The Bureau of Prisons was established within the Department of Justice on May 14, 1930 by the United States Congress,[5] and was charged with the "management and regulation of all Federal penal and correctional institutions.

[12] [13] The National Capital Revitalization and Self-Government Improvement Act of 1997 transferred responsibility for adult felons convicted of violating District of Columbia laws to the BOP.

The Bureau uses contract facilities to manage its own prison population because they are "especially useful" for housing low-security, specialized groups of people, such as sentenced criminal aliens.

The Bureau has a Mothers and Infants Nurturing Together (MINT) program for women who enter the system as inmates while pregnant.

[32] In 2017, four Democratic Senators, including Kamala Harris, introduced a bill explicitly requiring tampons and pads to be free for female prisoners.

According to the Bureau, most of the juveniles it receives had committed violent crimes and had "an unfavorable history of responding to interventions and preventive measures in the community."

[40] On December 23, 2024, President Biden commuted 37 of the 40 current federal death row inmates to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

[41] This leaves just 3 inmates on federal death row: Robert Gregory Bowers, Dylann Roof, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

The current sentencing guidelines were adopted in response to rising crime rates in the 1980s and early 1990s, especially for drug-related offenses.

[44] The yearly increases in the federal inmate population have raised concerns from criminal justice experts[45] and even among DOJ officials themselves.

Michael Horowitz, the DOJ Inspector General, wrote a memorandum concerning this issue: First, despite a slight decrease in the total number of federal inmates in fiscal year (FY) 2014, the Department projects that the costs of the federal prison system will continue to increase in the years ahead, consuming a large share of the Department's budget.

Second, federal prisons remain significantly overcrowded and therefore face a number of important safety and security issues.

[46]By July 30, 2020, there were 2,910 federal inmates and 500 BOP staff who had confirmed positive test results for COVID-19 during the nationwide COVID-19 pandemic.

Staff reportedly refused to wear face masks, a violation of court orders, and knowingly withheld information about confirmed COVID-19 diagnoses from people who had interacted with infected individuals along with hindering contact tracing efforts and allowing staff members who had been exposed to COVID-19 to refuse testing and work.