Land of four federal prisons

Until recently, when news broke that a possible prisoner exchange for three U.S. hikers in Iran involved an Iranian arms dealer held in a Minnesota federal prison, you might not have known our state is home to four federal pens.

While not as sexy or as newsy as facilities elsewhere in the country, Minnesota's federal prisons at Sandstone, Rochester, Duluth and Waseca house about 4,200 of the nation's more than 211,000 federal inmates -- including Amir Ardebili, an inmate at the Federal Medical Center in Rochester.

Recent reports hint at a desire by the Iranian government to swap Ardebili, who pleaded guilty to trying to obtain missile and radar parts, for the hikers awaiting trial on espionage charges.

The Federal Medical Center in Rochester, on a former state hospital campus a couple of miles outside downtown, provides specialized medical and mental health services to male offenders. It holds about 960 inmates.

Rochester once held former televangelist Jim Bakker, as well as Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, sentenced to life in prison for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York. Rahman was later transferred to a more secure facility.

The Federal Prison Camp at Duluth is a minimum-security facility that holds about 900 inmates. It is on the former Duluth Air Force Base about 7 miles north of Duluth. It has limited or no perimeter fencing.

The Federal Correctional Institution at Sandstone is Minnesota's largest federal prison, with nearly 1,400 men confined at the low-security facility about 100 miles northeast of the Twin Cities. A low-security facility in the federal system has a double-fenced perimeter.

The prison at Waseca holds nearly 1,100 inmates and has housed only women since January 2009. A onetime campus of the University of Minnesota, the Federal Correctional Institution Waseca opened as a prison for men in August 1995 and began its transition into a women's prison in October 2008.

James Walsh • 612-673-7428