Federal prison security levels form a ladder that John Kiriakou sets out to explain an apparent contradiction in his own account: why FCI Loretto, a low-security institution, held men he describes as very dangerous and very sick.[1]
The descent
The reason such men were there, in Kiriakou’s account, is that they did not start there. A prisoner would begin at a maximum-security penitentiary, then descend to a medium, then to a low. A move down to a low requires two things: fewer than 20 years left on the sentence, and good behaviour.[1]
Below that sits the minimum-security work camp, which Kiriakou says is available to a prisoner who has been really good and who does not have a violent crime.[2]
What the levels mean in practice
Kiriakou describes Loretto’s physical security as double fences topped with concertina wire, motion detectors and roving patrols — but with no guard towers, and with none of the correctional officers armed.[3]
He is emphatic that the level determines the character of the place. Violence at Loretto was relatively rare, and most of what there was broke out over what to watch on television. The kind of violence associated with prisons, he says, is much more prevalent in medium-security facilities and in penitentiaries, where serious, injury-inducing fights are routine and violence really is a way of life.[4][3]
That difference disciplined behaviour. Kiriakou notes that most prisoners at Loretto did not want to risk being sent back up to a medium or a penitentiary — a very real step down in conditions and living standards.[5]
The levels also sorted populations. Kiriakou offers as a fact that there are no pedophiles in medium-security prisons or penitentiaries, because it is too dangerous for them; those who killed the children they molested serve their sentences in a medium-security prison’s solitary confinement unit for their own safety.[6]
Kiriakou’s own placement
Both the judge and the prosecutor in Kiriakou’s case recommended a camp. The Bureau of Prisons sent him to a low-security prison instead, and he notes the consequence that mattered to him: pedophiles are not permitted in camps, and at Loretto they were within five feet of his children in the visiting room.[7]
He also records the reasoning as it was given to him by his lawyers: judges can only make recommendations as to prison assignments, and the Bureau of Prisons has the ultimate word — and it decided that he should serve his sentence in a real prison.[8]