[1][2][3] Initially named North Eastern Penitentiary, USP Lewisburg was one of four federal prisons to open in 1932.

[6] USP Lewisburg was the focus of the 1991 Academy Award-nominated documentary Doing Time: Life Inside the Big House by filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond.

Over the past four years, union leaders and other officials had been lobbying in an attempt to quell staff reductions and cutting costs.

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.

Offenders in the CMU will mostly be terrorists and inmates the BOP classifies as security threats who will be held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day.