America’s prisons are a network of locked doors and sometimes extreme security measures meant to keep the people inside secure and unable to escape. But not all prisons offer the same treatment.
To start, there is a difference between state and federal prisons and which types of criminals end up at each type of facility.
If someone is prosecuted in federal court, they’ll go to a prison overseen by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons. Crimes that fall under federal prosecution include financial fraud, terrorism, drug trafficking, human trafficking and tax evasion, as well as robbing a bank, soliciting a minor for sex and even running a phishing scam. Al Capone, Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and fraudster Elizabeth Holmes were sentenced to federal prison.
There are 122 federal prisons throughout the country, housing more than 155,000 incarcerated persons as of August 2025, according to the BOP.
If someone is prosecuted at the state level, by a district or state attorney, they’ll serve their sentence at a facility that is operated by the state—or in 27 states, run by private corporations that are contracted by the state. Crimes that can land someone in state prison range from murder and selling drugs to burglary and shoplifting. Ted Bundy and Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz were sent to state prison.
In the federal system, prisons are given different security ratings: minimum, low, medium, high and maximum (sometimes referred to as administrative). These ratings determine how freely an incarcerated person can move and which services, such as educational programs and substance abuse treatment, they can access.
Minimum security
Minimum security federal prisons typically house people in a dormitory-style setting and provide inmates access to a library, email and recreation areas.
Only low-risk detainees and nonviolent offenders are sentenced to minimum security prisons because there are usually no or minimal fences or perimeter guards. Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of child sex trafficking for helping Jeffrey Epstein recruit young girls to sexually abuse, was moved to a minimum security prison in Texas, where Holmes is also held.
These facilities are considered work and program-oriented. For people who give birth behind bars, minimum security prisons allow detainees with less than 30 months on their sentences the opportunity to live with their babies as part of the bureau’s Residential Parenting Program. During that time, women can also receive mental health, medical care, vocational training and child care.
Low security
Low security prisons are similar to minimum security prisons as they also allow inmates to sleep in an open dormitory or cubicle-style housing. They can move around inside freely, but are overseen by a higher guard-to-inmate ratio than minimum security facilities. Convicted people who are transferred from higher-level prisons to low-security must have less than 20 years left in their sentences.
These prisons do have fences, but are not barbed wire.
Before she was transferred to a minimum security prison in Texas, Maxwell had been held at a low-security prison in Florida. Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC manager Lou Pearlman, who was convicted of running a massive Ponzi scheme, was also sentenced to a low-security prison in Miami, where he died.
Medium security
The next step up is a medium security prison, which is often encased by double electronic fences. Detainees mostly live in cell-style housing and a variety of work and treatment programs are still offered.
The staff-to-inmate ratio is higher than at low-security prisons, and the incarcerated have less freedom of movement.
Former NFL quarterback Michael Vick spent part of his 23-month sentence for dog fighting at a medium security prison in Kansas before being moved to a low security one in Virginia.
High security
At these prisons, also known as United States Penitentiaries (USPs), fences are reinforced or facilities are surrounded by walls. Housing is more restricted to multiple- and single-occupant cells and there is close enforcement and control of movement within facilities.
Before he was commuted by President Donald Trump, rapper Kodak Black was incarcerated at Big Sandy USP in Kentucky for falsifying information on a background check to buy a firearm.
Maximum security
This is the most secure form of imprisonment that typically houses inmates with serious or chronic medical problems, as well as violent or escape-prone inmates. The Federal Bureau of Prisons states that convicts who “are deemed the most dangerous” are held in these facilities, which are referred to as administrative facilities.
These prisons only offer individual cell housing with little privacy. Their cell doors are controlled from a secure station by guards. When they’re out of their cells, detainees stay with guards. In general, the movements and schedules of the people held within them are strictly controlled and monitored, and they have fewer opportunities to spend time outside of their cells.
Joe “Exotic” Maldonado, known as “the Tiger King,” is serving a 21-year sentence at FMC Fort Worth for a murder-for-hire plot and various animal abuse charges.
Supermax prisons were born out of maximum security and are just a step above them in terms of the people they house, though the facilities are similar in security measures. People who the government has deemed a threat to national or global security are housed at these facilities. There, incarcerated people typically stay in a 23-hour-per-day solitary confinement.
Today, ADX Florence—called the Administrative Maximum Facility —is the country’s only operational federal supermax security prison. ADX holds mostly convicted organized crime leaders and terrorists, including Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski, Oklahoma City bombing accomplice Terry Nichols and Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
