Pros And Cons Of Supermax Prisons

Whether or not Supermax prisons, short for super-maximum security prisons, are more crucial and longer lasting, the question has been if these prisons are useful in applying lessons learned into criminals. Supermax prisons hold some of the most dangerous criminals convicted. Supermax prisons have been known to have their pros and cons. The common pros of supermax prisons was the separation of gangs as well as many other prisoners who act out in violence commonly. Although many may say that these kind of prisons are considered “concentration” and “dispersion”, supermax prisons are often needed to maintain relief of the criminals not acting out. The effectiveness of supermax prisons is what many debate on, which have made many different arguments

In an ordinary prison, many are at risk of being assaulted especially within weaker inmates. These prisoners who assault and frequently act out in violence, as well as prisoners who try to escape, “must be removed from the general population of the prison environment while they threaten any of those behaviors” (Riveland, 1999). While these prisoners are in the super-maximum security prison, they are not placed out of it until it is believed their threat level is low. Other inmates of supermax prions include: death row inmates, mentally-ill inmates, and inmates with HIV or other blood disease. These inmates are placed in supermax prisons to secure inmates from those who are likely to act out in rage, and to be sure the health of inmates is not at risk by getting HIV. Many see these reasons to be a necessary condition to place these inmates in a different and confined prison. However others see the supermax prisons as being a cruel punishment. When given this argument, many may agree that having prisoners, especially smaller and weaker inmates, around these violent offenders is dangerous. Would it be cruel and unusual to leave these inmates in a cell where they are at risk of being tortured by a mentally unstable or unfit cell mate? Many other might see that it is a fit punishment and it would prevent the abused inmates from becoming repeating offenders. Which would bring up the idea that these inmates

It hasn’t been fact whether it does effect the confined prisoners to have very limited human reaction or not. But the long term effects are theorized to have a stronger consequence and impact on the mental health. It also comes to question if it would effect a mentally-ill inmate more. Little to no study has been done to conclude that fact as of yet. It has been found that since the establishment of such facilities, the assaults from inmates to staff have reduced greatly. David Mere (2002) concluded “few studies document the extent to which the criteria states articulate for the placement and release of prisoners are followed. Even less is known about how long inmates stay on average in a supermax and how long they then are in traditional prisons before release to society. How many are released from a supermax straight into communities? What is the behavior of released supermax inmates upon reentry into other prisons or into society? What are the characteristics (e.g., age, sex, race/ethnicity, prior record and length-of-stay, behavior that led to supermax confinement) of inmates placed in supermax facilities and have these characteristics changed over time?” (p. 50-51). Mere has the correct input, it is near impossible to study these types of behaviors because of the boundaries of the situation. It is hard to say how long an inmate in a supermax prison is placed in there for, and many of the inmates