Alcatraz of the Rockies: Colorado prison houses nation’s worst offenders
Days pass without change.
Corridors repeat without differentiation.
Silence reigns; except, of course, when one offender can’t handle the monotony.
It’s a dichotomy, really: 400-plus men — lives marked by their evil filth — locked within the same sterile walls.
Act up, and your precious little privileges are taken away.
Welcome to the nation’s only Federal Administrative Maximum prison: Supermax ADX Florence.
The first Level 6 prison in America was Alcatraz; its replacement: USP Marion in Illinois.
But Thomas Silverstein proved Marion wasn’t secure enough: he murdered three people behind bars — one, a correctional officer there. It was at that point, leaders at the Bureau of Prisons realized it needed to ramp up its approach in handling inmates who were uncontrollable. Silverstein remains at Supermax to this day.
And indeed, Supermax has fulfilled its purpose. Since its opening in 1994, the nation’s worst offenders have been housed here: terrorists, bombers, and traitors.
“These are people that, as a nation, we cannot afford to lose,” said Larry Nutter, a former prison psychotherapist. “If someone were to escape, it would be a national embarrassment.”
The Supermax’s Who’s Who includes Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, 911 Conspirator Zaccharias Moussaoui, Shoe Bomber Richard Reid, Oklahoma City Bombing Conspirator Terry Nichols, and FBI spy Robert Hanssen.
Those in solitary confinement sit in their seven-by-12-foot cell of poured concrete for 23 hours a day. A concrete stool, ledges for a TV and a bed line the perimeter. Food is passed to an inmate through a slot. A four-inch-wide window to the outside angles upward to the sky — any view of the prairie or mountainscape cannot be seen. The lights are never turned off, and a camera watches their every move. One hour of solitary, scheduled exercise time outside of the cell is allowed.
Out of the cell, one button locks 1,400 doors simultaneously, some doors are made two-inch-thick steel.
Layers of barbed wire line the perimeter, and guard towers watch the slightest of movement continuously.
If family comes to visit, no physical contact is allowed.
There have been attempts of escape, but only “nominal,” according to Mark Andreis, who used to work at Supermax as a nurse.
“You don’t have a lot of fighting or trauma because it’s so secured,” said Andreis. “It’s built to do one thing: it’s to keep people from hurting anybody on the outside anymore, and to keep them contained. It does a perfect job of it.”
However, the toll of the day-to-day has its side-effects, said Andreis.
“The self-mutilation, the the self-harm, it’s extreme. Anything and everything can be a weapon.”
To this day, no one has escaped from Supermax.
