Sign up for 5280's weekly e-newsletters. Want the latest restaurant scoop? The latest happenings around town? Access to exclusive events and deals just for 5280 readers? Sunday’s Denver Post editorial on Supermax, the nation’s most secure maximum prison in Florence, Colorado, where most convicted terrorists end up, was chilling for a few reasons, not the least of which was this:
ADMAX spokeswoman Wendy Montgomery says the facility’s goal is to “house inmates and protect society.” There is no pretense of rehabilitation.
The second reason is the editorial’s (quite correct, I might add) description of inmate living conditions:
What makes it such stern punishment, experts and attorneys say, is the psychological isolation. By design, ADMAX inmates have virtually no contact with anyone, including guards. In the most secure wing, prisoners eat alone in their cells. Movement between a cell and a tiny recreation yard occurs one prisoner at a time, sans guards and with prison officials operating doors from a secure control area. No contact, no harm is the rationale.
I don’t think anyone disagrees that society needs to be protected from these inmates. But the Post wimps out at the end, with a mild:
As odious as are the crimes of the ADMAX inmates, it’s essential that this strictest of all facilities be operated under reasonable conditions.
Keeping prisoners locked up 23 hours a day without human contact is more than punishment. It is psychological torture. I’m disappointed the Post didn’t say so.
Posted 8/1/2005 at 7:47 am by Jeralyn Merritt
Crime :: Permalink :: Comments (2)
Here’s a short list of the prisoners currently at ADMAX:
Theodore Kaczynski – Unabomber
Terry Nichols – Oklahoma City bombing
Wadih El Hage – 1998 U.S. embassy bombings
Omar Abdel-Rahman – New York City landmark bomb plot
Raymond Luc Levasseur – American domestic bomber
Ramzi Ahmed Yousef – Terrorist
Abdul Hakim Murad – Operation Bojinka
Eyad Ismoil – 1993 World Trade Center bombing
El Sayyid Nosair – 1993 World Trade Center bombing
Yu Kikumura – Japanese Red Army
Luis Felipe – Latin Kings gang leader
Larry Hoover – Gangster Disciples gang leader
I wonder if the victims of these people are still psychologically tortured by the impact they’ve had on their lives and their families lives…that is those that have lived through the impact.
These inmates may have 23 hours in a cell all day, but they get three square meals, plenty of reading material, cable television, etc. Most of their victims no longer enjoy those small privileges that most of us take for granted in the free world, much less what these animals get to take advantage of inside a cell for 23 hours a day. The conditions in ADMAX are far more reasonable than the conditions that these inmates provided for the last moments of their victims lives and the continued days of suffering that their families endure.
I am grateful these people are being kept in such a facility. I sure don’t want them a place where they can get together with more such like minds. Their crimes were heinous enough…