ADX Florence, built south of Florence Colorado in 1994, is the most secure prison in the United States prison system. Commonly referred to as a “Supermax” prison, it has 490 beds in a compound which encompasses 37 acres.
The prison was designed to house prisoners deemed too dangerous or high-profile for regular incarceration, and nearly 95% of all inmates that have been sent to Florence were transfers with histories of violent behavior in other prison facilities.
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ADX Florence is known for its harsh conditions; inmates are kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. The hour they are allowed out is into a bigger cell with vaulted ceilings called the “empty swimming pool.” This room has a 4-inch by 4-foot skylight as the only window. It is designed to prevent the prisoners from knowing where they are, and they still spend this time alone.
For at least the first three years, prisoners are not allowed to come into contact with other prisoners at any time – anywhere on the premises. Over time, good behavior can earn inmates more “outside” time, and for the most fortunate a possible transfer back to a less-secure prison can await.
The cell furniture is limited to a desk, stool, and a bed, and each is constructed of poured concrete. The toilets are designed to shut off if plugged and the showers are on timers. Rooms may have mirrors, lights, radios, and in very rare instances televisions – but these are used as privileges based on behavior and are seldom awarded.
There is no mess hall; food is hand-delivered to each inmate by the guards. The prison has a multitude of motion detectors and cameras, 1,400 remote-controlled steel doors, and 12-foot high razor wire fences. As an added level of security, laser beams, pressure pads, and attack dogs guard the area surrounding the prison’s outlying fences.
Conditions are described as harsh, but clean and fair; it would be difficult to classify the prisoners as being “unfairly treated” given the circumstances which likely got them there. Former ADX wardens have described the place as “a cleaner version of Hell.”
The prison operates under the strategy of sensory deprivation and solitude. Inmates are left to their own thoughts, which often leads to hallucinations, memory loss, and increasingly irritable behavior.
Famous Residents
ADX Florence is home to some of this country’s most violent and evil criminals; it is also the number-one holding facility for convicted terrorists. As of the date of this article, the prison houses over 400 violent criminals including those involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and 2001 World Trade Center Attacks.
There are other notable criminals such as the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, shoe bomber Richard Reid, Oklahoma City bomber accomplice Terry Nichols, Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph, and Soviet spy Robert Hanssen (all pictured above).
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One of the most famous residents is Thomas Silverstein (at left), a convicted murderer and former Aryan Brotherhood leader who has committed four additional murders while imprisoned.
Silverstein currently holds the record of being the longest resident of solitary confinement in the United States prison system, having been in solitary since 1983. Silverstein is often credited with being one of the reasons the ADX Supermax was designed due to his uncontrollable activities in other prisons.
Defenders of the Supermax prison point out that criminals housed inside have previously shown no regard for human life on multiple occasions, with many having committed murders in other prisons around the country in addition to their initial heinous crimes.
Historically, the addition of another life sentence to a prisoner who already has one hasn’t proved successful. Harsher penalties were needed to restore order and deter prisoners from killing prison guards. The threat of being transferred to solitary confinement at ADX Florence is the best deterrent in the prison system The United States has against violent crime.
Typical accomodations:
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Satellite & Map of ADX Florence: click here
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5-star hotel. looks really expensive.
it is treated like the 5-star hotel too
why does everyone say that. the f you talking about 5 star hotel
8 months of winter?….. It’s a high deset there, so don’t try to make it seem difficult because of weather. And the inmates who are doing all the whining are just wanting sympathy because there is no way to continue their mayhem. They are there because they committed brutal crimes on the outside and continued to brutalize officers and staff and other inmates while incarcerated. They earned this type of incarceration, it’s almost on par with the death penalty.
You are exactly fricken correct
This is the way u will end up in any private owned jail for the first week to 10 day u go into intake where you will be locked up for 23 hours a day with nothing but your jumpsuit and bedding kind of messed up to do to someone that got caught with some weed or really any drug pharmaceutical company’s used a large percentage of Afghanistan’s opium that they use to make morphine codeine and thebane last derivative spelling is wrong I think but that is the three main compounds found in opium that’s why us soldiers where ordered to protect the popi fields from the Taliban that was burning poppy fields but this is what we do to anything that might make people feel better about the horrible things we do we the USA is a country that wants to eat there cake and have it too so I agree that people that earn there place there by providing proof that there is no hope for them but what about the little people that make up a hole industry of prison if u don’t believe me take 50$ and buy stock in one of the many private companies that are only in the business of incarceration and watch your money grow If u don’t mind making $$ of the suffering of others then your good
Wouldn’t want to end up there!!
