Will Rogers

The Justice Prisoner Transportation System (JPATS), nicknamed "Con Air" is an agency of the federal government of the United States charged with the transportation of persons in legal custody between prisons, detention centers, courthouses, and other locations. It is the largest prison transport network in the world. Though primarily used by the Federal Bureau of Prisons or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, JPATS also assists military and state law enforcement. The agency is managed by the United States Marshals Service out of the JPATS headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri. JPATS was formed in 1995 from the merger of the Marshals Service air fleet with that of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. JPATS completes over 350,000 prisoner/alien movements per year. Air fleet operations are located in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, with hubs in Anchorage, Alaska; Mesa, Arizona; Alexandria, Louisiana; and the Virgin Islands. Additionally, the Federal Transfer Center at Oklahoma City's Will Rogers World Airport was built especially to facilitate prisoner transport on JPATS. Usually, the airline employs Boeing 727 or McDonnell-Douglas MD-83 aircraft to transport convicts and illegal residents of the United States for extradition. Smaller jets and turboprops are also used to transport individual prisoners who are considered particularly dangerous. According to the Boeing Jetliner Databook, JPATS operates four Boeing 727s. JPATS also operates an additional four McDonnell Douglas MD-80 aircraft, as well as two Boeing 737-400s. JPATS aircraft use the ICAO designator DOJ with the callsign JUSTICE. Immediately after the September 11, 2001 attacks, when the Federal Aviation Administration grounded all civilian air service, JPATS was the only civilian passenger-carrying air service allowed to continue flying in U.S. airspace. Prior to the existence of JPATS, the transport of federal inmates over long distances was complicated. The process required an escort by two U.S. Marshals, accompanying the inmate on a regular passenger airplane. This posed numerous problems, including danger to civilians, a backlog of marshals needed to perform such escorts, and a high taxpayer expense. In the early 1970s, the U.S. Marshals were offered a transfer from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of a Boeing 727 aircraft. Though no purpose was originally designated for this plane, one official had the idea of using it for the mass transportation of federal inmates. JPATS' predecessor was the National Prisoner Transportation System of the U.S. Marshals Service.[5] The airline ultimately improved the efficiency of inmate transportation and made the sight of a shackled commercial airline passenger largely a thing of the past. For a plane full of 200 inmates, only 12 marshals are required. Marshals are trained with aircraft emergency procedures very similar to those flight attendants learn to protect the aircraft's occupants

• published: 16 Aug 2016
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