To accommodate their growing inmate populations, most states and the Federal Bureau of Prisons have been constructing new facilities in record numbers. Between 1998 and 1999 alone, the nation’s corrections systems initiated the construction of 162 large new prison projects and launched 675 major renovations of existing facilities. These efforts will add fifty thousand new bed spaces to the existing stock. Annual operating budgets for state and federal prisons exceed thirty billion dollars, not counting capital budgets set aside for construction.

The prisons constructed during the 1980s and 1990s look very different from the old fortress prisons. Today’s penal facilities incorporate the latest architectural and security advances. With modular designs, they look more like school campuses, complete with schools, vocational training centers, libraries, and chapels. Housing is dispersed in small residential pods, usually with direct supervision. Educational, vocational, and industrial facilities are on a par with those of modern technical schools. Vastly improved classification systems have facilitated the assignment of many inmates to a variety of prison settings characterized by different degrees of security. Serious, high-risk offenders continue to be housed in close-custody prisons. Others are placed in medium- and minimum-security prisons, which generally provide more humane environments and more extensive programs.

A growing trend for the federal and most state prison systems is to place their most violent and disruptive inmates into a “super-max” prison. The mission of these prisons is to incapacitate these offenders by keeping them in locked cells twenty-three hours a day, with one hour for recreation and showers. But even in these austere and harsh environments, there is some focus on controlling and changing inmate behavior through programs and staff