FMC Butner has a full hospital facility specializing in oncology and behavioral science. Many medical and surgical specialties hold clinics and perform procedures at the FMC. It has the only residential program devoted to the treatment of sexual offenders in the federal prison system. In 2009 Philip Fornaci, the director of the DC Prisoners' Project, stated that FMC Butner, along with FMC Carswell and FMC Rochester, "are clearly the "gold standard" in terms of what BOP facilities can achieve in providing medical care" and that they had provided "excellent medical care, sometimes for extremely complex medical needs."
Butner study
In 2009, a study conducted by psychologists Michael Bourke and Andres Hernandez was published in the Journal of Family Violence. The results suggested a strong link between viewing child pornography and sexual abuse. The findings went against the conventional and widely held belief that while abhorrent, a person passively viewing child pornography had an insignificant causal link with that person actually molesting a child. In what is known as the "Butner Study," Bourke and Hernandez analyzed data on 155 men convicted of child pornography offenses, who took part in an 18-month treatment program between 2002 and 2005, during which the men filled out assessment measures including a "victims list," where they revealed the number of children they had molested in the past. 74% of the men denied molesting anyone when they were sentenced. However, by the end of treatment, 85% had admitted to sexually molesting a child at least once. The numbers are more than twice that of other studies. In explaining this discrepancy, Bourke said, "Our treatment team worked for an average of 18 months with each offender, and the environment was one of genuine therapeutic trust" that encouraged the men to tell the truth about themselves. A critique of the study is that the use of a population of participants in the most intensive sex offender treatment program offered in the federal prison system skewed the sample. Offenders had to have received at least a thirty-six-month sentence to be eligible for the program. Melissa Hamilton argues, "These offenders may well, then, have represented particularly dangerous offenders who were a high risk to children since they had been prosecuted, convicted, given more than minimal prison sentences, and accepted into the limited-space program because of a perceived need by themselves and program clinicians for a lengthy and intensive residential program."
Notable incidents
In October 2012, the oldest inmate in the federal prison system, Drayton Curry,, died at FMC Butner at age 92. Curry was serving a life sentence for a 1992 drug trafficking conviction and had petitioned US President Barack Obama for clemency in February 2011 due to old age and poor health. Advocates of the prison reform system cited Curry's situation as a reason for reconsidering mandatory minimum federal drug sentences.
