Pubdate: Monday, December 28, 1998
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Page: A3
Copyright: 1998 San Francisco Chronicle
Contact:  http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Forum: http://www.sfgate.com/conferences/
Author: Michael Taylor, Chronicle Staff Writer

THE LAST WORST PLACE 

The isolation at Colorado's ADX prison is brutal beyond compare. So are the
inmates

This is it. The end of the line. The toughest ``supermax'' prison in
the United States.

If you make it here, the odds are you'll be an old man when you get
out of custody -- if you get out.

ADX-Florence -- governmentese for ``administrative maximum'' -- is the
place where the federal government puts its ``worst of the worst''
prisoners, mainly felons sent from other federal prisons after they
killed their fellow inmates, or on occasion, their guards.

Among its current 400 residents, the ADX also houses a handful of
high-profile prisoners, among them Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski,
serving four life sentences plus 30 years. But the criminally renowned
- -- less than 5 percent of the ADX population -- are just a sideshow to
the real raison d'etre of this place: to try and extract reasonably
peaceful behavior from extremely violent career prisoners. Here,
rehabilitation is hardly an issue. The goal is to release inmates to a
less restrictive prison to serve out the rest of their days.

The ominous objective might seem an odd match for the arid
surroundings of Florence, population 4,000, in what was once cattle
and coal country, south of Colorado Springs.

But today, this is prison country. There were already nine state-run
lockups in the county when eager Florence residents bought 600 acres
and gave the land to the federal government, which used it to build
four correctional facilities, including the ADX.

Unparalled in America, it is the only prison specifically designed to
keep every occupant in near-total solitary confinement, rarely
allowing inmates to see other prisoners.

The worst behaved men could serve an entire sentence -- decades -- in
isolation. And for some, it doesn't matter.

They are the men, former Warden John M. Hurley says, who have
``decided that life is inside the walls of a prison. They don't think
about what's going on in Colorado Springs or Detroit. . . . They're
not motivated in trying to be a better citizen. If you're 42 years old
and your release date is in August 2034, you're not thinking about
getting out and getting a job.''

Prison psychology experts, like Dr. Craig Haney of the University of
California at Santa Cruz, say this long-term solitary confinement can
have devastating effects. ``That's what is new about these so-called
supermax prisons,'' he said, ``of which Florence is the most extreme
example.''

Indeed, Florence is the leader in a nationwide trend toward supermax
prisons: in the past few years, 36 states have built strongbox
facilities to house their most dangerous inmates. In California, the
most notorious are the Security Housing Units at Pelican Bay and
Corcoran, already the subjects of numerous lawsuits and investigations
into alleged cruel and unusual punishment, as well as the staging, by
guards, of deadly fights among inmates.

In state facilities, though, isolation cells are just one segment of a
large, general population prison. At Florence, isolation is all there
is.

The ADX has a three-year program that keeps inmates in their cells 23
hours a day for the first year, then gradually ``socializes'' them
with other inmates and staff. In their last year, prisoners can be out
of their cells from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. and eat meals in a shared dining
room, rather than having food shoved through a slot in their steel
cell door.

``We have the agency's most violent and dangerous offenders,'' said
Hurley, shortly before he retired after nearly 30 years in the world
of corrections. ``It is something we emphasize to our staff day in and
day out.''

More than half the inmates have murdered somebody in or out of prison,
said Blake Davis, Hurley's assistant. A third of the men are in prison
gangs, including the well-known

Aryan Brotherhood, Black Guerrilla Family and Mexican Mafia, as well
as lesser known but just as deadly outfits such as the Dirty White
Boys. The average sentence is 36 years.

It is spent, typically, in a 12-by-7- foot cell. Beds, desks and
stools are made of poured concrete. Toilets have a valve that shuts
off the water if an inmate tries to flood his cell by stopping it up.
Sinks have no taps, just buttons -- inmates used to unscrew the taps
and use the plumbing parts as shanks.

A 42-inch window, 4 inches wide, looks out on a one-man concrete
recreation yard, which prisoners with good behavior can eventually
use.

When prison guards unlock a cell door they quickly cover their key
with an aluminum shield. Some inmates, said prison research analyst
Tom Werlich, can glance at the key, memorize the configuration and
size of its teeth and later duplicate it from materials picked up
around the prison.

``They have a lot of time to figure these things out,'' said a guard
who preferred to remain anonymous, lest he begin to get threats from
inmates' friends or relatives.

Out of reflex, the guard on a recent tour walked to a cell shower and
thumped the drain with his baton. ``They tie a weapon to a piece of
string,'' he said, ``then drop it down the drain to hide it.''

