FCI Ray Brook (medium-security)
FCI Ray Brook is a medium-security federal correctional institution for men in Ray Brook, New York, operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. It held about 820 people as of November 2025. It does not offer the Residential Drug Abuse Program. The institution's main number is 518-897-4000.
Location
Physical location: RAY BROOK, NY 12977
Mailing address: 128 RAY BROOK ROAD, RAY BROOK, NY 12977
Visitation
There are many specific rules and procedures to be aware of when you're considering visiting the institution. Read more on our Visitation Guide.
For full, current visiting rules and scheduling, always check the institution's official page on the Bureau of Prisons website: Official BOP Page.
Daily life and programs
The Federal Correctional Institution, Ray Brook is a medium-security U.S. federal prison for adult men operated by the Bureau of Prisons in the Northeast Region. Located in Essex County, the facility sits in the upstate New York hamlet of Ray Brook, positioned within the Adirondack Mountains between Saranac Lake and Lake Placid. The site is unusual for having been purpose-built as the athletes' Olympic Village for the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. Because Congress had required an after-use plan before approving the Olympic construction funds, it was constructed with the explicit understanding that it would be converted to a federal prison afterward. Congressman Robert C. McEwen coordinated the conversion with the Bureau of Prisons. The athletes departed in late February 1980, and roughly a year later, in 1981, the site reopened as a correctional institution. Because of this origin, it is still informally called the 'Olympic Prison.'
The layout of the original Olympic Village directly shaped the design of the prison that followed. Built with hundreds of small rooms that had each held two to four athletes, the complex allowed these spaces to be readily repurposed as cells. Securing the housing was a straightforward process due to the installation of heavy steel doors with peepholes, barred or windowless rooms, and concentric alarmed chain-link fencing with a surveilled double-gate entrance. The Bureau has publicly framed the housing as 'rooms' rather than barred cells, noting that they consist of typically two-person, four-person, and larger multi-bunk configurations. Reported capacity and population figures vary by source and year; capacity is cited from roughly 740 up to about 1,000, while the male population is generally in the 600 to 900 range. Because Ray Brook operates as a standalone medium-security FCI and no adjacent satellite camp is documented for it, the notable inmates below are held within the main medium-security institution.
Programming follows the standard Bureau of Prisons model geared toward reentry. The Education Department runs literacy, GED, and English-as-a-Second-Language instruction, along with Adult Continuing Education (ACE) and parenting classes, and vocational training has included trades such as carpentry and welding. Ray Brook hosts a UNICOR (Federal Prison Industries) operation that produces clothing and textiles; UNICOR jobs pay more than the standard institutional rate (roughly 0.12 to 0.40 dollars per hour for non-industry jobs) and typically carry a waitlist. Recreation includes outdoor basketball, handball, and a track, plus indoor fitness, table tennis, and arts and intramural programming. Notably, the facility does not offer the Residential Drug Abuse Program (RDAP) on site, so inmates seeking RDAP must transfer to a facility that runs it. An Adirondack Center for Writing partnership has exhibited artwork created by Ray Brook's incarcerated men in the surrounding Lake Placid community.
The prison has drawn repeated scrutiny over its conditions and remote setting. In 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reinstated a previously dismissed lawsuit brought on behalf of six inmates, who alleged they were confined in an extremely hot, cramped, and poorly ventilated room without adequate cleaning supplies. During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, reporting documented a slow institutional response as the virus spread from correctional officers to prisoners. This prompted news coverage noting that the 'situation was dire'; Ray Brook was also designated among federal sites used to quarantine incoming U.S. Marshals Service detainees. Separately, a former correctional officer pleaded guilty to accepting a bribe to smuggle a cellphone to an inmate, while more recent local reporting has described contraband deliveries by drone and periodic lockdowns after inmate fights. Finally, the deep-Adirondack location sits hours from major cities and is hard to reach in winter, a logistical reality making in-person family visitation a persistent hardship for prisoners' relatives.
Notable inmates
| Name | Sentence | Offense | Dates |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ja Rule (Jeffrey Atkins)[1] | About 2 years; released from FCI Ray Brook in 2013 | Attempted criminal possession of a weapon (a loaded .40-caliber handgun found in his car after a 2007 New York concert) and, federally, tax evasion | 2011-2013 |
| David Radler | 29 months | Fraud; former president and COO of Hollinger International, a cooperating co-defendant in the Conrad Black newspaper-empire case | 2008 (transferred to Ray Brook, then handed to Canadian authorities in September 2008) |
| Rezwan Ferdaus | 17 years plus 10 years supervised release | Terrorism; convicted in a plot to attack the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol using explosives-laden remote-control model aircraft and to detonate IEDs targeting U.S. troops | Sentenced 2012; booked at FCI Ray Brook |
| Sathajhan Sarachandran | 26 years | Conspiring to provide material support to the LTTE (Tamil Tigers), including attempting to buy surface-to-air missiles and military arms from an undercover FBI agent | Sentenced 2010 |
References
- ↑ "Ja Rule (Jeffrey Atkins)". '. Retrieved 2026-07-07.