USP Tucson is the high-security penitentiary within the Tucson federal correctional complex in Arizona, and it's a relatively young facility compared to many in the federal system. Planning identified Tucson as a strong site for a new high-security prison back in 2001, construction wrapped up in 2005 at a cost of roughly $100 million, and the penitentiary formally opened and began receiving inmates in February 2007. It's a large facility — over half a million square feet on a 640-acre property — designed to hold around 1,500 inmates, and it includes an attached minimum-security camp for lower-custody offenders. As a high-security institution, USP Tucson houses some of the more serious cases within the federal system, and its opening in the mid-2000s reportedly strained the local pool of qualified correctional officers, reflecting how significant an undertaking staffing a new high-security prison can be. For families, it's useful to know this is one of the newer high-security federal penitentiaries in the country, built with modern design standards rather than being a decades-old converted facility.