Drug lords should be placed here.
Or perhaps we should just end the useless and counter-productive war on drugs?
So true, I agree with you on that Will
Charlene, They are there.
CHILD MOLESTERS SHOULD BE PUT THERE!!
those people go to regular prisons. this place is no place for such simple crimes. yeah. simple.
Al Qaeda should go there
they are there
You call that a simple crime. One of the worst crimes are child molesters.
Child molesters don’t blow up buildings and have dozens killed because they were pissed. It’s a waste of resources to put them in such a place.
All child molesters should be put on an island in the middle of no where
They go to regular prison and get the crap beat out of them from regular murders…
I’d rather have the child molesters be put in other prisons where they can have cellmates and other beat the crap out of them.
Black Dolphin in Russia is the most secure IMHO. No escapes, and only ONE prisoner has been transferred out. Check it out on youtube – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbfjuYtkJRE&feature=related.
So what you’re saying is that you know better than the people from the guinness world records?
Totally agree with Alan. ADX looks like sunshine and rainbows compared to Black Dolphin.
ADX sunshine and rainbows? Stop the hyperbole. Put you in the hole for 23/7 and see how you come out.
Black Dolphin is more secure in the sense it has more manpower. 900 guards and 700 inmates.
Very true. Black Dolphin is the most secure. Guinness may not have been given access.
I think the most secure prison is the one nobody knows about. 😉
Black Dolphin is no more secure than ADX. They are both secure in their own ways, BD relying more on manpower with its 900 guards than the high tech ADX
Any country who invests in the amount of individuals who are incarcerated is a capitalist country …. point blank … invest in hotels in summer, or starbucks … give me a break
AT LEVEL ONE:It’s better to create excellent kindergartens for children to be taught manners and good behaviours and then good schools,colleges and universities to make good human biengs and proffessionals.This will reduce the cause of committing crime. AT LEVEL TWO:Prisons should be transformed into Civility Centres.Inmates should be taught how good human biengs are supposed to live in soceity, and their progress should be gauged by their own descriptions and answers to humanity questions.Nothing is impossible for a state.if a state wants that it be turned into a heaven,it all needs to commit itself to bringing the conditions of a heaven,otherwise it will remain a hell,with severe prisons and torture centres for its own and allien citizens.
Not sure that would work on psychopathic and psychotic killers. Re-education for “better manners and better behaviors” seems to me simplistic. Teaching Ted Kozinski to say please and thank you might not stop him from mailing bombs to people.
Have you ever worked with or known some of these people. “Let’s just teach the lion to be a vegan.” Time and again, this philosophy of yours has proven unsuccessful. We continue to test so called proven programs for rehabilitation, only to watch them fail at the behest of the experts, who most likely have never actually worked with these monsters. The experts learned about them in University, and became a policy author for that which she/he may be book smart, yet has no real world knowledge of.
These levels are called parenthood. When that fails, they go to prison.
People don’t like to face it, but some people are born psychopaths or sociopaths. They will never change, and nothing can help them. You can’t modify or “teach” them to have a conscience. They are completely narcissistic.
there are people there, that i grew up with, that should have at least gotten 25 to life with the possibility of parole in Otisville. This is too much and a waste of time
I find it ironic that prisoners who have forfeited their right to live in society by murdering other people, often with random bombings of innocent strangers, can now complain about forced isolation from other people. What about the rights of the rest of us to be separated from psychopaths who commit such crimes? ADX-Florence was born out of the necessity of protecting decent people from those unfit to live in society. And in many cases the inmates who populate this super-max facility have proven themselves unfit to even live among other prisoners.
It seems the people here should just be killed. There’s no reason for the government to use taxpayers monney to keep these people alive
the government uses taxpayers money to kill them, as well.
I agree…bullets are cheap. Such a waste of money here…line em up and shoot them
these people are in jail for taking lives taking the place of god, should they be taken out, who am i to decide i am not god and neither are any of us. So by killing these people we become no better than they are.And such an easy way out. Let them live in hell on earth until god decides its time for them to go to the real one. adx is perfect let them rot. the only rights they should have is
to live. all others should be taken no matter how inhumane.
Honestly, in my opinion, the people that are here deserve to live the rest of their lives in this hell. They shouldn’t been given the satisfaction of dying. They should live the rest of their lives like this people the friends and family of those they destroyed have to live the rest of their lives in sorrow.
Just my opinion though!
