Sarah Lessor
Ccj 101

The human rights of Supermax prisons A supermax prison is short for super maximum security prison. These are for high risk prisoners who are a threat. Our text book states that “they have high concrete walls or double-perimeter razor wire fences, gun towers with armed officers, and strategically placed electronic monitors.” (adler 332) They are very hard to break out of. The book also says that every state has at least one maximum security prison. (Adler 332) Supermax prisons have their prisoners in solitary confinement. Solitary confinement is where you spend 22 hours a day all alone. (ACLU) They cannot have any human contact. This can make a person go crazy though like talked about in class. Solitary confinement does more harm than good to the people in it because it does have horrible side affects to the mind. The people sentenced to supermax prison are very dangerous criminals. The book says that “maximum security prisons are designed to hold the most violent, dangerous, and aggressive immate.”(Adler 332) Supermax prisons have more than twenty thousand prisoners. (refworld) To hold a prisoner at one of these prisons it is around 85,000 per year. (chicagoist) It is very costly and the benefits of these prisons are not very affective. The supermax prisons are not very human friendly. They allow their prisoners to go mentally ill with being cut off from the world and human interaction. As talked about in the article on the hrw website it says that the condition of a cell should have windows and be heated and humane. This is not the case in these supermax prisons. They are lonely and dark. “Harsh conditions that might not be unacceptable for a month or two become inhuman and degrading when imposed for years.” (HRW) These prisons do not respect their prisons are treat them like they are worthless. Supermax prisons are used to cut off prisoners from the real world.

Works cited http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/supermax/Sprmx002-01.htm#TopOfPage http://www.aclu.org/blog/prisoners-rights/tamms-supermax-prison-its-inhumane-and-ridiculously-expensive-solitary http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/13/supermax.btsc/index.html?iref=allsearch http://www.refworld.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/rwmain?page=publisher&publisher=HRW&type=&coi=USA&docid=3ae6a86b4&skip=0 http://chicagoist.com/2012/12/04/tamms_supermax_racks_up_overtime_co.php criminal justice,Adler copyright 2012