Federal Correctional Institution, Seagoville
 | |
| Location | Seagoville, Texas |
|---|---|
| Status | Operational |
| Security class | Low-security (with minimum-security prison camp) |
| Population | 1,800 (170 in prison camp) |
| Managed by | Federal Bureau of Prisons |
| Warden | Kristi Ciolli |
The Federal Correctional Institution, Seagoville (FCI Seagoville) is a low-security United States federal prison for male inmates in Seagoville, Texas in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice. The facility includes a detention center for male offenders and an adjacent satellite prison camp that houses minimum security-male offenders.
FCI Seagoville is located 11 miles (18 km) southeast of Downtown Dallas.
History
The Federal Reformatory for Women in Seagoville opened on October 10, 1940. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the government converted the center into a Federal Detention Station, monitored by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, that housed people of Japanese, German and Italian descent who were classified as "enemy aliens," including women deported from Latin America into U.S. custody Many of the Latin American internees had been classified officially as "voluntary internees" because they had chosen to leave their home countries after their husbands had been deported to the U.S., however, their choice was in many cases motivated by the difficulties of supporting themselves and their families alone. Internees at Seagoville published a German language newsletter called the Sägedorfer Fliegende Blätter. Beginning in June 1943, the State Department arranged for the deportation of many of the internees to Japan and Germany, which helped decrease the population as authorities prepared to transfer the remaining detainees to Crystal City, Texas. Seagoville held a total of some 650-700 people, and was closed in June 1945.
After World War II ended, on June 25, 1945 the prison became a facility for minimum security male offenders. In 1969, the facility's mission changed to that of housing young male offenders sentenced under the Youth Corrections Act. At the time the maximum age of the prisoners was 27.
In 1979, the facility's mission changed into that of a Federal Prison Camp. In 1981, a perimeter fence was installed and the facility became a Federal Correctional Institution. The adjacent Federal Detention Center opened in 1996. FDC Seagoville celebrated its 60th anniversary on October 10, 2000.
Facility
The prison facility is located on an 830-acre (340 ha) tract. Built for $1.8 million, it occupies a portion of the acreage. In World War II single detainees occupied dormitories while couples resided in "Victory Huts", prefabricated one room buildings with measurements of 18 square feet (1.7 m2) each.
Notable incidents
On November 8, 2012, 27-year-old John Hall, an inmate at FCI Seagoville, pleaded guilty to violating the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act for assaulting a fellow inmate whom he believed to be gay. Hall admitted that on December 20, 2011, he repeatedly punched and kicked the victim, whom the Department of Justice did not identify, while calling the victim homosexual slurs. The victim sustained multiple lacerations to his face and fractured teeth as a result of Hall's unprovoked attack. On March 14, 2013, Hall was sentenced to an additional 71 months in prison for the attack, which is to be served consecutively.
Notable inmates (current and former)
| Inmate | Register Number | Status | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| Josh Duggar | 42501-509 | Sentenced to 12.7 years; scheduled release in 2032. | Former lobbyist and reality television personality from the TLC series 19 Kids and Counting. He was found guilty of receiving and possessing child pornography, and sentenced for receipt of said materials. |
| Chris Epps | 10095-042 | Sentenced to 19.6 years; scheduled release in 2032. | Former Commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Corrections, convicted of taking $1.4 million in bribes from contractors related to Operation Mississippi Hustle |
| Douglas Perlitz | 36435-013 | Sentenced to 19.6 years; scheduled release in 2025. | Former director of the Project Pierre Toussaint School in Cap-Haitien, Haiti. Perlitz confessed to sexually abusing eight homeless children at the center after showing them pornography, bribing them with food, money, clothing and electronics, and threatening to expel them if they told anyone. He is suspected of abusing dozens more young boys. |
| Jacques Roy | 44132-177 | Now at FMC Fort Worth; scheduled release in 2040. | Physician; indicted in 2012 for conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud for allegedly masterminding the largest healthcare fraud in US history, which involved 11,000 patients and resulted in $375 million being fraudulently billed to Medicare and Medicaid. |
| Ralph Shortey | 31860-064 | Sentenced to 15 years; scheduled release in 2030. | Former Republican member of the Oklahoma Senate. Indicted in 2017 for child sex trafficking, to which he pled guilty and has been jailed since November 30, 2017. |
| Fernando Rivas | 23452-171 | Sentenced to 15 years; scheduled release in 2026. | Composer for several TV Shows such as Sesame Street, Handy Manny. Won two Emmy awards for his music department's work on Sesame Street. Indicted in 2011, Rivas was sentenced to 15 years in prison for creating and sending child pornography. |
| Mufid Abdulqader | 32590-177 | Scheduled release in 2025. | Former Chief Fundraiser for the Holy Land Foundation, once the largest Islamic charity in the US; convicted in 2008 of providing material support for terrorism for funneling money to the terrorist organization Hamas. Four co-conspirators were also sentenced to prison. |
COVID-19 outbreak
On August 8, 2020, CNN reported that 1,300 of the 1,750 prisoners (75% of the inmates) have tested positive for COVID-19. Twenty-eight of the 300 staff members had tested positive as well. As of August 8, 2020, three inmates have died. "It came through here so fast that it's out of control," said inmate Bobby Williams, who contracted the virus in June. "We're packed like sardines."