America’s most famous haunted house is not devoted to spooky, frightening monsters grabbing the imagination or fascination of Halloween worshippers. It’s located 100 miles south of Denver, Colorado, according to Huffington Post.
Given the reputation as “a cleaner version of hell,” the USP ADX Florence Supermax Prison facility is the scariest in the United States. This house takes horror to an element beyond Halloween mischief or a Hollywood spectacle. The Post said.
Currently 403 of America’s most-violent inmates in the penitentiary system are housed there. These men have been declared too brutal for even maximum security incarceration, the Post warned.
Since 1994, the prison has confined its tenants to a 12-foot by 7-foot concrete cell with a toilet, shower, black and white television and accommodations for reading. The windows are entirely barred, so inmates cannot glimpse at the Rocky Mountains surrounding the complex. They must spend 23 hours per day locked in solitary confinement, the Post added.
Inmates are given one hour each day to exercise in a small outdoor enclosure designated as a gymnasium. According to the story, they are allowed 10 hours of physical activity per week. One 15-minute phone call is authorized per month.
In a CBS “60 Minutes” program narrative, prisoners could be heard cheering as they watched American and United airplanes crash into the twin towers on Sept. 11. High profile prisoners at the facility include Ramzi Yousef, 1993 World Trade Center mastermind; Zacarias Moussaoui, 9/11 perpetrator; and Dhokhar Tsarnaev, Boston Marathon bomber.
Other notorious criminals locked down at Florence include Terry Nichols, the Oklahoma City bomber accomplice; Vincent Basciano, former Bonanno Crime Family boss; and Michael Swango, the serial killer physician who poisoned over 60 patients, the Post said.
Florence was designed to be escape-proof. The penitentiary’s intended purpose is not for rehabilitation. Its mission is to impose harsh treatment and isolation. Once inside the facility, direction and time of day become increasingly difficult to ascertain. “This setup prevents both inmates from breaking out and cohorts on the outside from breaking in,” according to the Post story.
Studies conducted on Florence and other “silent prisons” discovered most inmates subjected to solitary confinement eventually suffer mental breakdown. Four prisoners killed themselves, and other former residents insisted they would have chosen capital punishment over a supermax sentence.
Often, an inmate’s only human interaction is with guards, physiatrists or clergy. Florence has been targeted as inhumane. The New York Times reported an incident where one inmate attempted to kill himself by cutting his wrist. When released from the hospital, a correctional officer forced him to scrub dried blood off the floor of his cell.
The government has litigated numerous lawsuits in defense of the facility’s operation; however, the nation’s fiercest threats “won’t be penetrating those concrete barriers anytime soon,” the Post concluded.
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