CDCR - California Medical Facility (CMF)

The California Medical Facility (CMF) at 1600 California Drive in Vacaville is unlike any other CDCR institution: since 1955, it has been California's centralized state prison for men who need serious medical, psychiatric, and dental care beyond what most other prisons can provide. Under Warden Sircoya M. Williams (appointed January 2026) and Health Care CEO Joseph A. Herman, CMF operates outpatient clinics, an Outpatient Housing Unit (OHU), a 400-bed inpatient psychiatric treatment center, a 50-bed Mental Health Crisis Bed unit, and the first licensed correctional facility hospice in the United States. Because CMF's mission is medical rather than punitive, its population and daily operations are shaped by clinical needs first and custody logistics second. For families with a loved one at CMF — often men with cancer, advanced illness, or serious mental illness — this guide covers the essentials of visitation through the CDCR VSA, mail routing to PO Box 2000 with a separate money-order address at PO Box 2500, Connect Network and JPay deposits, and CMF's unique hospice program.

About CMF and its medical/psychiatric mission

CMF was founded in 1955 specifically to provide a centrally located CDCR facility to meet the medical, psychiatric, and dental health-care needs of incarcerated men whose conditions could not be adequately addressed at other prisons. Over the seven decades since, CMF has grown into California's principal correctional-medicine hub, serving as a regional referral center for men across the CDCR system who need specialized care. The facility provides primary care, chronic disease management, specialty clinics, radiology, mental-health treatment across acuity levels, and end-of-life and palliative care.

CMF's hospice, opened in 1991, is the first licensed correctional-facility hospice in the United States. The program provides end-of-life care to men with terminal diagnoses who will die in custody, and it operates on a formal hospice model that includes pain and symptom management, spiritual and family support, and the participation of incarcerated hospice-worker peers who provide companionship and personal care to the dying under supervision by nursing staff. For families of a man in CMF hospice, this is often the most important thing to understand: your loved one is receiving structured end-of-life care intended to focus on comfort and dignity, and visits, calls, and family involvement are supported to the extent his clinical status allows.

Every incarcerated person at CMF has a CDCR number that follows him across California's whole system. Because clinical acuity can change quickly at a facility like CMF, and because men can be admitted from and transferred back to other CDCR institutions as their conditions stabilize, confirming current placement through CDCR's CIRIS before mailing or traveling is important. Our guide on how to find someone in jail or prison covers the search process.

Visitation at CMF through the CDCR VSA

Visits at CMF are held on Saturdays, Sundays, and CDCR-observed holidays. Every visit must be scheduled in advance through the CDCR Visitor Scheduling Application (VSA) at cdcr.gtlvisitme.com/app — walk-in visits are turned away. Because CMF's population includes men in acute-care settings, medically fragile patients, and psychiatric inpatients, visit format varies significantly by housing assignment and current clinical status. Some visits are conventional visiting-room contact visits; others take place at bedside in the medical or hospice units under staff supervision, particularly for hospice patients whose condition does not permit them to be moved to a visiting room.

Before scheduling, you must be approved on the visitor list. That process starts with CDCR Form 106 (Visitor Questionnaire) that the incarcerated person requests, mails to you, and you complete and return for a background check. Once approved, register with the VSA using the CDCR number and book a slot several days ahead. Bring a valid government-issued photo ID and dress within CDCR's visiting-room rules. For hospice or acute-care bedside visits, coordinate with your loved one's medical team ahead of time; those visits often have different arrival procedures and may not follow the standard visitation-office check-in. Vacaville is accessible by car from the San Francisco Bay Area (about an hour), Sacramento (about 30 minutes), and points further south with longer drives.

How to send money to a CMF inmate

CMF inmates fund their trust and canteen accounts through the CDCR-wide channels: Access Corrections' Connect Network and JPay for electronic deposits, plus a mailed-money-order option specifically to CMF's dedicated address PO Box 2500, Vacaville, CA 95696-2500 (this is separate from the inmate-mail PO Box 2000 — don't confuse the two). Money orders should be made payable per current CMF instructions and include the inmate's full name and CDCR number. Additionally, JPay lockbox mail to JPay, 2202 South Figueroa St, Box #3001, Los Angeles, CA 90007 is available for men who prefer that route. California's 50-percent restitution garnishment applies to non-exempt deposits. Our how to send money to an inmate and JPay guide cover the mechanics.

