MCC San Diego is a federal detention facility in downtown San Diego, California, notable for being one of the first of the Bureau of Prisons' high-rise, urban jail-style buildings when it opened back in December 1974. Along with sister facilities built around the same time in New York and Chicago, it represented a shift away from the traditional sprawling, walled prison campus toward a compact vertical design suited to dense city locations near federal courthouses. The building rises 23 stories and can hold around 1,300 inmates. Unlike many federal prisons that house people serving out long sentences, MCC San Diego mostly holds men and women who have pending cases in the local federal district court, along with some serving short sentences, so the population tends to turn over more quickly than at a standard prison. Its downtown location, close to the courthouse, makes it convenient for legal proceedings but also means visiting conditions and rules are shaped more by its function as a detention and processing center than as a long-term residential facility. For families, it helps to know that a stay here is often tied to ongoing court proceedings rather than a finalized sentence.