The
United States Penitentiary in Lewisburg (
USP Lewisberg) is a male inmate high security federal
penitentiaryA prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...
(USP) and satellite minimum security prison camp (CAMP) housing some 1,000 and 500 respectively, just outside
LewisburgLewisburg is a borough in Union County, Pennsylvania, United States, south by southeast of Williamsport and north of Harrisburg. In the past, it was the commercial center for a fertile grain and general farming region. The population was 5,620 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Union...
,
PennsylvaniaThe Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
. The Lewisburg Penitentiary was opened in 1932. This penitentiary is one of four federal prisons in the county and ten prisons within
Union County-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 41,624 people, 13,178 households, and 9,211 families residing in the county. The population density was 131 people per square mile . There were 14,684 housing units at an average density of 46 per square mile...
and the adjacent counties.
The
United States Penitentiary in Lewisburg (
USP Lewisberg) is a male inmate high security federal
penitentiaryA prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...
(USP) and satellite minimum security prison camp (CAMP) housing some 1,000 and 500 respectively, just outside
LewisburgLewisburg is a borough in Union County, Pennsylvania, United States, south by southeast of Williamsport and north of Harrisburg. In the past, it was the commercial center for a fertile grain and general farming region. The population was 5,620 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Union...
,
PennsylvaniaThe Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
. The Lewisburg Penitentiary was opened in 1932. This penitentiary is one of four federal prisons in the county and ten prisons within
Union County-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 41,624 people, 13,178 households, and 9,211 families residing in the county. The population density was 131 people per square mile . There were 14,684 housing units at an average density of 46 per square mile...
and the adjacent counties.
History
Lewisburg Penitentiary had a
prison riotA prison riot is an act of concerted defiance or disorder by a group of prisoners against the prison administrators, prison officers, or other groups of prisoners in attempt to force change or express a grievance....
in November 1995. Although started by only 10 prisoners, more than 20 visited the hospital that November 1st, with one prisoner recording multiple broken bones and missing teeth. Many were sentenced to the "hole" and over 400 were transferred. This incident thrust the Penitentiary into the national spotlight, where it gained much of its current notoriety.
A local non-profit group, the Lewisburg Prison Project, assists prisoners here and in the surrounding area with issues of conditions of confinement.
USP Lewisburg was the focus of a 1991 Academy Award-nominated
documentaryA documentary is a creative work of non-fiction, including:* Documentary film, including television* Radio documentary* Documentary photographyRelated terms include:...
titled,
Doing Time: Life Inside the Big HouseDoing Time: Life Inside the Big House is a 1991 documentary film directed by Alan Raymond. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature....
, by filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond. The one hour long film described conditions inside the prison and focused specifically on the abolition of
paroleParole may have different meanings depending on the field and judiciary system. All of the meanings originated from the French parole . Following its use in late-resurrected Anglo-French chivalric practice, the term became associated with the release of prisoners based on prisoners giving their...
within the federal system and the fears held by many prisoners about re-integrating into society upon their eventual release from prison.
As of 2009, USP Lewisburg was designated as a Special Management Unit intended to house the most violent and disruptive inmates in the Bureau of Prisons. Although most USP Lewisburg inmates are housed in the SMU, there remains a work cadre of appoximately 200 inmates in the USP's general population.
Funding Issues
In July of 2008, the Correctional Officers at Lewisburg Federal expressed concerns about underfunding. Over the past four years, union leaders and other officials had been lobbying in an attempt to quell staff reductions and cutting costs. The Federal Bureau of Prisons had proposed $143 million in possible spending cuts, including not replacing vehicles and equipment, eliminating overtime, reducing corrections officer training, and a possible cut in officer staff positions. Under such conditions, many of the Correctional Officers expressed concerns about their own safety.
Notable Inmates
Lewisburg Penitentiary has housed many infamous criminals, such as:
- Whitey Bulger
- Thomas DeSimone
Thomas "Two-Gun Tommy" Anthony DeSimone was an Italian-American gangster and associate of the Lucchese crime family in New York. Also known as "Tommy D" or "Tommy Two-Guns", he was a grandson and nephew of Los Angeles mob bosses Rosario DeSimone and Frank DeSimone...
- Ralph Ginzburg
Ralph Ginzburg was an American author, editor, publisher and photo-journalist. He was best known for publishing books and magazines on erotica and art and for his conviction in 1963 for violating federal obscenity laws....
- John Gotti
John Joseph Gotti, Jr was an American mobster who became the Boss of the Gambino crime family in New York City. Gotti grew up in poverty. He and his brothers turned to a life of crime at an early age...
