Inmates Spend Almost All Their Time Alone
Regardless of whether their crimes are widely known to the public or not, every inmate sticks to the same rigid schedule, spending 23 hours a day within the solitary confines of a 7-by-12-foot concrete cell.
Despite an occasional visit from prison staff, such as a correctional officer, teacher or chaplain, the prisoners are deprived of human interaction and they might not ever see friends or loved ones again. They are kept under 24/7 surveillance.
“The punishment that they're receiving is far beyond just doing time,” Hood explains.
Each cell has minimal concrete furnishings: a bed, desk and stool. There is a stainless steel toilet, sink and shower and a 4-inch by 42-inch sliver of a window that offers inmates the slightest peek to the outside world.
“What we've done is we figured out a system that's far beyond death. You would almost wish to have the death penalty,” Hood says.
Prisoners can watch a 12-inch black and white TV in their cells or read books. There may be restrictions on the types of television content or reading material they are allowed to have.
There is no inmate cafeteria. All prisoner meals are delivered through slots in their cell doors.
The Reward for Good Behavior
If prisoners behave, they are allowed one hour of exercise time per day, alone in another space, and one 15-minute phone call monthly. A team of guards escort them to these separate areas shackled at the wrists, ankles and stomach.
Perhaps the toughest part of the experience for prisoners is the complete elimination of social interaction with fellow inmates, Hood explains.
“No one's going out, and there's no group settings where they're sitting out together, playing checkers, like on TV,” he says. “Not only are you not going to see another inmate, you're not going to recreate with them, you're not going to have those kinds of normal activities of a penitentiary.”
The Perspective of One Prisoner Who Got Out
“You’re made to languish,” Powers, 64, tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “You fall into certain types of despair when you're literally buried alive, when you're left 24/7 in a fairly small, concrete, steel cage, a sarcophagus underground. What do you do with yourself? What do you do with your thoughts, your emotions? What do you do with your life? Because what you're looking at isn't much.”
He vividly recalls the day he arrived at the 490-bed facility on October 2, 2001.
“Everything's done in slow motion,” he remembers. “The garage door opens, the bus drives in, the door shuts, and everything is pitch black.”
Powers likens arriving at the facility to entering the underworld.
“They put you in a holding cell and strip you down. Everything becomes really calculated, really impersonal, very quickly, and it's not just the aura of authority or custodial amplification,” Powers says. “It’s more like you’re in hell. It’s like a portal to a lower dimension of human life. The way that they handle you, the amount of chains they put on you, the clothing, you're controlled from the second you walk in there."
Most Inmates Die There
Prisoners rarely leave Florence alive. Once inmates enter the prison, they are typically expected to spend the remainder of their lives there, serving out life sentences or being held until their execution dates. Powers is an extreme outlier.
“I just look at every day as a blessing,” he says.
Powers first entered the prison system in 1990 for a robbery conviction. He committed at least 30 unarmed bank robberies in Michigan until he was caught and sentenced to 40 years in prison, The New York Times reported, citing court records.
He was sent to Florence in 1999 after escaping federal prison in Atlanta by hiding inside a drainage grate in the prison recreation yard, climbing the side of a building using a makeshift grappling hook, scaling an electric fence, and then a barbed wire fence, the newspaper reported. Powers then stole a car and drove to Syracuse, N.Y., to see his 14-year-old son.
“I saw an opportunity, I took a chance and I actually got away,” he says. Powers was on the run for two days until he was caught.
In 2014, after 15 years of solitary confinement, he walked out of the supermax a free man.
“I didn’t think I was ever gonna come out of there alive,” Powers says “I went through the flames. I went to the edge of the pits.”
The severe deprivation of human contact in Florence and restrictive living conditions have driven several inmates to protest via hunger strikes, self-mutilation and suicide.
“The operations of the ADX are built around incapacitation,” Powers says. “The way that they handle you, they’re trying to bring you to the absolute depth of human subjection, without killing.”
But there are supporters of Florence, and some are pushing to bring the supermax model to other countries.
Mark Fairhurst, national chairman of Britain’s Prison Officers’ Association, believes extreme conditions are necessary for the country’s most dangerous criminals.
“The authorities need to act before there is a tragedy. We are calling for super-max facilities in prisons based on the American model,” Fairhurst said, according to The Sunday Times. “For the most violent, dangerous criminals who are intent on committing atrocities and attacking staff, the time has come for control and containment. This cohort of prisoners should not enjoy the same privileges and freedoms as those who do conform.”
Powers condemns the supermax in Florence and says it should be reformed to provide humane inmate conditions.
“The ADX is a place we can’t be proud of. It’s not just the aura of authority or the custodial amplification. It's more like you're in hell, you're at the bottom, and there’s nothing else," he says. “It’s the death penalty on a payment plan.”
