LOCATION Fremont County, Colorado, USA
NEAREST POPULATION HUB Pueblo, Colorado
SECRECY OVERVIEW High-security location: the highest-security prison in America.
Sometimes referred to as the Alcatraz of the Rockies, Colorado’s ADX Florence prison is home to many of America’s most dangerous criminals. Its residents include seasoned terrorists and prisoners too violent to keep in regular facilities. Many of its inmates know that the only way that they will be leaving the penitentiary system is in a box.
Opened in November 1994 at a cost of some US$60 million, the prison lies off Highway 67 amid the sprawling foothills of the Colorado Rockies. It covers some 15 hectares (37 acres) and lies not far from the small town of Florence. With room for 490 inmates, the prison has a staff numbering almost 350. The land on which it stands was donated by the people of Florence in 1990, principally because the facility promised significant local employment.
To a large extent, ADX Florence owes its existence to events at a penitentiary in Marion, Illinois on October 22, 1983. On that day, two guards were killed in separate but virtually identical incidents, after the prisoners they were escorting were able to unpick their handcuffs and stab the officers with help from fellow prisoners. The violence highlighted the question of how best to handle dangerous prisoners already facing such stiff punishments that further loss of freedom holds few terrors. One of the answers was the “control unit prison,” of which ADX Florence is a prime example. Here, the most dangerous prisoners in America are kept isolated from their guards and from one another as much as possible. Only around 5 percent of inmates are sent here directly from the courtroom: most are redirected from other prisons where they have shown a propensity for violence. Security at the facility is rigorous, with each prisoner assigned one of six security levels.
The jail was designed jointly by LKA Partners (Colorado Springs) and the DLR Group. Cells are 2.1 x 3.6 meters (7 x 12 ft), and contain basic furniture manufactured from concrete. Toilets and sinks are designed so that attempts to back up water or flood cells are impossible, while windows have been installed in such a way as to prevent inmates from knowing their exact location within the facility, with views generally restricted to a bit of sky and some wall.
IN THE COOLER The cells at ADX Florence may be clean and functional but inmates lead a lonely existence in an oppressive atmosphere. As Robert Hood, a former warden, remarked on life at the facility: “I don’t know what hell is, but I do know the assumption would be, for a free person, it’s pretty close to it.”
The main complex has high outer walls, and the entire site is surrounded by guard towers and razor-wire fencing to the height of two men, with regular patrols by guards and dogs. Inside the complex are almost 1,500 steel doors, activated via remote control, as well as surveillance cameras, motion detectors and pressure pads. When a guard manually unlocks a door, the key is quickly replaced in an aluminum shield for safekeeping and so that inmates are not able to visually memorize its configuration to later recreate it. There have to date been no successful escape attempts.
Prisoners are not allowed any telecommunications devices, but are permitted a single, monitored, 15-minute telephone call each month. They are locked in their cells for 23 hours a day in the first year of their sentence and do not eat or socialize together—food is hand-delivered to cells by the guards. A sunken, swimming pool-like exercise yard can be used by one prisoner at a time for short spells. Where appropriate after the first year, attempts are made toward greater socialization, including a shared dining room. Inmates who respond well to the prison’s program may be allowed out of their cells for as much as 16 hours a day during their final year at the institution. Each cell has a small black-and-white television broadcasting “improving” programs.
Within the prison is an area known as Range 13, which has even more stringent security measures in place. Inmates here are considered so dangerous they have virtually no human contact. Indeed, Range 13 rarely contains more than one or two inmates, and is frequently unoccupied for long spells.
The jail’s roll call has included Timothy McVeigh (subsequently executed for his part in the Oklahoma bombings), Ted Kaczynski (the “Unabomber”), Eric Rudolph (Atlanta’s Olympic Park bomber), Ramzi Yousef (convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center terrorist attack, and occasionally resident in Range 13), and a number of people convicted of Al-Qaeda activities or associated with the Mob. To get into ADX Florence, you need to be seriously bad.
NO WAY OUT With a roll call that includes some of the most hardened criminals in the country, security around the prison is about as tight as it gets. It seems to be working, though, as there have been no break-outs in the two decades since it opened.