The Federal Correctional Institution, Fort Dix occupies part of a much older military installation — the land was first established as Camp Dix back in 1917, a World War I Army training cantonment that briefly became one of the largest bases in the Northeast, and it was made a permanent post and renamed Fort Dix in 1939. The federal prison itself came much later, opening on the grounds in 1992, long after the base's WWII-era heyday as a major training and separation center. Today the surrounding installation is known as Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, and the prison operates as a low-security facility for male inmates, split into East and West compounds plus a minimum-security satellite camp in between. What stands out most is sheer size: Fort Dix consistently ranks as the most populous federal prison in the country, holding several thousand inmates at once, which means larger housing units, more inmates per counselor, and a somewhat more impersonal day-to-day environment than smaller institutions. It has also housed a number of well-known inmates over the years. For families, the scale of the place and its location on an active military base are the two things most worth understanding going in.