CHARLESTON, W. Va., Aug. 25 — Would-be presidential assassin Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme and several other prisoners have been transferred in a major shuffling of female in-mates at federal prisons, officials said yesterday.

Among the most affected was the federal prison in Lexington, where the high-security female unit was shut down, corrections officials said. Other prisons heavily involved in the transfers, which began last month, are in West Virginia, Kentucky, California and Florida.

A burgeoning female prison population — caused in part by an increase in the number of women convicted of drug crimes and other serious offenses — is forcing the government to shift inmates and open more facilities, prison officials said.

Fromme and four other women were moved from the Lexington prison’s high-security unit when it was closed Friday. The Lexington facility is being converted into an all-female medium- and minimum-security prison.

Fromme, a follower of cult leader Charles Manson, and two others were transferred to a new high-security unit of the Marianna Federal Correctional Institution in Florida. One was sent to a California prison, and federal officials refused to identify the fourth inmate or where she was sent.

The all-female medium- and high-security facility inside the Marianna prison, known as the Shawnee Unit, had received 23 other women as of yesterday — 15 from the Alderson Federal Correctional Institution in West Virginia, seven from the Pleasanton Federal Correctional Institu-tion in California and one direct commitment, officials said.

The Shawnee Unit eventually will house about 55 inmates and will remain separate from an all-female low-security camp and a medium-level men’s prison under construc-tion there, authorities said.

“It looks like a combination of an old Roman coliseum and a garish modern office building,” Fromme said yesterday in a telephone interview from Marianna, in Florida’s panhandle.

Fromme, who is serving a life sentence for attempting to kill President Gerald Ford in 1975, complained that the first floor of the unit was flooded Tuesday by rain.

A prison spokeswoman said she wasn’t aware of the flooding but acknowledged some minor problems. “It’s like when you buy a new house, you work the bugs out,” said spokeswoman Jama Acuff.

Alderson, where Fromme spent 10 years before being moved to Lexington after she escaped from the West Virginia prison last year, is being turned into a less-secure “camp” facility, said Warden Ron Burkhart.

Besides Marianna, high-risk inmates from Alderson could be sent to federal prisons in Danbury, Conn., or Pleasanton, he said.

A female satellite camp at an all-male prison also is under construc-tion in Phoenix, Ariz., officials said.

Other female convicts besides Fromme who were the last to leave Lexington were bank robber Sylvia Jean Brown, kidnapper Debra Denise Brown and Puerto Rican terrorist Alejandrina Torres.

By STEVEN L. HERMAN