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The vilest deeds like poison weeds
Bloom well in prison air:
It is only what is good in man
That wastes and withers there.
— Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol
Some violent criminals are more desirable than others. Colorado residents take pride in the fact that although home to Supermax, its residents are, by and large, the kinds of prisoners any state would be proud to claim as residents.
Supermax is a maximum-security prison of the very best sort. It was built in 1994 at a cost of $60 million and in 2007 had a staff of 347 people and more than 400 inmates. Inmates live in cells that range in size from 77 to 87 square feet. Its construction was inspired after two guards were murdered in one day in the federal prison in Marion, Ill, a prison that was conceived as the successor to the then closed Alcatraz. Following their murder federal officials concluded that what was needed was a REALLY secure prison where prisoners would be unable to murder their minders.
Prisoners in Supermax are locked in their cells 23 hours a day in isolation and permanent lockdown. In a 78 cell “control unit” where the worst of the worst are sent, inmates are prohibited from having any contact with the outside world.
The list of prisoners who have been or are presently at Supermax is quite distinguished as prison rosters go. It includes Theodore Kaczynski, the famous “Unabomber”, Harvard class of 1962 from where he went on to earn his PhD. at the University of Michigan following which he became an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley when only 25 years old. He left there after two years, eventually moving to a cabin in Montana slightly larger than the cell in which he now resides from which he sent out 16 bombs to people and entities against whom he had grudges, killing 3 people and injuring 23. Arrested in 1996 he is now a permanent resident of Supermax.
Although Mr. Kaczynski is the most distinguished inmate academically, he is not the only prominent resident of Supermax. Richard Reid, the famous if somewhat inept “shoe bomber” who unsuccessfully tried to use a match to ignite a fuse to a bomb protruding from one of his shoes while on a flight over the Atlantic, is another of the residents. He is at the opposite end of the spectrum intellectually from Mr. Kaczynski.
Between these two men are more than 400 other violent criminals including, Acardo Slimonelli, a professional hit man having more than 30 counts of murder to his credit and Rodney Curtis Hamrick who, while incarcerated at the U.S. Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas managed to construct and mail a letter bomb to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit.
Now that President Obama has decided to close Guántanamo the question is where will he put the former detainees. One obvious answer is to put them in extant prisons in the United States, if the prisoner being placed is a person whose former activities suggest the need for further incarceration. Inmates of Guántanamo who have done nothing wrong should not be difficult to place. For the violent types, however, some members of the Colorado Legislature have let it be known they would not be welcome at Supermax.
Thirty-four Republicans and 3 Democrats have signed a petition in opposition to polluting the distinguished population now resident at Supermax by introducing unsavory sorts from Guántanamo.
The petition signing was organized by Sen. Ken Kester of Las Animas, Colorado and Representative Cory Gardner from Yuma, Colorado. The first thought the casual observer had was that Messrs. Kester and Gardner did not think it appropriate that Guántanamo inmates should be able to bypass the immigration procedural requirements imposed on all foreigners seeking to take up residence in the United States. That, however, has nothing to do with their concerns.
Although in the 16 years of operation there has never been an escape from Supermax Messrs, Kester and Gardner and the petition signers believe the possibility of the new residents escaping once introduced into the facility poses an unacceptable threat to people living near the prison. Messrs. Gardner and Kester do not, apparently, think that Mr. Slimonelli with 30 murders to his credit would pose a threat to nearby residents were he to escape. Mr. Kester said: “I think we’re putting the people of Colorado in jeopardy because in that prison there’s going to be a lot of bad things happen. These are the meanest, worst people in the world. They can do so much damage with a prison.” A murderer with a corpse credit of 30 is apparently not someone Mr. Kester would consider one of the “worst people in the world.”Like the petition signers, I hope that the Guántanamo detainees don’t end up in Colorado. It would spoil the nice atmosphere that now exists at Supermax to have those kinds of people housed there.
8 Comments so far
Show AllAs a citizen of Colorado, I am amazed and disgusted with the members of the legislature that are so foolish and scared of everyone and everything.Typical republican fear.
What the republicans are really afraid of is that their policies have obtained them a whole legal mess. They know that they are on very shaky legal and completely unconstitutional territory, and they know that what they have done won't stand a contitutional review by a long shot. What they have staked their claim on is "keeping America safe", but once it goes to court, they lose that in a heartbeat. Not to mention, very few of the cases that have gone to court have stood up on evidence alone and they have lost almost every one so far. If I remember correctly, there are 3 actual convictions from the Gitmo detainees.
