview

FCI Terminal Island is a low-security correctional institution. It holds adult male inmates. The Bureau classifies it as a low-security facility, a step below medium security, with dormitory-style housing rather than cell blocks.

The prison stands on a man-made island in Los Angeles Harbor. Bridges connect the island to San Pedro and the mainland. The site once held fish canneries and a Navy presence before the federal government built a prison there.

The facility offers the Residential Drug Abuse Program, the Bureau's intensive substance-abuse treatment track. It has also housed inmates with chronic medical conditions and prisoners enrolled in the Sex Offender Management Program.

History

The prison opened on June 1, 1938. The state of California held control of the site for a stretch in the following decades and returned it to the Bureau of Prisons in 1955.

For much of its history the prison held both men and women, with the women housed separately. That changed in 1977. Overcrowding pushed the Bureau to move the female population to the federal prison in Dublin, California, and Terminal Island became a men's facility.

In April 2024 an engineering and architecture firm under contract to the Bureau studied the buildings and the underground utility tunnels. The firm found the prison would need more than $110 million in critical repairs over the next 20 years to stay in service. The condition of the steam tunnels became the central problem.

On November 25, 2025, Bureau director William K. Marshall III told staff the agency would shut the prison down. He pointed to falling concrete in the tunnels and the threat it posed to the steam lines and to anyone working below ground. The Bureau said it would relocate the roughly 1,000 inmates to other federal facilities, with a stated preference for keeping people near their expected release locations.

COVID-19 Outbreak (2020)

Terminal Island became one of the worst coronavirus hot spots in the federal prison system in the spring of 2020. The first prisoner died on April 13, 2020. The Bureau then ran mass testing across the facility from April 23 to April 27. That round returned 443 positive cases. At the time the prison held around 1,091 low-security inmates, so the early count alone reached about 42 percent of the population.

The numbers climbed fast. By May 11, 2020, the prison reported 693 positive cases. For a period that May, Terminal Island accounted for roughly a quarter of all confirmed COVID-19 cases in federal prisons nationwide. More than 70 percent of the inmate population was eventually infected.

Ten prisoners died between April 13 and June 21, 2020. Most had pre-existing health conditions, and several were over 65. The death toll made Terminal Island one of the deadliest outbreaks in the Bureau's system that year.

A later review by the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General faulted the prison's handling of the outbreak. Investigators found the dormitory layout left no room for social distancing. Staff at one point housed 129 infected inmates alongside 107 inmates who had tested negative for four to five days. Sixty percent of staff reported they did not have enough personal protective equipment. In at least two cases, families learned of a death through the news rather than from the prison.

Notable Alumni

Terminal Island has held several well-known federal inmates across its history.

• Al Capone was transferred to Terminal Island in 1939 and finished a federal sentence there before his 1940 release.
• Charles Manson served two terms at the prison before he became publicly known, the first from 1956 to 1958 for car theft and the second from 1966 to 1967 for check fraud.
• Timothy Leary, the former Harvard lecturer and LSD advocate, was held at Terminal Island in 1974.
• G. Gordon Liddy, a figure in the Watergate scandal, was incarcerated at the prison in 1974, overlapping with Leary.
• Henry Hill, the Lucchese crime family associate later portrayed in Goodfellas, spent time at the prison in the 1970s.
• Edward Bunker, the novelist and actor, was held at Terminal Island in the early 1970s and drew on the experience in his fiction.

In more recent years the prison drew attention as the designated facility for FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and attorney Michael Avenatti.

Location and Visitation

The prison's physical and mailing address is 1299 Seaside Avenue, San Pedro, CA 90731.

Visiting rules at federal prisons change often, and the pending closure adds further uncertainty. Anyone planning a visit should confirm current procedures with the institution first. See our Visitation Guide for general guidance, and check the official Bureau of Prisons page for the facility at bop.gov.

See also

• Index of Federal Prison Facilities
• Bureau of Prisons Classification Methods
• Residential Drug Abuse Program (RDAP)