What is Day to Day Life Like in a Maximum Security Prison?

Factual Questions
1

First off, I realize that in the US alone we have separate prison systems within each state, subdivisions within many states, and then there is the federal system as well. An exhaustive analysis isn’t really what I am looking for although notable exceptions or something really strange are welcome. I am just interested in this question in the general sense.

Say you got sent to a generic maximum security prison for life, what would day to day life be like? How many hours a day could you be out of your cell. I know many prisons offer work as a reward. Is that time-consuming or do you still spend most of your time locked in your cell? What types of things can you have in your cell like TV’s, radios, furniture, mementos etc.? Are there things like recreation rooms you can hang out in for any significant amount of time? What other types of entertainment especially special events do you get and how often do they come?

I think you get the idea. My questions above are not meant to be complete. I am just wondering what life is like in a typical maximum security prison in a day to day and week to week sense.

2

A good book covering the subject is Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing by Ted Conover, a journalist who became a New York State Corrections Officer and was assigned to Sing Sing maximum security prison. Although it is from the point of view of a corrections officer, it covers a good deal of what day to day life is like for the inmates.

3

I took a day-long tour of max prison and was suprised at the variation within the prison based on inmate classification.

But my overall reaction was that it is horrible, horrible, horrible.

Most of them lived in these concrete, individual cells with huge doors alomst like bank safes and had little radios and some snack foods, photos etc. By day some of them got to be in single adjoining indoor cages, one per cage, but they could at least communicate. Each cage had little steel toilet; one guy was naked, taking a dump when our (co-ed) group passed by, and the guy didn’t even flinch as we walked by. (just one example of how dehumanized they are) It was about 95 degrees with fans blowing on the cages and lots of yelling, and of course it stunk.

Others only got 1 hour per 24 to go to the outdoor cages where they either just sat there or did pushups or calesthnics. Again lots of screaming. (one guy exposed himself masturbating for the benefit (I assume) of the females in our group and had his outdoor privileges revoked for 30 days).

But generally lots of isolation and sitting and standing and pacing and sitting and standing etc.

Go take a tour–it changed the way I think about our justice system. Through my job, I used to see the inmates who spend their time doing useless habea corpus appeals, so I had the mental image of them being somewhat engaged in reality, but the majority of the guys seem to just sit there.

4

Within the last few weeks there was an interesting article in Time magazine about the federal maximum security prison in Colorado that holds so many notorious inmates - Eric Rudolph, Ted Kazinski, Zacharias Moussoui, the shoe bomber guy, the OK City bomber accomplice guy, the original WTC bombers, etc. There was some description of their day-to-day life as well as very interesting excerpts from letters that Rudolph has written from prison.

As I recall, they have very small windows in their cells and spend very little time outside – an hour a week maybe? They spend a lot of time watching TV or listening to the radio in their cell, doing crossword puzzles and talking loudly to their neighboring inmates.

I’ll look and see if the article is available online somewhere.

5

Aha! Here is is: Inside Bomber Row

6

[QUOTE=Skammer]
Within the last few weeks there was an interesting article in Time magazine about the federal maximum security prison in Colorado that holds so many notorious inmates - Eric Rudolph, Ted Kazinski, Zacharias Moussoui, the shoe bomber guy, the OK City bomber accomplice guy, the original WTC bombers, etc.
[/QUOTE]

That’s the federal “Supermax” facility, even more maximum than maximum security, which raises all sorts of questions about the proper use of superlatives.

7

Lissa’s husband works in a supermax facility. Maybe she’ll be along shortly to share what she has heard about conditions and day-to-day life for the inmates.

In the meantime, you can read this Wikipedia article for more information. Suffice it to say that I’d rather kill myself than spend the rest of my life in such a nasty hellhole.

8

I went on a tour of Maitland Gaol, which was an old-fashioned brick Victorian “gallery” prison similar to the one in Porridge. It was frightening enough with no inmates in it. It was a closed prison, but not a museum. It had only closed the year before, and all the security cameras, razor wire etc were still there.

The cells were tiny, cold, hard and dark. The tour guide told us that this 19th century prison only received electric lighting in the cells in the 1960s. Prior to that, when it got dark, it got dark. Maybe 5pm to 7am in winter without being able to see your hand in front of your face. Every morning, a guard would come to your cell and ask “Cell or yard?”. If you chose to stay in your cell, you were locked back in there until the following morning (except for meals, I guess). If you chose the small, caged exercise yard, then you were locked out of your cell for the rest of the day - so no escape from potential violence. Work was available, but it was awful, and even a mundane kitchen job might take years on a waiting list (because of the knives in there, you had to have excellent behaviour).

