Just two hours outdoors of Denver , in a concrete pit among Rocky Mountain foothill , sit the high - security prison house in America . Its prescribed name is the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility , but everyone calls it " ADX " or " ADX Florence . "
The ADX in Florence , Colorado , is the one and only Union " Supermax " prison , home to the most severe criminals and escape - prostrate offender in Union prison house .
Infamous Inmates of ADX Florence
Among nearly 400 male inmate incarcerated at ADX Florence prison areseveral infamous characterswho have adorn the Federal Bureau of Investigations " most wanted " listing .
Take , for good example , Joaquín " El Chapo " Guzmán , the infamous drug swivel pin . El Chapo was sent to ADX after break loose twice from maximal certificate prison in Mexico . Today , piles of convicted serial killers , drug runners and other violent offenders reside at ADX .
Some of the most infamous crook serving time at ADX let in :
Just months after 9/11 , " shoe bomber " Richard Reid boarded a commercial flight and attempted to detonate base - made explosives blot out in the sole of his shoes . The endeavour was stopped by carpenter’s plane passengers , and Reid later plead guilty to eight terrorism rush . He is now serving three straight liveliness sentence at USP Florence Admax .
How Does Someone Get Sentenced to ADX Florence?
A person convicted of one or more law-breaking does n’t terminate up in the ADX by accident . Many have committed slaying — either on the exterior or in other penitentiaries , including killing safety equipment . Others are hardcore mob members who have ordered or carry out prison house striking . And a meaning portion of the men housed at ADX — as many as a thirdby one estimate — have a name genial illness that make them a serious threat to themselves and others .
But critic of the ADX and other Supermax institutions argue that disregardless of these men ’s crimes or mental unwellness , the stipulation inside these hyper - strong facilities — in which inmates drop 23 hours a daylight in solitary confinement — are the very definition of " cruel and unusual " punishment . harmonize to the United Nations , they even qualify as torment .
Life Inside ADX Florence Prison
At other mental home , inmate are position insolitary confinementfor short stretch in response to violent or aggressive behavior . correction official call this type of punitory solitary lying-in " administrative segregation , " better known as " the kettle of fish . " At ADX , also known as " theAlcatrazof the Rockies , " the full institution is essentially " the hole . "
How Big Are ADX Cells?
ADX inmates are confined to their 7 - by-12 - foot ( 2 - by-4 - meter ) mobile phone of poured concrete 23 hour a day , according to The New York Times . They receive all their meal through a time slot in the cell door , and their only glimpse of the extraneous humans is through a thin cunt of a windowpane aimed at an empty sky .
This deprive captive of find out the layout of the prison and the positioning of their cells . No one has ever escaped from ADX Florence prison .
What’s in an ADX Cell?
Since ADX inmates ca n’t be swear with anything that could be break down and made into a artillery , all the cellular telephone furniture is solid concrete and stabile : a concrete writing desk , concrete president and a concrete slab top with a thin foam pad that serve as a bottom . The " bathroom " is a combination toilet / sump and a shower that turns on mechanically three time a week .
With good behaviour , inmates earn the right to buy a low , black-market - and - white-hot TV with a build - in wireless , and to borrow Holy Scripture and magazines from the prison house library . Phone call are limited to 15 minutes a month to close mob members . prisoner are allowed five sojourn each month , under rigid circumstance .
A Stark Existence of Constraints
The only time that convict are allow out of their cells is for an time of day of exercise . Handcuffed and shackled at their feet , inmate are either leave to an empty elbow room with a unmarried wrench - up bar , or take outside to the yard , where they are shut away alone inside a caged pen .
Robert Hood , a former warden at the ADXtoldThe New York Times that the ADX was " not designed for world . When it ’s 23 hour a sidereal day in a room with a slit of a window where you ca n’t even see the Rocky Mountains — let ’s be candid here . It ’s not designed for rehabilitation . Period . End of story . "
Inanother interviewwith The Boston Globe , Hood described the eerie quiet of walking through a modern prison house facility where all of the inmate are locked down . " The ADX is a far more stark environment than any other prison I ’ve ever seen , and I ’ve been to all of the Union prisons , " enjoin Hood . " [ I ] call it a sporty interpretation of hell . "
Why Super Maximum Security Prisons Exist
There are roughly2 million peoplein prison house or slammer in the United States at any given prison term .
accord to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons , a small segment of that population poses pregnant challenges to wardens , prison guards and other chastisement workers . The difficulty of controlling those individual , describedas " the most dangerous , recalcitrant , aggressive and antagonistic inmates in a prison system , " drive the design and construction of increasingly secure facilities .
