States Question 'Supermax' Prisons

Fourteen years ago, Maryland opened its ultramodern Supermax prison, a high-tech fortress to hold the "worst of the worst."

In contrast, a few blocks away stood the Maryland Penitentiary, a dark, gothic, castle-like structure built nearly 200 years ago when inmates were supposed to contemplate their sins in solitude and disgrace.

But when Mary Ann Saar, Maryland's secretary of public safety and correctional services, recently described a Maryland institution as so out of step with modern correctional philosophy that it ought to be razed, she was talking about Supermax.

"First of all, it's inhumane. Second, it has no program space," she said. "Nor can it be converted. It was built so hard we can't change anything. We're talking about tons and tons of concrete and steel that would cost a fortune to dig into."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/11/05/national/main582117.shtml

I don't have an answer but I can figure out that if you lock someone up in bathroom for 1-10 years they're going to come out much worse than when they went in. (We can do a test. Lock up Limbaugh and Noel Bush, separately, in cells for 1 year and see what they're like when they come out.) But seriously, any moral person should be able to objectively conclude you have to give prisoners something to do, give them opportunities to learn a skill so that they can earn money when they get out.

Just think of yourself and a prisoner for 5 years. How would you cope? What would you be like when you got out.

When sentence is up, do they really just give you $50 and say goodbye? Where would you go? Where would you live? How could you buy transportation so that you could start working?

Seems to me the system is training people to be criminals and NOT at all showing them how to survived in Democracy.

built a new super max and never opened it. the il super max that is open is for the prisoners who commit crimes in other prisons or were recommended to be placed there. it cost about 60,000+ per inmate per year about double the other prisons per yr. inmate costs.the goal is to reablitate the prisoner so they can go back to a regular prison and most of these prisoners will never get out.
il. is also reopening a closed prison to take nothing but drug offenders and they also have a unit with a prison that has nothing but sexual preditors,which is a step in the right direction.
as you said where are they going to go? well most go back to the same neighborhood and the same friends. go back to no jobs, no way to get to a job, and more important the "we don`t hire cons". so they end up doing the same thing that got them in prison the first time. the cycle is repeated over and over...