FCI Aliceville is a fairly young facility, with construction starting in 2008 and the prison opening its doors in 2013 — making it the first federal women's prison ever built in Alabama. It sits on a large rural tract in Pickens County, between the small towns of Aliceville and Pickensville, and pairs a low-security institution with an attached minimum-security satellite camp on the same grounds. When it opened, it absorbed part of the female inmate population that had previously been housed at other institutions around the country as the Bureau of Prisons worked to add capacity for women. For the surrounding county, the prison was a notable economic development, bringing several hundred jobs to a part of the state that had seen little new investment. It has historically housed well over a thousand women. Worth noting for families: reporting in 2026 indicated the Bureau of Prisons has been in the process of realigning some of its facilities' missions, including a shift of Aliceville from a women's institution toward housing male inmates, so it's worth double-checking current designation and population when following up on a loved one there.