A super-maximum security (supermax) or administrative maximum (ADX)
prison is a "control-unit" prison, or a unit within prisons, which represents the most
secure level of custody in the prison systems of certain countries.
The objective is to provide long-term, segregated housing for inmates classified as the highest security risks in the prison system and those who pose an extremely serious threat to both
national and
global security.[1]
Characteristics and practices
According to the
National Institute of Corrections, an agency of the United States government, "a supermax is a stand-alone unit or part of another facility and is designated for violent or disruptive incarcerated individuals. It typically involves up to 23-hour-per-day, solitary confinement for an indefinite period of time. Those incarcerated in supermax housing have minimal contact with staff and other inmates", a definition confirmed by a majority of prison wardens.[1]
In 2001, academics
Leena Kurki and
Norval Morris wrote that there was no universal, agreed upon definition for "supermax" and that prisons are classified inconsistently. They identified four general features of supermax prisons:[2]
Long-term: once transferred to a supermax prison, incarcerated individuals tend to stay there for several years or indefinitely.
Powerful administration: supermax administrators and correctional officers have ample authority to punish and manage incarcerated individuals, without outside review or prisoner grievance systems.
Solitary confinement: supermax prisons rely heavily on intensive (and long-term) solitary confinement, which is used to isolate and punish prisoners as well as to protect them from themselves and each other. Communication with outsiders is minimal to none.
Very limited activities: few opportunities are provided for recreation, education, substance abuse programs, or other activities generally considered healthy and rehabilitative at other prisons.
Those who are in a supermax prison are placed not as a punishment of their crimes but by their previous history when incarcerated or based on reliable evidence of an impending disruption, such as a gang leader or the leader of a radical movement. These decisions are made as administrative protection measures and the prisoners in a supermax are deemed by correctional workers as a threat to the safety and security of the institution itself.[2]
The amount of programming for those in prison varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Certain jurisdictions provide entertainment for their incarcerated population in the form of television, educational and self-help programs. Others provide instructors who speak through the cell door to individuals who are incarcerated. Some jurisdictions provide no programming to its incarcerated population.[2] In a supermax, incarcerated people are generally allowed out of their cells for only one hour a day (one-and-a-half hours in
California state prisons). Exercise is done in indoor spaces or small, secure, outdoor spaces, usually alone or in a pair and always watched by correctional officers. Group exercise is offered only to those who are in transition programs.
Prisoners receive their meals through ports in the doors of their cells.[3]
People in these prisons are under constant
surveillance, usually with
CCTV cameras. Cell doors are usually opaque, while the cells may be windowless. Furnishings are plain, with poured concrete or metal furniture. Cell walls, and sometimes plumbing, may be soundproofed to prevent communication between people.[3]
Supermax and Security Housing Unit (SHU) prisons are controversial. One criticism is that the living conditions in such facilities violate the
United States Constitution, specifically, the
Eighth Amendment's proscription against "cruel and unusual" punishments.[4] A 2011 New York Bar Association comprehensive study suggested that supermax prisons constitute "torture under international law" and "cruel and unusual punishment under the U.S. Constitution".[5] In 2012, a federal class action suit against the Federal Bureau of Prisons and officials who run ADX Florence SHU (Bacote v. Federal Bureau of Prisons, Civil Action 1:12-cv-01570) alleged chronic abuse, failure to properly diagnose prisoners, and neglect of prisoners who are seriously
mentally ill.[6]
History
Australia
An early form of supermax-style prison unit appeared in
Australia in 1975, when "
Katingal" was built inside the
Long Bay Correctional Centre in
Sydney. Dubbed the "electronic zoo" by inmates, Katingal was a super-
maximum security prison block with 40 prison cells having electronically operated doors, surveillance cameras, and no windows. It was closed down two years later over
human rights concerns.[7] Since then, some maximum-security prisons have gone to full lockdown as well, while others have been built and dedicated to the supermax standard. In September 2001, the Australian state of
New South Wales opened a facility in the
Goulburn Correctional Centre to the supermax standard. While its condition is an improvement over that of Katingal of the 1970s, this new facility is nonetheless designed on the same principle of sensory deprivation.[8][9] It has been set up for 'AA' prisoners who have been deemed a risk to public safety and the instruments of government and civil order or are believed to be beyond rehabilitation.
Corrections Victoria in the state of
Victoria also operates the Acacia and Melaleuca units at
Barwon Prison which serve to hold the prisoners requiring the highest security in that state including
MelbourneGangland figures such as
Tony Mokbel, and
Carl Williams, who was murdered in the Acacia unit in 2010.