Mail to a CMF inmate: PO Box 2000

Personal mail for CMF inmates goes to Inmate Name and CDCR Number, PO Box 2000, Vacaville, CA 95696-2000. Note that money orders use a separate address (PO Box 2500) and legal mail from an attorney should be clearly marked. Include your full return address. For men in the inpatient psychiatric center, OHU, or hospice, mail delivery may be slightly slower because clinical-unit mail routing goes through nursing staff. If a letter you sent has not arrived weeks after mailing, ask your loved one or his medical social worker to check with the unit clerk.

Follow California's prohibited-items rules: no cash, personal checks, stamps, stickers, glitter, glue, tape, staples, paperclips, Polaroids, hardcover books, musical or embellished cards, or anything with electronics. Our how to send mail to an inmate covers the format.

Phone calls, hospice family involvement, and mental-health context

Phone service at CMF, like every CDCR institution, has been free of charge to the incarcerated caller since January 1, 2023 under California's Keep Families Connected Act (SB 1008). Calls run through ViaPath/GTL's ConnectNetwork platform. Register your phone number at connectnetwork.com. For men in acute psychiatric care or hospice, phone use may be limited by clinical status, but consistent phone contact from family remains a documented positive factor in mental-health treatment outcomes and in the human dimensions of hospice care.

CMF's role as a Coleman (mental-health) site means the Prison Law Office and other advocacy organizations that specialize in prison mental-health care monitor operations closely. If you are concerned about your loved one's clinical care at CMF — whether in the general medical population, the OHU, the inpatient psychiatric center, the crisis unit, or hospice — document specific concerns in writing to the Health Care CEO's office at (707) 448-6841 with copies to the CDCR Office of the Ombudsman. External escalation paths include the Prison Law Office as class counsel in Coleman and Plata. Our guide to calling an inmate covers phone setup.

Hospice family involvement

If your loved one is in CMF's hospice, ask his medical social worker about family-involvement opportunities that are unique to the hospice program: expanded visiting arrangements at bedside, participation in memorial services, and coordination on end-of-life wishes. Some families report that hospice at CMF, while unavoidably painful, offers real involvement and dignity that they had not expected from a prison setting. If your loved one wants specific funeral or burial arrangements coordinated, or if there are property or family issues that need to be addressed before his death, working with the hospice team early helps ensure those wishes are documented.

Inside the California Medical Facility: how the facility is laid out

the California Medical Facility has been in operation since 1955. It holds people at medium security.

CMF operates as a medium security medical facility, providing primary care, chronic care and specialty care clinics, radiology, occupational and physical therapy, pharmacy, laboratory and respiratory services, inpatient and outpatient mental health treatment, and end-of-life and palliative care.

Layout matters more than families expect. Which yard or unit someone is assigned to drives their custody level, their program eligibility, and often their visiting schedule — so when you call, having the housing assignment to hand will get you a useful answer faster than the name alone.

How crowded the California Medical Facility is right now

the California Medical Facility was designed to hold 2,316 people. As of July 22, 2026 the agency reported a population of 2,052, which is 88.6% of that design capacity.

Running at or below design capacity does not mean the institution is quiet. Population moves in waves, and intake, medical screening, and visiting slots can all come under pressure in a single week without the headline number changing.

For scale, the same report puts the state's institutions as a whole at 86,006 people against a design capacity of 71,074, or 121.0% — so this facility sits well below the system-wide figure rather than being an outlier.

This figure moves week to week. Treat it as the scale of the place rather than a live count, and confirm anything that affects a visit with the institution directly.

What makes the California Medical Facility different

the California Medical Facility does not operate as an ordinary general-population prison. Its designated role is medical and mental health hub, and that changes what you should expect from it.