9

[QUOTE=dwc1970]
Lissa’s husband works in a supermax facility. Maybe she’ll be along shortly to share what she has heard about conditions and day-to-day life for the inmates.
[/QUOTE]

He used to work in one. He’s working at a medium security facility now.

The place he worked at was a newly-constructed facility which had all of the latest technology. It really was interesting to visit.

The inmates spent 23 hours a day in specially hardened cells. Everything was anchored to the floor and the toilet/sink combo was a one-piece unit encased in stainless steel. With good behavior, they could earn the privledge of having a small black and white TV or a radio in their cells. They were also allowed to have legal documents, letters and a small number of books from the prison library.

The door to the cell had a cuffport in the center and about a two-inch gap above the floor. (The gap was necessary because the inmates were constantly flooding their cells by busting off the fire sprinkler heads or stopping up their toilets.) From the door, you could see the entire cell.

Food was passed on special plastic trays through the cuffport and then returned as soon as the meal was finished. Razors for shaving were issued and then had to be immediately returned afterwards lest they make a weapon from them.

If they had behaved, the inmates could go to one of two recreation areas, an indoor one and an outdoor one, for an hour a day. (Though the outdoor one was simply a concrete room which was open at the roof to let sunlight in.) They were handcuffed and ankle chained whenever they exited their cells. Inside these rec areas were exercise equipment (anchored to the ground and hardened to prevent tampering) and a basketball hoop.

It was a very clean facility and very quiet unless an inmate was acting up. (Which I never witnessed on my visit.) Nevertheless, it was a shitty place to be, both for the employees and for the inmates. The frustration level for both was extremely high.

There’s a saying in corrections that a bored inmate is a dangerous inmate, and it’s very true. Inmates who had no privledges had nothing to do but make trouble, so they’d flood their cells, throw urine or feces on passing officers, refuse to return their food trays so that an extraction team would have to go in and get them, or just scream obscenities at anyone who passed by. One fellow frequently would strip down to the skin and smear his body with feces then refuse to obey commands so that the officers would have to go in and try to pull him out.

10

A typical maximum security prison is going to have population of around a thousand prisoners. The cells are usually organized into galleries, which are long hallways with cells along one side and windows along the other or squares, which are four walls of cells facing a centralized open space. The cells are about 8x12. Two prisoners live in each cell. They have bunk beds, a desk, a chair, a metal sink, and a metal toilet. Everything is attached to the walls. Prisoners can have their own personal property. There is a list of what is allowed - radios and tape players are usually allowed, TV’s are usually not. Prisoners can have things like photots etc. They cannot have their own furniture (usually there’s no room for extra furniture and it could be used as a weapon or barricade.)

All prisoners are required to work. Going to school class can count as a work assignment. Each prisoner is assigned to two three-hour modules of work each day, with one or two days off each week. Each prisoner is assigned a specific work area, some of which are obviously more popular than others.

Most prisoners eat their meals in a central mess hall. There are rec areas like TV rooms, gyms, and outdoor rec areas that are usually open for three or four hours a day. These have things like TV’s, sports equipment, weight lifting equipment, tables for playing cards or games, etc. Prisoners who are not working or have not lost their rec privileges as a disciplinary measure can go to the rec areas when they are open. There are also religious services, organizational meetings, law libraries, and general libraries.

There are special events like family picnics where prisoners can invite family members to visit them. These are usually held in a gym or other large building. These are usually once a month or so. Most prisons also have “trailer visits” (which are either mobile homes or cabins) where a prisone can have his family visit a spend the night with them. Trailer visits are usually only once or twice a year. There aren’t a lot of outside entertainment groups that come in. There are religious volunteers who conduct services and meetings. And there are sometimes outside sports teams that will come in to play a game of baseball or basketball against a prisoner team. Things like musical concerts are very rare. Most prisons used to have a theatre to show movies once a week but now this is usually done over the TV system via a centralized VCR or DVD player (on the plus side there’s usually more movies being shown).

Between work assignments and meals, most prisoners spend several hours out of their cell each day. Some prisoners choose to spend their free time in their own cells but most decide to go to a rec area so that adds several more hours out. In the evening, usually around nine or ten pm, the rec areas are closed and all prisoners are locked in for the night.

