The Federal Medical Center, Carswell (FMC Carswell) is a United States federal prison and medical facility for women in Fort Worth, Texas. The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) operates the administrative-security institution and its adjacent minimum-security satellite camp on the grounds of Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth, formerly Carswell Air Force Base. Carswell is the only federal medical center operated specifically for women and houses prisoners with serious physical illnesses, disabilities, mental-health conditions and forensic-treatment needs. FMC Carswell held women's prisoners sentenced to death by the U.S. federal government.
History The main Carswell building was constructed as a 250-bed United States Air Force hospital and opened in 1958. The hospital cost approximately $5.2 million and was built to serve military personnel and their families.
The military hospital closed on September 30, 1993. The BOP acquired the property in 1994 and converted the six-story, approximately hospital into a federal prison for women. The bureau later added nine buildings totaling approximately and developed a minimum-security camp next to the main institution.
Carswell opened in 1994 as the BOP's only medical center specifically for women.
Facility and population Physical layout and custody The converted hospital contains 16 housing units with multiple-occupancy cells and one open-bay dormitory. The 2018 inspection found no general-population single-cell housing units. The complex includes chronic-care, medical-surgical, acute-care, mental-health and hospice units; an outpatient clinic; a special housing unit (SHU); and an administrative housing unit for women classified as requiring heightened security.
The administrative housing unit was activated in 1998 and contained 43 beds when inspected in 2017. It held women under federal death sentences, women accused of escape attempts or assaultive conduct, national-security prisoners and others designated as special management concerns.
The adjoining camp consists of two housing buildings and facilities for food service, healthcare, education, recreation, religious services, laundry, commissary and visitation. Women assigned to the camp also perform labor supporting the main institution and the surrounding naval air station.
Overcrowding and cell occupancy The Corrections Information Council reported a design capacity of 926 people at the main institution and 314 at the camp. At the time of its September 2017 inspection, the main institution was already operating at 99 percent of design capacity. On August 1, 2026, BOP population statistics listed 1,014 people at the main institution and 249 at the camp. The main institution was therefore holding 88 people—approximately 9.5 percent—above its reported design capacity.
During the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, relying on interviews and more than 200 pages of written testimony from women in Unit 2 North, reported that four women were housed in cells measuring approximately by in the institution's high-rise housing.
Conditions in the SHU reflected the same compression. Although BOP policy described SHU confinement as placement in two-person cells, inspectors observed two SHU areas in which most cells were designed to hold four people and the accessible cell was designed for three. Women in the SHU were generally allowed one hour per day outside their cells, and the inspection recommended doubling that minimum and restricting the use of disciplinary segregation.
Programs Carswell offers adult basic education, GED instruction, English-language courses, continuing education, vocational training, religious services, recreation, release preparation and a Residential Drug Abuse Program. Vocational offerings have included cosmetology and culinary arts. The 2018 inspection found that post-GED and vocational opportunities were limited or unaffordable for some women and recommended expanding access.
Sexual abuse and employee misconduct Sexual contact between a BOP employee and a person under the employee's custodial authority is a federal crime; the law does not recognize the incarcerated person as capable of consenting to the relationship. Carswell nevertheless has one of the most extensively documented records of staff sexual abuse in the federal prison system.
Documented pattern The 2022 bipartisan Senate investigation identified 22 women as victims in Carswell cases between 2012 and 2022. Its Carswell total combined victims in federal criminal cases with 16 women whose allegations were substantiated by the BOP Office of Internal Affairs. Carswell had more identified victims than any other federal women's prison in the Senate's exhibit.
A 2025 investigation by The Guardian found that 13 Carswell employees had been convicted of sexual abuse or related misconduct since 1997. The newspaper also reported that 35 women accused Carswell staff of sexual abuse or misconduct between 2014 and 2018, the highest reported number at any federal women's prison during that period.
The record includes correctional officers, supervisors, case managers, medical personnel, religious staff and other employees. Federal prosecutions have included former cook supervisor Yvonne Marrufo, who pleaded guilty in 2016 to sexually abusing a woman she supervised; former case manager Matthew McGaugh, sentenced in 2017 after pleading guilty to sexual abuse; former lieutenant Luis Curiel, sentenced in 2022 for sexually abusing women under his authority; and former correctional officer Marerllis Nix, sentenced in 2025 after a trial established that he committed sexual acts with a woman in his custody.
