Even as it announces a review and reduction of its solitary confinement practices, the US Bureau of Prisons has confirmed that a newly acquired prison in Illinois will hold federal prisoners in supermax conditions. “Thomson will be a high security prison holding inmates with various security needs, including SMU and ADX type inmates,” BOP spokesperson Chris Burke said via email.
Thomson is the unused prison that the federal government recently bought from the state of Illinois. ADX, the notorious federal supermax in Florence, Colorado, holds its prisoners in 23-hour-a-day isolation with virtually no human contact. Federal SMUs, or Special Management Units, such as those found in Lewisburg Penitentiary in Pennsylvania, hold their prisoners in near round-the-clock lockdown in two-person cells. Both are forms of long-term isolation, and both have been denounced by human rights and prisoners rights groups as an inhumane and ineffective form of punishment, sometimes amounting to torture.
Welcome to the New Federal Supermax
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