It is separate from, but often confused with, the United States Disciplinary Barracks (USDB), a military facility located on the adjacent Fort Leavenworth army post.

Located 4 miles (6.4 km) north of the FCI, the USDB is the sole maximum-security penal facility for the entire United States military.

In addition, the military's medium-security Midwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility (JRCF), located southwest of the new USDB, opened in 2010.

[8] The Auburn system was a marked difference from the earlier Pennsylvania plan popularized at Eastern State Penitentiary in which cell blocks radiated out from a central building and was the original design for the nearby Disciplinary Barracks before it was torn down and replaced by a totally new prison.

Frank Grigware, imprisoned for train robbery, escaped from Leavenworth in 1910 with five other men by smashing through the prison gates with a hijacked supply locomotive.

He was discovered by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the FBI in 1933, but serious doubts about his original conviction led the U.S. to drop its extradition request in 1934.

White hostage and escaped, aided by the well-known gangsters Frank Nash, George "Machine Gun" Kelly, and Thomas James Holden.