The recurring convictions and substantiated cases established that the abuse was not confined to unverified complaints or a single employee. A former acting director of the BOP's National Institute of Corrections, who participated in a 2022–2023 audit of Carswell, told The Guardian that the prison had a pattern of sexual assault and that senior Carswell and regional officials received the audit. She said no major institutional change followed.
Reporting failures and retaliation Women interviewed by The Guardian described rape, coerced sexual acts, threats and retaliation by employees who controlled their housing, work assignments, medical access and disciplinary status. Several said that administrators ignored reports, delayed interviews or returned accused employees to duty.
In 2025, 11 women filed civil lawsuits alleging sexual abuse by six Carswell employees, including correctional, medical, religious and maintenance personnel. Several plaintiffs alleged that they were punished, transferred or placed in the SHU after reporting abuse. At the time of the investigation, the government had sought to move the cases to the Northern District of Texas but had not addressed the merits of the allegations.
Internal-affairs records obtained by The Guardian showed that sexual-misconduct allegations at Carswell rarely produced discipline. Four of seven "inappropriate relationship" allegations reviewed for a 26-month period were substantiated; one employee was prosecuted, while three others resigned or retired and the investigations were closed. The paper also cited a Justice Department inspector-general finding that BOP investigators required substantially more proof than agency policy demanded, increasing the likelihood that employees who committed misconduct could avoid accountability and remain employed.
The BOP told The Guardian that it takes sexual-abuse allegations seriously and investigates credible reports. It declined to answer detailed questions about the Carswell cases, the status of accused employees and the internal audit.
PREA audit and continuing allegations A Prison Rape Elimination Act audit conducted in July 2025 declared Carswell compliant with all 45 standards reviewed. The same audit recorded four allegations of staff-on-inmate sexual abuse and 15 allegations of staff-on-inmate sexual harassment during the preceding 12 months. None of the abuse allegations had been referred for criminal investigation; three remained open and one was classified as unsubstantiated. Twelve harassment investigations remained open, and one staff-harassment allegation had been substantiated.
The compliance finding therefore coexisted with active allegations, unresolved investigations and a documented institutional history of convictions. The Senate had already found that PREA audits at other federal women's prisons declared facilities compliant while failing to detect ongoing cultures of employee sexual abuse, and concluded that the BOP had not successfully implemented PREA as a prevention and accountability system.
External oversight and accountability Carswell's failures persisted within an oversight structure that repeatedly failed to provide effective independent review. Healthcare accreditation ended, correctional reaccreditation relied on the BOP's own findings, a requested congressional inquiry never occurred, and an internal audit warning of a sexual-assault pattern produced no visible major reform.
Loss of independent healthcare accreditation Carswell's contract with The Joint Commission, which accredited the prison as a healthcare organization, expired in October 2020 and was not renewed. By 2025, no comparable independent healthcare accreditation had replaced it. The State of Texas did not regulate the prison's medical operations because Carswell is a federal institution, and no outside organization independently monitored dialysis treatments.
Carswell's medical-services contract required quarterly reports describing problems in the dialysis program. The University of North Texas Health Science Center told reporters that it did not possess the reports and directed questions to its subcontractor, U.S. Renal Care. Neither the contractor nor the BOP produced the requested monitoring records.
The result was a specialized dialysis program for medically vulnerable women with no publicly documented review by a hospital accreditor, state health regulator or independent clinical monitor.
Correctional accreditation without independent review The BOP separately paid the American Correctional Association (ACA) to accredit federal prisons. BOP officials described the contract as a source of independent third-party review. A 2023 audit by the Department of Justice inspector general found that such independent review did not occur during most reaccreditations.
ACA reviewers relied on the BOP's internal program reviews instead of conducting their own comprehensive examinations of prison operations and records. The inspector general found that ACA did not consistently verify the bureau's work, did not always report deficiencies and corrective actions, and sometimes used fewer reviewers or less inspection time than required.
The inspector general concluded that the BOP was, in effect, paying ACA to affirm the bureau's own findings. It found no instance in which ACA accreditation improved BOP health, safety or security standards and warned that the process created a public misconception that federal prisons had undergone ACA's ordinary independent review.
The BOP allowed its ACA contract to expire on March 31, 2024. The end of the contract removed an accreditation process that the inspector general had found non-independent, but it did not itself create a replacement system of routine outside review.
Warnings that produced little change In September 2022, Representative Marc Veasey asked the House Judiciary Committee to investigate Carswell's high number of sexual-abuse reports and the BOP's handling of complaints. His request cited a pattern of misconduct and alleged cover-ups revealed by the Star-Telegram. The Guardian reported three years later that the requested inquiry never occurred.