A Peek Inside Supermax

The Bureau of Prisons, the agency responsible for corralling those folks who have violated Federal law, has outposts scattered across the country. The installations have house varying levels of security and intensity based on the kind of inmates housed there. The BoP outpost in Florence, Colorado is one of the Bureau's largest, with five separate institutions. The "jewel" of Florence, if you will, is ADX Florence - the "Alcatraz of the Rockies" - where the BoP's most violent and high profile inmates are housed.

Since ADX Florence was opened, it has been off limits to journalists. I'm not talking about getting in to interview inmates, I mean getting in at all. This past week, for the first time, a group of journalists got brief tour of the facilities. CBS legal guru Andrew Cohen reports his impressions here and here (via TalkLeft). It's not the Hobbesian nightmare it could be:

Warden Wiley told us that he speaks personally with every single inmate in his facility at least once a week. So what does Terry Nichols talk about? What does the Unabomber have to say? All Wiley would tell us is that their requests are more practical than philosophical in nature. The high-profile prisoners, he said, are actually among the best behaved in the facility. 'It is super quiet' where they are confined, he said, 'and they exhibit a lot of discipline and respect for authority.'

Still, lest anybody think it is not a dark hole into which we cast our worst elements:

But my lasting impressions of my morning at Supermax are of the quiet of the place and of the hundreds and hundreds of remote-controlled cameras. The level of control exercised over virtually every single function is remarkable, and for most of the inmates there, this soulless, artificial world is all they will ever again know.

I'm not saying that the inmates don't deserve that fate. I'm just saying I took no satisfaction in seeing it.

Indeed.