![\"A](\"https:\/\/wpdash.medianewsgroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/GettyImages-2235231451.jpg\")
<\/a>A guard tower stands on the waterfront at Reservation Point behind security fencing at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Terminal Island, a low-security federal prison for men operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons at the harbor entrance to the Port of Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California on September 13, 2025. (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon \/ AFP) (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\nMarshall cited problems with underground tunnels containing the facility\u2019s steam heating system. Ceilings in the tunnels have begun to deteriorate, causing chunks of concrete to fall and putting employees and the heating system at risk, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not going to wait for a crisis,\u201d Marshall told employees. \u201cWe are not going to gamble with lives. And we are not going to expect people to work or live in conditions that we would never accept for ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bureau of Prisons spokesperson Randilee Giamusso, responding to the AP\u2019s questions about FCI Terminal Island, confirmed that the agency is taking \u201cimmediate action\u201d to \u201csafeguard staff and inmates.\u201d<\/p>\n
Inmates at the facility will be moved to other federal prisons \u201cwith a priority on keeping individuals as close as possible to their anticipated release locations,\u201d Giamusso said. In his memo to staff, Marshall indicated that the process could take several weeks.<\/p>\n
The facility\u2019s future will be decided once the Bureau of Prisons has \u201cassessed the situation further and ensured the safety of all those involved,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The Bureau of Prisons has long been bedeviled by FCI Terminal Island\u2019s aging infrastructure, Giamusso said. In April 2024, an architectural and engineering firm contracted by the agency identified more than $110 million in critical repairs needed over the next 20 years.<\/p>\n
Site\u2019s checkered past<\/p>\n
The prison\u2019s opening dates back to the 1930s and it has undergone many changes over the decades.<\/p>\n
The first prisoners, 610 men and 40 women, filed into the new 21-acre federal prison near the southern end of Terminal Island on June 1, 1938.<\/p>\n
Back then, the Terminal Island Federal Correctional Institution consisted of three cell blocks built around a central quadrangle, and cost $2 million to build.<\/p>\n
In 1942, the U.S. Navy took control of the prison for use as a receiving station, and then as a barracks for court-martialed prisoners.<\/p>\n
After the Navy deactivated the facility in 1950, the state of California took it over for use as a medical and psychiatric institution.<\/p>\n
The state ceded control to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons in 1955, which converted the facility back into a low-to-medium security federal prison.<\/p>\n
The prison has housed the famous and the infamous over the years.<\/p>\n
Al Capone spent the last few months of his 10-year sentence for income tax evasion at Terminal Island in the late 1930s.<\/p>\n
Two mug shots of American gangster Al Capone taken by Miami police in 1931. (Courtesy of Library of Congress )<\/p>\n
In 1974, LSD guru Timothy Leary and Watergate co-conspirator G. Gordon Liddy were\u00a0incarcerated there at the same time.<\/p>\n
Sara Jane Moore came to Terminal Island in 1976 after her failed assassination attempt on President Gerald Ford. Hustler publisher Larry Flynt spent time there after shouting obscenities at a judge during one of his trials in the early 1980s; he was transferred after allegedly\u00a0punching prison staff members.<\/p>\n
The prison was coed, with women prisoners housed in a separate area, until overcrowding forced authorities to transfer the women to the federal prison in Pleasanton in 1977. It has been male-only ever since then.<\/p>\n
During the 1970s, Terminal Island became known for escape attempts. In December 1979, the\u00a0San Pedro News Pilot\u00a0reported 12 escapes during a single 2 1\/2-month period.<\/p>\n
Fortification including more barbed wire and increased armed guards were added to dispel the facility\u2019s \u201cClub Fed\u201d image in the early 1980s.<\/p>\n
Other inmates included Wall Street fraud artist Barry Minkow of ZZZZ Best fame, automaker John DeLorean (briefly, following his drug trial), and jazz singer Flora Purim, who served 18 months for drug charges before the prison returned to its current all-male make-up.<\/p>\n
The prison was rocked by a corruption scandal in the early 1980s that resulted in the indictment of six Terminal Island federal employees between 1982 and 1984. The charges involved bribes, cover-ups, marijuana sales to inmates and other types of corruption.<\/p>\n
Up until that time, the scandal was the most serious in the history of the federal prison system, because of the high-ranking officials involved. These included Charles DeSordi, the prison\u2019s former chief investigator of crimes committed, the highest-ranking federal prison official ever to be indicted.<\/p>\n
In June, hundreds gathered in San Pedro to protest against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement\u2019s apparent use of Terminal Island as a staging area for its operations across Los Angeles County, but the prison was not involved in those concerns.<\/p>\n
Officials from the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles \u2014 which also share portions of Terminal Island \u2014 said at the time that ICE wasn\u2019t using any of their properties for operations, despite the U.S. Department of Homeland Security\u2019s request to L.A. to do so.<\/p>\n
The prison system<\/p>\n
Tuesday\u2019s news of the closure echoes that of the agency\u2019s federal jail in Manhattan in 2021.<\/p>\n
The Bureau of Prisons, the Justice Department\u2019s largest employer, has more than 30,000 workers, 122 facilities, about 155,000 inmates and an annual budget that exceeds $8.5 billion. But the agency\u2019s footprint has shrunk over the last year as it wrestles with financial constraints, chronic understaffing and changing priorities.<\/p>\n
An Associated Press investigation has uncovered deep, previously unreported flaws within the Bureau of Prisons, including rampant sexual abuse, widespread criminal activity by employees, dozens of escapes and the free flow of guns, drugs and other contraband.<\/p>\n
In December 2024, in a cost-cutting move, the agency announced it was idling six prison camps and permanently closing a women\u2019s prison in Dublin, California, that was known as the \u201crape club\u201d because of rampant sexual abuse by the warden and other employees.<\/p>\n
In February, an agency official told Congress that 4,000 beds meant for inmates at various facilities were unusable because of dangerous conditions like leaking or failing roofs, mold, asbestos or lead.<\/p>\n
At the same time, the agency is building a new prison in Kentucky and, at Trump\u2019s direction, exploring the possibility of reopening Alcatraz, the notorious penitentiary in San Francisco Bay that last held inmates more than 60 years ago.<\/p>\n
Marshall, his top deputy and Attorney General Pam Bondi visited in July, but four months later, Alcatraz remains a tourist attraction and a relic of a bygone era in corrections.<\/p>\n
In addition to failing facilities, the Bureau of Prisons has been plagued for years by severe staffing shortages that have led to long overtime shifts and the use of prison nurses, teachers, cooks and other workers to guard inmates.<\/p>\n
That problem has only worsened in recent months, in part because of a hiring freeze and recruiting by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has lured correctional officers away with promises of signing bonuses of up to $50,000.<\/p>\n
In September, Marshall said the Bureau of Prisons was canceling its collective bargaining agreement with workers. He said their union had become \u201can obstacle to progress instead of a partner in it.\u201d The union, the Council of Prison Locals, is suing to block the move, calling it \u201carbitrary and capricious.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Southern California News Group staff writer Donna Littlejohn and columnist Sam Gnerre contributed to this report.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By MICHAEL R. SISAK | Associated Press The federal Bureau of Prisons is closing a lockup adjacent to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70155,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[138,131,133,132,100],"class_list":{"0":"post-70154","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","9":"tag-long-beach","10":"tag-long-beach-headlines","11":"tag-long-beach-news","12":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}