FPC Eglin (Closed)

Federal Prison Camp, Eglin (FPC Eglin) was a minimum-security federal prison camp at Auxiliary Field 6 of Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. For four decades it was the best-known white-collar destination in the federal system, the camp for which the term "Club Fed" was coined, before the government closed it in 2006. This page is maintained as a historical record of the facility.

"Club Fed"

Eglin operated as the classic base camp: dormitory housing, no perimeter fence, a low staff-to-inmate ratio, and a population dominated by non-violent, mostly white-collar men who worked support jobs on the Air Force base. Its manicured grounds and ball field, and the fact that some residents worked as groundskeepers for an adjacent golf course, earned it the "Club Fed" nickname that came to stand for the entire category of soft federal camps.

Notable residents

Eglin's most famous cohort was the Watergate burglars: Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez, James W. McCord Jr., and Frank Sturgis all served time at the camp, cementing its reputation as the landing spot for the politically connected. Across the 1970s, 80s, and 90s it held a steady stream of fraud, embezzlement, and public-corruption defendants.

Closure

By 2006 the federal government moved to cut costs, closing the camp and returning its buildings to the Air Force. Its population was transferred largely to FPC Pensacola, the nearby Navy-base camp that inherited Eglin's role, and its reputation, until its own closure in 2026.

Legacy

"Club Fed" outlived the camp that named it. Eglin's closure began a long contraction of the classic military-base camps, a run that continued through Pensacola and the Bureau of Prisons' 2026 consolidation wave. For the modern equivalents, see the current federal prison camps.