Drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, known for repeatedly escaping from Mexican prisons, is now at a federal prison in Florence considered escape-proof, where ultra-violent prisoners once beat an enemy to death and one inmate descended so far into madness he bit off both his pinky fingers.
Guzman, 62, arrived July 19 at Administrative Maximum U.S. Penitentiary, or ADX, in Florence after he was sentenced two days earlier to life plus 30 years in prison.
The drug lord’s incarceration at the nation’s highest security prison, nicknamed the Alcatraz of the Rockies, has brought new attention on the prison that critics consider an incubator for mental illness. He joins some of the nation’s most notorious offenders already at the prison including Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols and 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef.
Guzman has proven to be a wily prisoner. In 2001, he was smuggled out of a top-security Mexican prison in a laundry basket. In 2015, he escaped from Altiplano prison in central Mexico, where he slipped into an escape hatch beneath his shower, and rode a motorcycle through a mile-long, hand-dug tunnel to freedom.
“Clearly the federal government is very concerned about his ongoing contact with just about anyone, since they fear he will send messages related to drug smuggling. So his isolation will be extreme,” said Dr. Terry Kupers, a psychiatrist who wrote a book about the psychological impact of long-term solitary confinement at Supermax.
After a quarter century of operation, no one has ever escaped from Supermax. Prison inmates have been diagnosed with insanity while incarcerated there or already existing conditions of mental illness have worsened, according to a 2012 class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. Prisoners have been known to interminably wail and bang on the walls of their cells, the lawsuit claims.
One of Guzman’s trial attorneys, Jeffrey Lichtman, said Supermax conditions amounted to “more torture … It’s just awful.”
Even Robert Hood, a Supermax warden between 2002 and 2005, offered harsh criticisms of the facility.
“This is not built for humanity. I think that being there, day by day, it’s worse than death,” he said.
The Supermax prison was built after two Aryan nation offenders, Thomas Silverstein and Clayton Fountain, murdered two correctional officers in separate attacks on the same day at the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Ill., in 1983. An inmate passed Silverstein a shank, or prison knife, while he was being escorted to his cell after a shower and he stabbed officer Merle Clutts 29 times. That afternoon, a different inmate slipped Fountain a shank and he stabbed officer Robert Hoffman to death.
Several sites were considered for a more secure prison. The deciding factor came down to economics, Hood said.
“Florence donated the land for the prison. That is truly the reason,” Hood said.
Supermax was completed in 1994 and Silverstein was sent there.
“Though I know that I want to live and have always been a survivor, I have often wished for death,” Silverstein was quoted as saying in a 2014 report called, “Entombed – Isolation in the Federal Prison System,” by prison watchdog group Amnesty International.
Most of Supermax’s 400-plus inmates are alone for 23 hours a day in 7-by-12-foot reinforced concrete cells. Massive 12-gun guard towers overlook the prison.
The Amnesty International report said the cells have an interior barred door as well as a solid outer door, compounding the sense of isolation. Prisoners eat all meals in their cells, and most cells have a shower and a toilet, minimizing the need for inmates to leave. Cell furniture includes a small desk stool and bed made from concrete. Beds have thin mattresses. Each cell has a window that is 42 inches tall and 4 inches wide — without mountain views. Many cells have a radio and black and white television that offers religious and educational programming.
All outside visits are non-contact, with prisoners separated from their visitors by a glass screen.
Supermax has an ultra-secure unit, so-called “Range 13,” a four-cell wing in the prison’s disciplinary unit, where prisoners have virtually no human contact. They are under camera surveillance 24 hours a day and get one 15-minute non-legal phone call a month. Yousef lived in Range 13 for more than seven years, the Amnesty International report said.
Former Supermax inmate Jack Powers spent nearly 10 years in the disciplinary unit. He bit off both pinky fingers, severed his earlobes and cut off a testicle and his scrotum, the class-action lawsuit claims. The lawsuit has led to reforms related to inmates’ mental health but is still pending.
It’s a “no brainer” that Guzman’s new home is one of the Range 13 cells, Hood said.
He predicted Guzman will be a very compliant prisoner, who will develop friendships with officers over the course of years as he seeks to escape.
“To me there is no doubt he will try to escape. As far as his job is, it’s to get out. I think he’ll test the system,” Hood said.
Nearly complete isolation will test Guzman’s resilience, if not his sanity, Kupers said. He said he can’t predict how solitary confinement will impact Guzman but prisoners subjected to long-term isolation experience panic, paranoia, compulsive behaviors, irrational anger and despair.
The BOP has implemented new programs to meet the needs of Supermax inmates and has transferred dozens of mentally ill inmates to other federal prisons, according to court records in the class-action lawsuit. As a result of the reforms, Powers was sent to a federal prison in Arizona to get treatment, said Edwin Aro, Powers’ attorney.
Several phone and email messages left with BOP officials seeking comment were not returned.
Despite its extreme security measures, Supermax is still a very dangerous prison.
Guzman, who headed the powerful Mexican Sinoloa drug cartel, won’t be the only drug boss at Supermax, where rival gang leaders have battled each other.
On April 21, 2005, gang-land leader Richard “Chuco” Santiago, and an accomplice, stomped and beat Mexican Mafia prison gang leader Manuel “Tati” Torrez, 64, leaving him with 18 broken ribs and a cracked skull. His eyes were swollen shut. Torrez died of his injuries.
Though it is yet to be seen how long Guzman will remain in isolation at Supermax there is good reason to suggest it will be a long time.
Along with his sentence, Guzman is subject to court-ordered Special Administrative Measures, that essentially will mandate his complete isolation in prison, Hood said.
A 2013 BOP report found that 174 Supermax inmates had spent five years to at least 19 years in succession in solitary confinement, at least partially in the Florence prison.
Justifications for the ultra-restrictive conditions at Supermax have been upheld in federal court. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver ruled in May of 2014 that Silverstein’s 30 years in solitary confinement did not violate his civil rights.
“The risk of death and physical or psychological injury to those exposed to Mr. Silverstein … make it reasonable to keep him in solitary confinement,” the ruling said.
After the appeals court ruling, Silverstein remained at Supermax another five years. This spring the gravely ill inmate was transferred to St. Anthony Hospital in Lakewood, where he died in May.
