Usually when we have a case like this, we like to say: "Lock him up and throw away the key!"
Which is kind of exactly what is about to happen to this guy:
[El Shafee] Elsheikh, 33, was convicted in Virginia on Thursday for kidnapping and killing four Americans. He was convicted on four counts of conspiracy and four counts of hostage-taking resulting in death and faces a life sentence. ...
Like other terrorists - such as Al-Qaeda's co-founder Mamdouh Mahmud Salim and British 'Underwear' bomber Richard C. Reid - Elsheikh will more than likely rub elbows with the worst-of-the-worst at Colorado's Florence ADX, which is most commonly known as just ADX.
The notorious prison is known as the worst facility in the US, with its roughened conditions and inmates spending up to 23 hours a day in their cells.
"Worst facility in the US" is a matter of perspective. The sad wretches who call this prison home don't have to worry about getting assaulted or raped by other inmates, for instance.
Then again, they don't ever get to see any other inmates...or really any guards...or really anyone at all, ever.
Florence ADMAX was specifically designed to isolate the country's most dangerous, violent, flight-risk prisoners from effectively all human contact, every day, for the rest of their lives. To do that they took a novel approach to prison design:
Each inmate is assigned their own 7-by-12 foot cell, where they spend roughly 23 hours alone each day. The cells (and everything in them, including the sink-toilet, shower, desk, and bed) are forged from concrete. It's reportedly soundproof; that way, prisoners can't communicate with others in their block by talking or tapping out codes. A slot in the door allows for meal delivery with little to no interaction between inmates and guards. Psychiatric evaluations, spiritual guidance, and other services are also provided through the door, or via telecommunication. A 2014 Amnesty International report on the facility found "that prisoners routinely go days with only a few words spoken to them." The report was titled "Entombed—Isolation in the U.S. Prison System."
"Entombed" is a bit right. In ADMAX, you might as well be in a box in the ground as far as your connection with the outside world:
One of the things that seems to haunt former ADX Florence inmates is the window design. Each cell reportedly has a 4-inch-wide window. The angled slit cuts through the thick prison walls in such a way that inhabitants can't understand their own location in the complex. "You can't see nothing, not a highway out in the distance, not the sky," Travis Dusenbury, who spent 10 years in the prison's general population, told The Marshall Project, a non-profit criminal justice newsroom. "You know the minute you get there you won't see any of that, not for years and years."
Even when you're let out, you're not really let out:
Prisoners spend no more than 10 hours outside their cells each week. Even then, they're kept in isolation: the yard is sectioned off into a series of individual cages. Often, when an inmate is outside his cell, he's restrained. These restraints can be severe, according to the Amnesty report, with an inmate's feet and hands shackled and tied to a belt around his waist. Sometimes, a prisoner's cuffed hands are further restrained inside a black box.
Unsurprisingly, federal officials are not keen to let journalists into the building; keeping the details of the interior as obscured as possible is key to retaining the facility's inescapable security status. Occasionally, they may let journalists wander within a half-mile of the fence:
I don't envy anyone who ends up there, though admittedly they shouldn't have been evil terrorists in the first place so I guess my sympathy only runs so far.
P.S. Now check out our latest video 👇