Brazil
In 1985, the state government of São Paulo created an annex to a psychiatric penitentiary hospital meant to house the most violent inmates of the region and established the
Penitentiary of Rehabilitation Center of Taubaté, also known as Piranhão. Previously, high-risk inmates were housed at a prison on Anchieta Island; however, that closed down after a bloody massacre. At Taubaté, inmates spent 23 hours of a day in solitary confinement and spent 30 minutes a day with a small group of seven to ten inmates. Ill-treatment of inmates occurred on a daily basis, causing major psychological impairment.[10]
Throughout the 1990s, and the early-2000s, Brazil faced major challenges with gang structures within its prisons. The gang
Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) gained notoriety in the prison system and had new members joining within the prisons. Riots were a common occurrence and the gang culture became uncontrollable, leading authorities to pass the controversial Regime Disciplinar Diferenciado (RDD), a culture founded from disciplinary punishment.[11]
Germany
Stammheim Prison, in
Stuttgart, Germany, opened as a supermax-style prison in 1964, with an additional wing built in 1975 to house members of the far-left militant
Red Army Faction. At the time, it was considered one of the most secure prisons in the world.
United Kingdom
His Majesty's Prison Service in England and Wales has had a long history in controlling prisoners that are high-risk. Prisoners are categorized into four main classifications (A, B, C, D) with A being "highly dangerous" with a high risk of escaping to category D in which inmates "can be reasonably trusted in open conditions."[12]
The British government formed the Control Review Committee in 1984 to allow for regulating long-term disruptive prisoners. The committee proposed special units (called CRC units) which were formally introduced in 1989 to control for highly-disruptive prisoners to be successfully reintegrated. Yet a series of escapes, riots, and investigations by authorities saw the units come to a close in 1998. They were replaced by
Close Supervision Centres (CSC).[13] It was reported to hold 60 of the most dangerous men in the UK in 2015.
HM Prison Belmarsh is a High-Security Unit holding up to 48 prisoners. The prisoners are those of greatest risk of escape, terrorism, radicalising other prisoners or continuing organised crime from within the prison. Belmarsh was Britain's strictest prison in the United Kingdom.[14]
United States
The
United States Penitentiary Alcatraz Island, opened in 1934, has been considered a prototype and early standard for a supermax prison.[15] A push for supermax prisons began in 1983, after two correctional officers, Merle Clutts and Robert Hoffman, were stabbed to death by inmates at
Federal Penitentiary in
Marion, Illinois.
Norman Carlson, the director of the
Federal Bureau of Prisons, argued for a new type of prison to isolate uncontrollable inmates who "show absolutely no concern for human life".[16] USP Marion became the first "supermax" prison where inmates were isolated for 23 hours in their cells. By 1999, the United States contained at least 57 supermax facilities, spread across 30–34 states.[2]
There is only one of the America's strictest supermax prison remaining in the
U.S. federal prison system,
ADX Florence in
Florence, Colorado.[18] It houses numerous inmates who have a history of violent behavior in other prisons, with the goal of moving them from solitary confinement (up to 23 hours a day) to a less restrictive prison within three years.
However, many states now have created supermax prisons, either as stand-alone facilities or as secure units within lower-security prisons.[20] State supermax prisons include
Pelican Bay in
California and
Tamms in Illinois. In 2006,
USP Marion, the original model for the modern supermax prison, was downgraded to a medium-security prison. The
California State Prison, Corcoran (COR) is a hybrid model, incorporating a supermax partition, housing or having housed high-security prisoners such as
Charles Manson.
Cost-benefit analysis of supermax prisons
There is no set definition of a supermax prison; however, the United States Department of Justice and the National Institute of Corrections do agree on their purpose: "these units have basically the same function: to provide long-term, segregated housing for inmates classified as the highest security risks in a state’s prison system."[21]
Costs of operating a supermax prison
Building a supermax prison, or even retrofitting an existing prison, is expensive. Construction of
ADX Florence cost $60 million[a] when it opened in 1994.[24]
Compared to a maximum security facility, supermax prisons cost about three times more on average.[25] The 1999 average annual cost for inmates at
Colorado State Penitentiary, a supermax facility, was $32,383, compared with the annual inmate cost of $18,549 at the Colorado Correctional Center, a maximum-security prison; the cost of the latter facility being just 57% of the former.[26] The increased cost is due to the technology needed to further maintain a supermax: high-security doors, fortified walls, and sophisticated electronic systems, and because more people must be hired to maintain the buildings and facilities.[26]
ADX Florence is one of the strictest supermax prisons in the
United States.