You can't "save" your country by throwing out everything that the country stands for. Such "thinking" is totally Reganesque, as in "saving" the country by bankrupting it. Foolishness in the extreme. And the republicans have gone from people with "ideas", even if they were foolish ideas, to people with nothing but fear. Completely pathetic, and just plain embarrassing from an American standpoint.
At least one of those "convictions" was pretty much a forced guilty plea: the Australian was given a choice of a long wait for a trial or he could plead guilty and be sent home where he would be incarcerated for a year. The one of bin Ladens driver is pretty much guilty by association and the info to convict him on was tortured out of him and others. Don't know about the third.
"Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings with a single bound." Superman? No. According to the screaming righties, this is how powerful the Gitmo detainees are and they want us all to be afraid of them, whether they are fierce jihadists or simple cooks. Of course, we don't know, because the screaming righties think fair trials are a sign of weakness and capitulation to the jihadists. Besides, these people are Muslims and the screaming righties paint all Muslims with the same dark brush.
It's way past time for some common sense and rational thinking.
Smallbear
The Glue That Holds Chaos Together
Your article is very-well written, and I agree with your sentiments.
I think that the issue is very convuluted, due to the Bush administration's idiocy. Since the prisoners are foreign nationals who have been taken illegally and denied legal counsel, we have little idea as to who among them are terrorists and who are simply law abiding citizens who have been icarcerated and tortured to no good purpose. If we knew that certain prosoners were terrorists, as they were tried through legal process, then we could implement a plan to kill them, as keeping them alive presents a threat of felow terrorists trying to bargain their way out through further acts of terrorism. This is why the French once had a no-bargain method where they would barge in and kill hostages and hi-jackers alike....
...however, I do not see where the logic is for denying our illegally detained captives entrance to the Supermax, as it has been housing domestic terrorists, like Kascinski.
In any case, this is a situation of our own making, and we are responsible for the safety and well being of our suspected "terrorists", and sense we are responsible, it is ethically wrong to place them outside of our nation.
Don't forget Pelican Bay in northern CA - another 23 hr a day lockdown with a high rate of mental illness caused by isolation.
But I could be wrong !
A little Googling on Rodney Curtis Hamrick and I found out that he has done this numerous times, constructing and mailing letter bombs WHILE LOCKED UP!!! And I thought the permissiveness and general lawlessness of prisons in some Latin American prisons was bad. (Supposedly in some, inmates regularly carried guns, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4404176.stm)
“...some members of the Colorado Legislature have let it be known they would not be welcome at Supermax.”
This is NIMBY to an extreme. They already have a super secure facility with “distinguished” inmates, what could possibly be their objection? I'm guessing some racism.
Sioux Rose:
From what I understand, the people locked up at Supermax are in single person cells. They don't have access to each other.
From http://www.ncjrs.gov/App/abstractdb/AbstractDBDetails.aspx?id=205754
“Supermax prisons separate the most serious and chronic troublemakers from the general prison population, housing inmates in solitary confinement, with minimal human contact and virtually no educational, religious, or other programs. As the level of assaults and violence directed toward correctional staff members and other inmates escalated in the early 1970’s, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) developed the high-security prison in Marion, IL, into a supermax facility. In a 1997 survey, the National Institute of Corrections (NIC) found that over 55 supermax facilities or units were operating nationwide. A survey of these institutions found that all supermax prisons share certain defining features: inmates are confined to their cells 22 to 23 hours per day; human contact is limited to instances when medical staff, clergy, or counselors stop in front of inmates’ cells during routine rounds; and physical contact is limited to being touched through security doors by correctional officers while being put in restraints or having restraints removed.”
Sioux Rose
DAVID PEACE: Thanks for the elaboration on security in that hell hole.
Sioux Rose
Since a lot of the residents of the US offshore prison "complex" got pulled in under dubious drift nets, their so-called guilt is likely as much a fiction as the cause to get involved in the Iraqi war. Thus I would wonder about THEIR safety if put into a facility with mass murderers? While the lockdown for an inhuman 23 hours seems impenetrable, dangerous minds with lots of time on their hands are capable of fashioning a weapon out of almost anything.
Some of the convicted criminals in the Colorado supermax prison probably are "patriotic" and will take these foreigners for "enemies," and seek every chance they might find to execute their own version of justice. Kind'a reminds me of the fate of Jeffrey Dahmer, although he had no innocence to claim.