- Robert Hansen
Robert Christian Hansen is an American serial killer. Between 1980 and 1983, Hansen murdered between 17 and 21 women near Anchorage, Alaska.- Early life :Hansen was born in Estherville, Iowa to Christian and Edna Hansen...
- Henry Hill
- Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss was an American lawyer, government official, author, and lecturer. He was involved in the establishment of the United Nations both as a U.S. State Department and U.N. official...
- Jimmy Hoffa
James Riddle "Jimmy" Hoffa was an American labor union leader....
- Robert Lee Johnson
Robert Lee Johnson was an American sergeant who spied for the Soviet Union.Johnson volunteered to spy for the KGB while he was stationed at Berlin, Germany. He also recruited a former Army friend, James Mintkenbaugh...
- George Jung
George Jacob Jung , nicknamed "Boston George", was a major player in the cocaine trade in the United States in the 1970s and early 1980s. Jung was a part of the Medellín Cartel which was responsible for up to 85 percent of the cocaine smuggled into the United States . He specialized in the...
- Wilhelm Reich
Wilhelm Reich was an Austrian-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, known as one of the most radical figures in the history of psychiatry...
- Steve Reid
Steve Reid was an American jazz drummer who played with a wide range of artists including Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, James Brown, Fela Kuti and Sun Ra, and as a session drummer for Motown.- Biography :...
- Christophe Rocancourt
- Samuel Roth
Samuel Roth was an American publisher and writer. He was the plaintiff in Roth v. United States , which was a key Supreme Court ruling on freedom of sexual expression...
- Robert Thompson
Robert Thompson was a U.S. Air Force clerk that confessed, in 1965, to passing hundreds of photos of secret documents to the Soviets while he was based in West Berlin. He received a 30-year sentence to the Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania.U.S. investigators held that he was a...
- Carl Upchurch
Carl Douglass Upchurch was an American activist, author and educator. His commitment to education, civic and urban issues, and political justice earned him a national reputation....
- Paul Vario
Paul Vario was a caporegime of a crew in the Lucchese crime family. In the 1970s Vario held the position of consigliere in the family but later resigned. In 1980, longtime associate Henry Hill became a government witness and testified against Vario and members of his crew...
- Clayton Waagner
Clayton Lee Waagner is a convicted bank robber and anti-abortion activist. He was born Roger Waagner in North Dakota. He was an escaped fugitive during the spring, summer and fall of 2001 and was the FBI's 467th fugitive to be placed on the Ten Most Wanted list for carjackings, firearms...
- Melvin Williams
Melvin D. Williams , known as Little Melvin, is a former drug trafficker and organized crime figure in his native Baltimore, Maryland. Williams is widely known for his involvement in heroin trafficking in Baltimore in the 1970s and 1980s...
- John Wojtowicz
John Stanley Wojtowicz was an American bank robber whose story inspired the 1975 film Dog Day Afternoon.-Background:...
- Al Capone
Alphonse Gabriel "Al" Capone was an American gangster who led a Prohibition-era crime syndicate. The Chicago Outfit, which subsequently became known as the "Capones", was dedicated to smuggling and bootlegging liquor, and other illegal activities such as prostitution, in Chicago from the early...
- Edwin Cortes
Edwin Cortes is a Puerto Rican nationalist who received a sentence of 35 years for seditious conspiracy and other charges. He was sentenced on February 18, 1981, and incarcerated in a U.S. federal prison...
- Ricardo Jimenez
Ricardo Jiménez is a Puerto Rican nationalist who received a sentence of 90 years for seditious conspiracy and other charges. He was sentenced on February 18, 1981, and incarcerated in a U.S. federal prison...
- Joe Doherty
Joe Doherty is a former volunteer in the Belfast Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army who escaped during his 1981 trial for killing a member of the Special Air Service in 1980...
- Mutulu Shakur
Mutulu Shakur , is a former proponent of the Republic of New Afrika and a close friend of Geronimo Pratt....
- Enoch L. Johnson
Enoch Lewis "Nucky" Johnson was an Atlantic City, New Jersey political boss and racketeer. From the 1910s until his imprisonment in 1941, he was the undisputed “boss” of the Republican political machine that controlled Atlantic City and the Atlantic County government...
It was also home to
Bayard RustinBayard Rustin was an American leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, pacifism and non-violence, and gay rights.In the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation , Rustin practiced nonviolence...
, a civil rights activist during his period of incarceration, and
Leonard PeltierLeonard Peltier is a Native American activist and member of the American Indian Movement . In 1977 he was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment for first degree murder in the shooting of two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents during a 1975 conflict on the Pine...
, Native American civil rights activist.