's prison outreach director, Rabbi Menachem Katz, stated that the BOP "kind of unofficially designated it to meet the needs of Orthodox Jews" due to the proximity to the Jewish population of New York City. Circa 2008 the warden of the prison stated 58 prisoners were Jewish, while Jewish Prisoner Services International chairperson Gary Friedman stated that about 120 prisoners were Jewish. FCI Otisville offers Passover Seders, done in the prison cafeteria. Until other prisons began offering seders, prisoners at those institutions took buses to Otisville to partake in seders. Peter Hyman of New York magazine wrote "Otisville still offers one of the more traditional Seders in the prison system." Religious Jewish inmates request assignment to FCI Otisville for these reasons.
Notable incidents
On August 11, 2009, former correction officer Hope Spinato was sentenced to eight months in prison after pleading guilty to aiding and assisting an inmate serving a 17-year drug trafficking sentence, in briefly escaping the facility. An investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation found that Spinato became involved in a relationship with the inmate and drove the inmate between the facility and her home, on several occasions.
, the basis for the 2001 film Blow, served time at FCI Otisville, but was later transferred to the Federal Correctional Institution in Fort Dix, New Jersey before being released in 2017. In the Spike Lee film 25th Hour, the protagonist Montgomery "Monty" Brogan spends his final day commiserating with friends and family before reporting to Otisville for a seven-year sentence. In the opening of the 2010 film , the sequel to the 1987 film Wall Street, Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas, is released after serving an eight-year sentence for insider trading and securities fraud for his actions as a corporate raider in the first movie. Although the scene was actually shot at Sing Sing state prison, Gekko mentions in the film that he served his sentence at FCI Otisville. In The Mindy Project, nurse Morgan refers to his time in Otisville for the theft of cars with his cousin. In 2019, Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino, who is famous from the MTV show Jersey Shore, was sentenced to 8 months for tax fraud.
