FCI Milan, in Washtenaw County, Michigan, has one of the longer institutional histories in the federal system. It was activated back in April 1933 as a "Federal Detention Farm," and in its early years it actually held female inmates, from 1933 until 1939, before later being used for offenders sentenced under the mid-century Federal Youth Corrections Act. Its most notable historical footnote is grim but significant: in July 1938, it was the site of the only federal execution ever carried out in Michigan, when a man convicted of murder was hanged there. Over the decades the institution's mission shifted several times, eventually settling in as a low-security prison for male inmates, holding well over a thousand men in more recent years. Given its age, Milan reflects an earlier era of federal prison design and mission compared to the medium- and high-security compounds built in the 1980s and beyond. For families, its location in southeastern Michigan, not far from Ann Arbor and the Detroit area, makes it more reachable than many of the rural federal prisons scattered elsewhere in the country.