I agree that complete isolation would not be easy for a sane individual, personally I don’t find these people to be sane. What I find insane is using taxpayer money to support this refuse. Although this is not a hotel, they are still getting 3 squares a day, a bed to sleep in out of the heat ,cold,rain, snow, etc. Oh, and free healthcare. Pretty sad when you consider all the many homeless that are out there through no fault of their own. I thought I had heard that it costs around 100,000 pr yr to house a max security inmate. Now that’s insane! Some are so against the death penalty, would you still be against it if a friend or family was the one that they murdered? You will find no bleeding heart here. Obviously the current system is not working. True criminals are not afraid of going to prison. We need to do something to make them scared. The way it is now seems more to me like pampering. Isolation should be just one of the conditions. A cold dark room with a dirt floor, stifling heat and a day filled with brutal work would make me feel better about this system. Prisoners should not have it better than the homeless!
I think ADX is better than the death penalty. Just imagine looking at a wall for the rest of your life. Compared to being put to sleep by lethal injection.
Chiekotz,
Have you ever been in ADX. I used to be a C.O. in the Seg Unit of a prison and I’d rather be dead.
death iz better than being treated like u are an animal..
They are animals
True Cory! I believe animals are better.
I’d probably rather be dead than stay at the ADX.
I would like to spend a few weeks their to see how bad it is
u have a good wish.better barter yr time with an inmate,he will get yr comforts and God will bless u in the next life….good bargain as a christian!
Its no human contact silly
Prison is a requirement. ADX Florence seems to have gone to the max in order to keep their inmates on program….or have they,how far can you push?
It is definitely better to keep someone in prison for the rest of their life than put them to death with the kindness of lethal injection. IMHO
Al Qaeda should go there because he committed so many crimes and killed hundreds of innocent people!
I laughed. 😉
This is why I feel safe being a a Colorado resident
Are you being serious? Al Qaeda is not a person it is a group -.-
The Clergy in any religion is a danger because it spreads fundamentalism and divides humanity It bases its illogical teachings on unconfirmed and scientifically unverifiable views regarding Existance,Life and Universal Phenomenon.When light comes,darkness vanishes.Spread of positive knowlege regarding humanity,human virtues,human duties towards life and ecology, common human problems and needs,and social interaction can reduce such problems.The US and Western Europe with so much resources can defend humanity against the clerical divisions,be they by the Muslim clerics or other clergies i.e Christian or Hindu etc.
One day, someone’s gonna escape, I know it.
if one day a person escapes that will be someone smart
poeple should enter and do sometesting on it and see if its possible
With constant planning, pin-point accuracy and nothing short of pure genius its possible to either escape or kill yourself (probably pretty much the same thing there lol)
Nobody is going to escape from that prison. I did four years there and got out after not being convicted of what the governor accused me of. The only way your leaving that place is by death or release, period
TV though? c’mon that stuff shouldn’t be available. they should sit and rot in boredom for the rest of their useless lives.
No one will ever escape adx
They don’t get TVs unless they earn it. And from what I have read it is a very rare reward.
I can understand the death penalty as an only fair price for some crimes where life or happiness of another is forever destroyed, but I could never understand the vindictive evil soul that finds pleasure and satisfaction in torturing the criminal. Only God can appropriate and inflict torture and retribution. The role of the government and society should be limited to removing the dangerous element from further damaging the societal interest and rehabbing the criminal conduct of the individual with least and efficient expense. Incarceration has proved to be a failure and costly. In many instances, the death penalty could be more appropriate than incarceration, but the problem remains in the judicial process where access to justice depends on the individual fortune and political status. Where “reasonable doubt” remains vaguely defined and more dependent on jury selection, the death penalty can only remain a bigger nightmare than crime itself. But even if life sentence becomes inevitable, a human retains many rights among which the right to basic physical needs, mental and intellectual growth, social bonding and interaction, and even the right to earn an income if so desired. Experience has shown that the more human the prison conditions are, the more probable the rehabilitation of the criminal behavior is. In the US, the prison system has become more of a commerce, political agenda, and small towns economy than an effective governmental function to maintain peace and order.
hi , i dont agree with everything you said but I do agree with some… having know a few people who have graced the prison system (stupid stuff – suspended DL or DUI) I was stunned to learn of the financial gain and rampit abuse of skewing numbers for federal monies…. not to mention the lack of simple information to friends and family about process – Those who come visit or see if they can offer assistance to someone incarcerated are treated like criminals too! I had NO idea and bought into the nightly news about prison systems… personally I think the corruption starts at the top and meeting their budgets and works its way down… but ok I am getting a little off topic – just my two cents
This is the worst place any human can ever be placed….I can understand if the person had killed for not defending him self, but as an desire, or raping children, but for being blamed for robbing a bank with out evidence and place on death roll for protecting themselves from a”green light” on his life, and then lied on by Deputies ” this guy in a treat to society he attacked a guard with a 10 Inch knife” and the person was in death role solitaire, how did he get the 10 inch knife when a person is stripe searched before thrown into the grimmie cell without clothing…Figure that one out!
