The Federal Detention Center in Miami is a high-rise facility in the city's downtown core that opened in 1995, built specifically to handle the growing number of pretrial defendants moving through the Southern District of Florida's federal courts. Before it existed, people awaiting trial or sentencing in Miami's federal cases were often held in leased local jail space that was chronically overcrowded, so FDC Miami was constructed to give the Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Marshals Service a purpose-built option in the city itself. It was designed to hold over 1,200 inmates and houses both men and women, most of whom are detainees tied to ongoing federal court proceedings rather than long-sentenced prisoners. Because of that pretrial focus, the population at FDC Miami tends to turn over more quickly than at a standard prison, and a loved one's time there is often directly linked to how their case is progressing through the courts. Its downtown location is a practical plus for families, since it sits within the city rather than in a remote area, making visits more accessible than at many federal facilities.