Supermax, also known as Alcatraz of the Rockies, is far too punitive for those suspected but not convicted of crimes.
There's also been major staffing problems at Supermax. The guards union has been furiousIt hasn't been immune to inmate murders. More on the problems here and here.
Also at Supermax: Jose Padilla, Ted Kaczinski, Ramzi Yousef, "Blind Shiekh" Omar Abdel-Rahman, Eric Rudolph, Zacarias Moussaoui, Richard "shoe bomber" Reid, OKC conspirator Terry Nichols and others. Even "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh was shipped there in 2007. Here's a list.
None went to Supermax before conviction in a federal court.
But, it just goes to show, those who say a terrorist won't be convicted in federal court don't know what they are talking about. Supermax holds many of them, as the list shows.
Journalists got their first tour of Supermax in 2007. CBS legal analyst Andrew Cohen was one of them. From his report:
We saw cement desks and bed frames and stainless steel toilets and sinks. We saw cages—straight out of the circus—where inmates who are going along with the warden’s “program” are allowed to “recreate” outside for about 10 hours a week. We saw that the windows in the cells are only a few inches wide and all look inward toward the other windows of other cells. No one has a view of the beautiful Rocky Mountains which surround the facility in the southern portion of Colorado.
... It may be a high-tech, super-secure prison but it is still a prison, where men will live and die in 68-square-foot cells.
As Human Rights Watch said in their report, Locked Up Alone:Detention Conditions and Mental Health at Guantanamo:
“Security measures don’t justify locking people in windowless cells 22 hours a day, for months and years on end, with almost no opportunity for human interaction, physical exercise or mental stimulation.”
The detainees who are not going to be charged with crime must be returned to their home countries or provided safe haven in another country. Those that the U.S. is going to prosecute can be housed in secure facilities, but the conditions at those facilities must be appropriate for a pre-trial detainee, not punitive like those for the nation's most serious convicted offenders. And that's not Supermax.