11

I have friends that work at Attica in New York. **Little Nemo ** summed it up pretty good, with a few changes. They don’t have trailer visits. Nowhere in New York state is that allowed. Also the cells are one man each.

My best friend from when we were kids works there. The officers also say they are doing a 25 year sentance. Just 8 hours at a time. He’s not the same guy as he was. His temper is a lot shorter and he has lost a lot of his faith in humanity. Dealing with scumbags that did something wrong and were sent to prision every day will effect your personality.

Just like society at large, most of the inmates just want to get by day to day. Most of the problems are from a select few that have all day and night to scheme and think up mischief.

12

Inhumane.

13

What I do not understand is how we pick the guys who go into these dungeons. Take the Unabomber, I’ll call him Ted.

He was a serial killer,a real bad guy. On the other hand is also a whack job. He does not seem (to me who does not follow this stuff closely) dangerous to himself or others. He does not seem to be a special escape risk. Why the heck is he in Double Secret Maximum Security? Same with the woman who took a shot at President Ford, ‘Squeaky’ Frum.

How do you get into a Maximum Security prison?

14

[QUOTE=diggleblop]
Inhumane.
[/QUOTE]

So what is a humane method of punishment?

15

[QUOTE=Paul in Saudi]
What I do not understand is how we pick the guys who go into these dungeons. Take the Unabomber, I’ll call him Ted.

He was a serial killer,a real bad guy. On the other hand is also a whack job. He does not seem (to me who does not follow this stuff closely) dangerous to himself or others. He does not seem to be a special escape risk. Why the heck is he in Double Secret Maximum Security? Same with the woman who took a shot at President Ford, ‘Squeaky’ Frum.

How do you get into a Maximum Security prison?
[/QUOTE]

You mean a Super-Max?

From what I have read, they have two types of prisoners. The first are the people like the Unabomber and Terry Nichols (2nd in command in the Oklahoma City Bombing). They just use the Super-Max as an extra special punishment right off the bat for people like that and it seems to be substituted when they think that they can’t get the death penalty (frankly, I think the death penalty is mere child’s play compared to lifetime solitary confinement in a barren cell). I think the major reason is revenge but it also cuts off any possibility that they will escape or have any influence whatsoever on anyone else in their lifetime.

The second group are the ones that are causing problems in a regular maximum security prison. They would mainly be gang leaders and people that are a constant threat to guards and other inmates. It allows the system to hold something even worse over the heads of the regular maximum security population and removes the threat completely if they don’t comply.

16

Certainly I understand the idea of a 'jail for the jail system, ’ a place to put people who are dangers to the staff, other prisoners or outsiders, but it is fair, right, or even a wise use of money to keep Ted in a very expensive lockup?

Also who the heck sorts these guys into piles? Maybe it is time for another thread on this sort of stuff.

17

Notoriety. You know what all kinds of blue hell the corrections system would get for letting THE UNABOMBER escape? Plus if it was perceived that he was living in a correctional Hilton, there’d be outrage, too. Fair, no, but hey, life isn’t fair.

18

“But its expensive!” Paul said as the thread veered off course.

19

I have no prison experience, but I think another part of it may be for the prisoner’s safety.

After all, being “the guy that killed the Unabomber” may be something some people may aspire to.

Just a WAG.

20

[QUOTE=Poysyn]
I have no prison experience, but I think another part of it may be for the prisoner’s safety.

After all, being “the guy that killed the Unabomber” may be something some people may aspire to.

Just a WAG.
[/QUOTE]

In his case, it would be for several reasons. Firstly, for the reason you mentioned. Secondly, for the safety of other inmates. (The guy has a few screws loose, after all, and who knows what he moght be capable of doing?) Thirdly, in a “regular” prison, he’d have access to all sorts of items he might use to make an explosive or an incindiary. Fourthly, he could pass that knowledge on to others.

Perhaps. But what else are we supposed to do with inmates who have shown themselves to be too violent to be kept in general population?

Let’s say there’s an inmate named Fred who was incarcerated for robbery. While in prison, he raped and beat other inmates. He was duly prosecuted for those acts and given more prison time. Then, Fred does it again, torturing another inmate and also beats a staff member who tries to intervene. He clearly cannot be allowed to stay in general population where he can hurt others, yet none of his crimes are death-penalty eligible. We can’t kill him and we certainly can’t release him. What should be done with Fred?