The ADX goes to great lengths to bring everything into the cells --
books, food, television -- so that inmates never need to leave. A 12-
inch black-and-white TV in each cell shows closed-circuit classes in
psychology, education, anger management, parenting and literacy.
Religious services of numerous denominations are piped in from a small
chapel, where prison officials display for the videocamera the
religious objects appropriate for a given faith.

The harsh quarantine is rooted in equally harsh reality: a single,
deadly day 15 years ago gave birth to the ADX.

On Oct. 22, 1983, two handcuffed inmates at the federal prison in
Marion, Ill. killed two guards in separate incidents.

In the first, ``The inmate was walking down the hall, with his hands
cuffed in front of him,'' Werlich said. So fast and practiced was the
prisoner, he ``was able to suddenly turn and shove his cuffed hands
into the cell of a friend, who quickly unlocked the cuffs with a
stolen key, handed his friend a knife and the inmate turned around and
killed the guard.'' Later that day, another inmate used the same
lethal tactic.

Up until then, Marion -- the place where the Bureau of Prisons
formerly sent its worst offenders -- was an old-style, open population
prison. When trouble broke out, the prison was locked down and all
inmates kept in their cells until a few days later, when it would open
back up. And then the killings and assaults would resume.

For Norman Carlson, then director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons,
the deaths of the two guards was the turning point.

``I decided I had no alternative but to bite the bullet and do it'' --
institute a permanent lockdown at Marion -- ``and hope the courts
would understand,'' Carlson said.

``There is no way to control a very small subset of the inmate
population who show absolutely no concern for human life,'' he said.
``These two characters (who killed the two guards) had multiple life
sentences. Another life sentence is no deterrent.''

Carlson, now retired, persuaded the government to build a new and
different prison that would effectively isolate prisoners from each
other and, for the most part, from prison staff. The result was
Florence, which opened four years ago.

Since then, to the government's credit, the $60 million ADX has not
drawn the same kind of withering criticism as its state cousins, such
as Pelican Bay.

``The Bureau of Prisons has taken a harsh punitive model and done it
as well as anybody I know,'' said Jamie Fellner, an attorney with
Human Rights Watch, the largest U.S.- based human rights organization.
Fellner was recently given a tour of the prison. ``What I'd like to
see is more debate within the BOP to see how we can minimize the need
for supermaxes,'' she said.

Haney, the Santa Cruz psychologist who has testified as an expert
witness in cases involving supermax confinement, said the effect of
isolation in places like Florence is dramatic. Prisoners ``become
extremely depressed and lethargic -- sleeping, lying on their bunks,
staring at the ceiling, declining to go out and exercise,'' he said.
They begin to lose memory, can't concentrate and suffer severe panic
attacks, he said, or become uncontrollably enraged over insignificant
things.

Haney and others suggest that prison officials pay more attention to
the individual needs of supermax inmates rather than spending so much
time and money on high-tech prison gadgetry and oppressive controls.

But Davis, the warden's assistant, says extreme control, for some
prisoners, is the only way to save bloodshed.

``Behavior puts them here,'' Davis said, repeating what has become the
prison motto. ``And behavior gets them out.''

IMFAMOUS INMATES

Among the prisoners at Colorado's ADX-Florence:

- -- THEODORE KACZYNSKI, 56, the Unabomber, serving four consecutive life
sentences.

- -- TIMOTHY McVEIGH, 30, sentenced to death for the 1995 bombing of the
Oklahoma City federal building which killed 168 people.

- -- TERRY NICHOLS, 43, McVeigh's accomplice, is now serving life in prison.

- -- CHARLES HARRELSON, 59, the father of actor Woody Harrelson, is serving
two life sentences for the murder of a federal judge.

- -- RAYMOND LUC LEVASSEUR, 51, member of a U.S. radical group, serving 40
years for bombing buildings and attempted bombings in the 1970s.

- -- EYAD ISMOIL, 27, serving 240 years for driving the rental van holding
the bomb in the World Trade Center attack.

- -- YU KIKUMURA, 46, Japanese Red Army terrorist, serving 30 years for
transporting bombs in preparation for an attack on a Navy recruiting center.

- -- LUIS FELIPE, 35, leader of New York's Latin Kings gang, who ordered the
murders of six gang members from his jail cell and is serving a life sentence.

- -- RODNEY HAMBRICK, 33, serving a 68-year sentence on bomb charges.
- ---
Checked-by: Patrick Henry