The institution operates 400 licensed inpatient psychiatric beds and 50 licensed mental health crisis beds. Licensed bed counts matter because a licensed unit runs under health-care rules rather than ordinary custody rules: admission is a clinical decision, not a classification one, and visiting and phone access on those units can differ from the rest of the facility.

CMF operates the first licensed prison hospice in the United States.

If your family member is here for a medical or mental-health reason rather than a custody one, ask specifically which unit they are on. That single answer determines their visiting schedule, their phone access, and who you need to speak to about their care.

Who runs the California Medical Facility

The senior official on site is Sircoya M. Williams, appointed in January 2026. Naming the warden is not just trivia: correspondence about a serious unresolved problem should be addressed to that post rather than to the institution generally, because a letter to a named office creates a record that a call to a switchboard does not.

The institution's main line is (707) 448-6841. Use it for anything urgent — a medical emergency, a safety concern, confirming whether visiting is running — and ask for the watch commander or the shift supervisor rather than leaving a message with whoever answers.

Education, training, and work at the California Medical Facility

Academic programming at the California Medical Facility includes Adult Basic Education, GED preparation, HiSET preparation, the Voluntary Education Program and community college coursework. Enrolment is rarely immediate — most institutions run waitlists, and assignment depends on custody level, sentence length, and prior testing. If your family member wants a place, the request has to come from them through their assigned counsellor; a call from outside will not add someone to a list.

Vocational and career technical training on site includes Computer and Related Technology, carrying Microsoft certifications. These carry more weight than general programming, because completion is documented and can matter at a parole or release review as evidence of work done inside.

The facility also operates prison industry work assignments: the Blind Project, doing Braille transcription and repair and the Bike Project, refurbishing bicycles. These are paid positions, at correctional pay rates rather than market wages, and the earnings usually route into a trust account your family member can spend at the commissary. A work assignment is also the most common reason someone becomes hard to reach during the day.

Visiting the California Medical Facility: the current schedule

the California Medical Facility receives visitors on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, with in-person visits offered for a minimum of two hours, though the exact session length varies by institution and availability.

Two things about that schedule are worth knowing before you drive. Published hours are when the visiting room is open, not when you can arrive — processing closes well before the room does, and arriving inside the last hour often means being turned away. And a published schedule is suspended more often than it is changed: lockdowns, staffing shortages, and medical isolation all cancel visiting at short notice, usually without the website being updated.

Visiting is booked through the department's Visitation Scheduling Application. The booking window opens eight days before the visit and closes five days before it, and the daily request period opens at 6:00 a.m. for northern institutions, 6:30 a.m. for central, and 7:00 a.m. for southern, running to 11:59 p.m. Only people already approved as visitors can book an appointment, so the approval application has to be completed and granted before any date can be reserved. Visits can be cancelled at any time for health and safety reasons, and can be ended early if staff see a visitor or a resident showing symptoms of a contagious illness.

Call the institution the morning you travel and ask specifically whether visiting is running on your family member's yard or unit — not whether the prison is open. Those are different questions, and the second one gets a misleadingly reassuring answer.

Records and your first steps at CMF

Keeping the CDCR number, current housing unit (general population, OHU, inpatient psych, crisis unit, or hospice), medical social worker's name and contact, VSA login, and any advance-directive or health-care-decision documentation organized in one place carries families through CMF with the least added friction. If someone you love has just been transferred to CMF, focus first on the essentials: write down their CDCR number and current unit, request CDCR Form 106 for visitor approval and register at cdcr.gtlvisitme.com/app once approved, coordinate with the medical social worker on visitation logistics if he is in a clinical unit, set up Connect Network or JPay for deposits (money orders to PO Box 2500, letters to PO Box 2000, California withholds 50 percent for restitution), and register your phone at connectnetwork.com for free calls. Our life after prison, finding work after prison, and applying for SNAP, Medicaid, and TANF after release guides cover the reentry side if your loved one will step down from CMF to a lower-custody placement.