Bloody hell, this sounds like quite a prison

The prison Zacarias Moussaoui is going to is far from a soft option. Florence penitentiary, 90 miles from Denver, Colorado, is known as SuperMax, and was built in 1994, the first of a generation of high-security prisons.

It houses what the US media refers to as "the worst of the worst", among them Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, the Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski, and Eyad Ismoil, who was involved in the World Trade Centre attack in 1993.
It is unparalleled in the US's tough penal system, in that almost every one of the 400-500 inmates is kept in solitary confinement. Moussaoui will be confined to his cell for 23 hours a day, and allowed out for the remaining hour for exercise alone in a concrete courtyard. His cell, 7ft by 12ft (2.1m by 3.6m), will be soundproofed. All the furniture - a small desk, a stool and bed - is made of concrete. There is a shower, toilet and television. Religious services of numerous denominations are piped in from a small chapel.

The prison is nicknamed the Alcatraz of the Rockies, but Moussaoui is unlikely to enjoy a mountain view. The one small window in each cell is high up, looking directly up at the sky - making it hard for a prisoner to work out which part of the jail he is in - or into an exercise yard.

As well as high-profile criminals, Florence is the final destination for prisoners who have been found to be beyond the control of warders elsewhere. About 22% have killed fellow inmates elsewhere.

Critics of the prison say it has been designed to minimise the number of staff required, and the result is to dehumanise the prisoners because, as well as lack of contact with fellow inmates, interaction with warders is minimal.

Escape is almost impossible as it is built into the side of a mountain, with all access through a single tunnel.

It has 1,400 remote-controlled steel doors, motion detectors, pressure pads and gun towers.

Posted By: Old Git on May 10th 2006 at 14:13:51

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