By David Riley, Director of Corrections’ Psychological Services
In the United States over the last quarter of a century, most jurisdictions have established specially designed facilities which house selected inmates in extreme security. Typically, in such institutions prisoners are confined to a single cell around the clock, leaving three times a week for showers, and five times a week for solitary exercise in a small enclosed concrete yard. At all such times they are shackled and escorted by a pair of officers. They have restricted property privileges and surveillance is continual. On those very rare occasions when prisoners are in the same room with another person, for example, review board hearings, they are caged or bolted down.
The extreme levels of control and oversight evident in such regimes has led them to be termed ‘supermax’.
Not surprisingly, these ‘supermax’ regimes have received a degree of criticism, with opponents highlighting the problems with prisoners coping in such institutions due to mental illness, brain damage or other factors; that needed treatment is often not provided; and that vulnerable inmates may be further damaged by deprivation and other disorienting features of such environments.
Notwithstanding the concerns which have been expressed about this form of confinement, there has been little systematic research on just who is assigned to such regimes, what impact this has on them when they are there, and whether this form of confinement has any bearing on the rate of violence within the prison system. Moreover, there is comparatively little information available which sheds light on whether confinement within a supermax institution increases or decreases rates of subsequent serious offending.
In a recently published study, David Lovell? and colleagues investigated post-release offending of prisoners who had spent time in such institutions during 1997 and 1998. These prisoners were compared with a group matched on risk factors who had been released but who had not had experience of confinement in the supermax institutions.
When felony convictions were considered, it was found that those prisoners who have been confined within the supermax institution had a slightly higher rate of reconviction, but this was not statistically significant. What did appear to produce the most difference between the two groups, was when those prisoners who were released from the supermax regime were compared with the control group and also with those prisoners who had been transferred to another institution from the supermax at least three months prior to their release. This analysis revealed that those released from the supermax environment had substantially higher rates of felony conviction that the other two comparison groups. Additionally, those prisoners who were released directly from supermax registered felony convictions much more rapidly than prisoners who were released from a non-supermax institution. Significantly, when the amount of time spent in a supermax regime was taken into account, this was found to have no impact on the rate of felony convictions.
While the authors acknowledge that the prisoners’ behaviour while incarcerated may have a significant bearing on whether they are retained in a supermax institution until the time of release, the data in this study tends to support the alternative hypothesis that confinement within this environment may negatively impact on the prisoners’ mental state, causing paranoia and social anxiety, and these in turn make it more difficult for them to cope with the demands of society on release. The results did tend to suggest, however, that many inmates could recover their equilibrium if they spent a period of time in a more standard prison environment prior to release.
? Lovell D ., Johnson L., and Cain K. (2007) Recidivism of Supermax Prisoners in Washington State. Crime and Delinquincy, 53, 633 - 656
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ISSN 1178-8453