Supermax Facilities Are Relatively New
The first " Super Maximum - Security " prisons were built in the 1980s , and there are now more than 30 so - called Supermax facilities in the United States . ADX , the only Supermax for federal prisoner , was built in 1994 .
An Academic Look at Supermax Conditions
Keramet Reiterteaches criminology and law at the University of California Irvine and wrote a book about a Supermax prison house in California called " 23/7 : Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long - Term Solitary Confinement . "
" The denotative principle [ for Supermax penitentiary ] is that there are people who are so serious they have to be get rid of from the universal prison house population , and by remove them , everybody else would be well off , " say Reiter . " Theoretically there would be less violence and you could deter gang behaviour by locking the great unwashed off in these really harsh and restrictive condition . "
But Reiter says that there ’s little grounds to support the rationale that near - full solitary childbed is an in effect way to call prison house violence . On the flip side , there ’s mounting grounds that long - terminal figure solitary confinement is cognate to psychological torture and increase the risk of infection of certain types of violence , particularly self - harm andsuicide .
What Solitary Confinement Does to the Body and Mind
Reiter says that doctors have known since the sixties and seventies that lone confinement and sensory privation have straightaway and lasting impression on the brainpower and bodies of prisoners , as evidenced by the experience of American POWs in Vietnam .
" We bed that lock in someone up in solitary confinement can do all kinds of psychological problems within days , if not hours , " read Reiter . " With Supermax prison house , we ’ve essentially been running a mass experimentation on the effects of foresighted - term lonesome parturiency for the last two decades . "
Guards Are Prisoners' Only Company
For ADX prisoners , the only person they may have contact with is a sentry duty who brings them meals and escort them to the pace . A2014 reportby Amnesty International determine that ADX prisoners " routinely go days with only a few words utter to them . "
The effects of long - term nongregarious lying-in range from depression and anxiety to full - on hallucinations and psychotic breaks .
The New York Timestells the disturbing storyof an ADX Florence prison house yardbird named Jack Powers , jailed for looting and broadcast to ADX after escaping from another prison . The closing off station Powers spiral into insanity . He thin off his ear lobe , manducate through a finger’s breadth and smashed his head open in edict to come in his mastermind with " bacterium - oppressed fluid . "
" It ’s just the harshest place you ’ve ever picture . Nothing live , not so much as a brand of grass anywhere , " said Travis Dusenbury in aninterview with the Marshall Project . He spent 10 years at ADX Florence for set on a guard duty at another prison , before being free . " It ’s so claustrophobic in there … It scram to the point where absolutely anything that changed , like if I visit snow falling outside , was what permit me to survive . "
ADXhas six different levelsof certificate , and inmate can move from extremely restrictive to less - restrictive caparison , and possibly to other prisons . But even when released from lonesome , the core of isolation linger .
In 1993 , a MD named Stuart Grassian described a condition call " SHU syndrome " ( only confinement facilities are also called Security Housing Units ) that ’s characterized by paranoia , scare attack , aggressiveness and psychotic symptoms .
Are Supermax Prisons Unconstitutional?
TheEighth Amendmentof the Constitution veto " cruel and unusual punishment , " and given the hump psychological burden of solitary childbed , should n’t facilities like ADX be illegalize ?
" Legally the shape inside Supermax prison house are constitutive , " says Reiter . " They have been challenged extensively and no courtyard has bind that keeping someone in solitary confinement for any specific period with any specific degree of deprivation is unconstitutional . "
Federal Bureau of Prisons vs. the U.N.
There is increasing pressing , however , from the international legal community to end the practice of long - term solitary confinement in America . The United Nations , for example , has established the " Mandela Rules " govern the discourse of prisoners , which prohibits the role of " prolonged sole labour " ( defined as 22 hour or more per day ) and equates it with torture .
There have been some small victory for prisoner rights at ADX . In 2016 , the Federal Bureau of Prisonssettled a class - activity lawsuitwith 100 mentally ill ADX inmates who were deny antipsychotic medications and left to languish in awful conditions . The settlement lead to the transfer of some of the most unhinged con to special Union facilities where they can receive better psychiatric care .
For the rest of the ADX inmates deemed mentally fit , they are still in their cells serving a life story sentence in nigh - absolute isolation .
