601 McDonough Blvd SE
Atlanta, GA 30315
(404) 635-5100
The United States Penitentiary, Atlanta is a medium-security United States federal prison for male inmates in Atlanta, Georgia. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice. The facility also has a detention center for pretrial and holdover inmates, and a satellite prison camp for minimum-security male inmates.HistoryIn 1899, President William McKinley authorized the construction of a new federal prison in Atlanta, Georgia.Georgia Congressman Leonidas F. Livingston advocated placing the prison in Atlanta. William S. Eanes, an architect from St. Louis, Missouri; and U.S. Attorney General William S. Eanes, on April 18, 1899, traveled to Atlanta to select the prison site.Construction was completed in January 1902 and the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary opened with the transfer of six convicts from the Sing Sing Correctional Facility in upstate New York. They were the beneficiaries of the Three Prisons Act of 1891, which established penitentiaries in Leavenworth, Kansas; Atlanta, Georgia; and McNeil Island, Washington. The first two remain open today, the third closed in 1976. The Atlanta site was the largest Federal prison, with a capacity of 3,000 inmates. Inmate case files presented mini-biographies of men confined in the penitentiary. Prison officials recorded every detail of their lives - their medical treatments, their visitors, their letters to and from the outside world