Federal Correctional Institution, Terminal Island

The Federal Correctional Institution, Terminal Island is a low-security United States federal prison for male inmates in California. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice.FCI Terminal Island is located at the entrance to Los Angeles Harbor, between San Pedro and Long Beach.HistoryThe prison was opened at the southern end of Terminal Island, adjacent to a Coast Guard base, on June 1, 1938, with 610 male, and 40 female prisoners. It consisted of a central quadrangle surrounded by three cell blocks and cost $2 million to construct. In 1942, the U.S. Navy took control of the prison for use as a receiving station and later as a barracks for court-martialed prisoners. The facility was deactivated by the Navy in 1950 and later turned over to the state of California for use as a medical and psychiatric institution.The state returned control to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons in 1955 for conversion into a low-to-medium security federal prison. The prison was coed, with female prisoners housed separately, until 1977, when overcrowding led to the transfer of the women to the federal prison in Pleasanton. The prison was given increased barbed wire and armed guards in the early 1980s in an effort to dispel the facility's "Club Fed" image. A corruption scandal rocked the prison in the early 1980s, resulting in the indictment of six employees on charges of bribes, cover-ups, marijuana sales to inmates, and other corruption. Those indicted included Charles DeSordi, the prison's chief investigator of crimes, the highest-ranking federal prison official ever to be indicted.