The Federal Medical Center, Fort Worth has had an unusually winding institutional history. It first opened in 1971 as a standard Federal Correctional Institution, before being converted into a Federal Medical Center in 1994 to serve inmates with significant medical or mental health needs. It didn't stay that way permanently — by the end of 2006 it had been converted back to regular FCI status — and then, as of 2017, it was redesignated as a Federal Medical Center once again, which is its current status. Practically, this means the facility now houses male inmates of varying security levels who require ongoing medical or psychiatric care, alongside a general population, making it something closer to a prison hospital than a typical single-purpose institution. It sits in Tarrant County within the city of Fort Worth, Texas, and holds around 1,500 inmates. For families, the back-and-forth designation history matters less than the present reality: because it's a medical center, transfers in and out are often tied to health needs rather than standard classification scoring, and inmates there may be receiving specialized treatment unavailable at ordinary FCIs, which can affect programming, movement, and visiting logistics compared to a standard facility.