In Brazil, the "regime disciplinar diferenciado" (differentiated disciplinary regime), known by the acronym RDD, and strongly based on the Supermax standard, was created primarily to handle inmates who are considered capable of continuing to run their crime syndicate or to order criminal actions from within the prison system, when confined in normal maximum security prisons that allow contact with other inmates. Since its inception, the following prisons were prepared for the housing of RDD inmates:
Catanduvas Federal Penitentiary (
Catanduvas, Paraná,
Brazil) – also based on the supermax standards. It is the first federal prison in Brazil, designed to receive prisoners deemed too dangerous to be kept in the states' prison systems (in Brazil, ordinarily, both convicts sentenced by States' courts or by the Federal Judiciary fulfill their prison terms in state-run prisons; the Federal Prison System was created to handle only the most dangerous prisoners in Brazil, such as major drug lords, convicted either by the Federal Judiciary or by the judiciary of a state).
Sassari District Prison "Giovanni Bacchiddu" at
Bancali, Sardinia. The only Italian prison specially designed and built as a Supermax, housing about 90 super-high security criminals all subject to the provisions of the
Article 41-bis prison regime, detained in self-contained sections, each with 4 cells, a small courtyard and a video-conference room where they can be interrogated and undergo trials without leaving the prison. This specially-designed supermax has been built to replace the old maximum-security prison of the
Asinara island, the so-called "Italian Alcatraz", that was closed in 2002.[34]
Another 10 Italian prisons have Supermax sections housing 41-bis inmates, besides the ordinary detention facilities, as follows:
L'Aquila District Prison – The largest Supermax section in Italy, housing over 150 inmates.[35] Contains a section for female prisoners.
Frankland –
Durham,
England,
United Kingdom – High Security Prison with a special unit for prisoners suffering from Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorders.
Whitemoor –
March, Cambridgeshire,
England,
United Kingdom – houses up to 500 of the most dangerous criminals in the UK. It has a unit known as the 'Close Supervision Centre' which is referred to as a "Prison inside a Prison". It has a special unit for prisoners with Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorders.
Wakefield –
Wakefield,
England,
United Kingdom – High Security Prison with a 'Close Supervision Centre'. It is nicknamed "The Monster Mansion" due to the many high-profile convicted murderers incarcerated there.
Black Dolphin – Russian maximum-security prison for convicts sentenced to life imprisonment.
White Swan – Russian maximum-security prison for convicts sentenced to life imprisonment.
Al-Muwaqqar II Correctional and Rehabilitation Center is a super-maximum security prison with 240 cells in
Jordan, see also
Correction centers in Jordan. It is designed to hold incorrigibly violent inmates in separate isolation cells.
Khao Bin Central Prison,
Ratchaburi,
Thailand – Supermax facility being opened in the first half of 2014.[42]
^Ross, Jeffrey Ian; de Jesus Filho, José (2013). "The Rise of the Supermax in Brazil". The globalization of supermax prisons. Rutgers University Press. pp. 130–132.
ISBN9780813557410.
OCLC784708328.
^de Jesus Filho, José (2013). "The Rise of the Supermax in Brazil". In Ross, Jeffrey Ian (ed.). The Globalization of Supermax Prisons. Rutgers University Press. pp. 130–135.
ISBN9780813557410.
JSTORj.ctt5hjbxg.14.
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^Ross, Jeffrey Ian; West Crew, Angela West (2013). "The Growth of the Supermax Option in Britain". The globalization of supermax prisons. Rutgers University Press. pp. 51–60.
ISBN9780813557410.
OCLC784708328.
^Crews, Angela West (2013). "The Growth of the Supermax Option in Britain". In Ross, Jeffrey Ian (ed.). The Globalization of Supermax Prisons. Rutgers University Press. pp. 49–66.
ISBN9780813557410.
JSTORj.ctt5hjbxg.9.
OCLC784708328.
^Riveland, C. (1999) Supermax prisons: overview and general considerations. Washington D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Corrections
^Grondahl, Paul (24 July 2015).
"Prison escapee David Sweat severely isolated, controlled in". Times Union. In corrections parlance, Five Points is known as a "super-max." It was built 15 years ago and the modular cell units were hauled to the rural prison site two at a time on flatbed trucks and bolted together end-to-end to form a cellblock.
^Ward, Mike. "
Hunt is on for escaped killer." Austin American-Statesman. 29 June 1999. A1. Retrieved on 27 November 2010. "Clifford Dwayne Jones' escape from the Estelle High-Security Unit on Sunday afternoon was the first from a Texas prison this year and the first from the "super max" lockup, as the unit is called."