Black dolphin is the most secure prison iv ever seen. Watch the documentary on Russia’s tuffest prisons. When I saw that place and how its ran. There can’t be a prison in the world more harsh and secure then that one. Unless there’s guys being tortured some where else. That place and the rules there. Nothing compares
There are places in the world where torture is commonplace. Do you remember any of the horror stories of the insane things done to inmates by Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq? While the isolation would be brutal in a supermax prison, i think most people would deal with that than physical torture on some regular basis.
Seems to me Gitmo is pretty secure and quite harsh. Many held there similar to ADX
but for political reasons. Many are not violent offenders. It makes Gitmo quit a horror story. ADX prisoners do deserve what they get. Some at Gitmo do not.
is too good for the scum
That Russian prison someone mention should probably be the harshest. And how does one escape in winter, which is probably 8 months of the year? By the way, the link to
the YouTube video has been cancelled by YouTube. It doesn’t work.
I was an employee of the FEDERAL BAUREAU of Prisions for 27 years I have worked at 7or 8 institutions from camps to medium security institutions to the the penitentaries During my tenure I have had number a jobs inside the ferderal prison system. This has enabled me to be right in the thick of things I have seen escapes, killings, suicides, rapes, good conditions and poor contitions. The day to day operations of an institution largely contribute to the amount of unrest that may be at the JOINT.
Imates “act out” when conditions are poor, thru murder, taking hostges, killing snitches, trying to control other groups.setting fires, food strikes and general destruction In the Supermax, they have made it so there is very little movement They come outfor one hour a day to recreate in a concrete cage. After that “recreation” the inmate in back in his cell the other 23 hours a day. The window in their cell is four inches wide and three foot long. When you look out you only see the sky. This is a securtiy mesure used to cause disoriention of th prisioner
Even though all work often becomes just day-to-day going there,coming home. Often if not most of the time, your experience for those 27 years much have been fascinating. Also, few jobs/professions require 100% focus, and you jobs mostly did. It is like being a pilot landing and taking off all the time for 27 years.
Long term solitary confinement is a human rights violation and torture. I do not support the use of torture in any form. Solitary confinement costs twice as much as high security incarceration it causes psychoses and inmates released from solitary are more likely to hurt people even without a prior history of violence. When the UN asked if we systematically used solitary confinement in our prisons Obama lied and said we did not. Solitary is not reserved for the worst of the worst – an inmate who spit on a guard was placed there. While there may be some punitive value in using it for short term punishment there is no justification for long term use. The entire prison system needs reform. The drug war needs to end now.
I was one of the thousands of people who worked on the construction of it, back in the early 90’s and it is secure, triply secure. No way out, or in, for that matter.Every aspect of the cells is controlled by the guards. It the seg. a prisoner is behind at least 4 steel door/bar combos. The bad boys can be controlled–
ADX Florance is country club, Compared to any prison in the middle east.,
I was a prisoner inside the place you all speak of on this site. Most of your comments and opinions are wrong, presumptuous and/or offensive. But I’m gad you all were not running anything, or i would be dead, rather then sitting here at home with my woman right now.
Hi, you were there, and got out? I thought it’s for lifers only
Now you know different. Look me up on the list.
I’ve been to ADX as a visiter but i went to the low security compound
im doing a school reaserch project i feel really bad for evry prisoner
Gin, I did 5 years in that prison and now I’m out and have turned my life around and do a lot of service work. The people hating prisoners on this site are weak minded cowards and would never take a stand on their twisted positions. People like you are a breath of fresh air. I hope you have a good experience with this project.
I was in the ADX for 5 years, got out and do service work and take care of my family. People that hate on prisoners are weak minded and hardly have the guts to take stands on real issues. People like you make a difference and I wish you all the best on your project. Maybe you can show that were not all animals and can be productive citizens
Politicians who commit treason, bribery, any felony should be there then the worst of the worst…It looks like a fitting place for those people, male or female. To eliminate the space re institute the swift completion of the death penalty..Those scum do not deserve to life on this earth,