Isolating the Menace In a Sterile Supermax

"Is 'claustrophobic' a psychological term?" Wiley asked, cutting short the interview after two or three minutes. "Well, I'm getting claustrophobic. Let's move along."

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Medical care is also problematic. Only two of five physician slots are filled at Florence, to serve an inmate population that, with the three other prisons in the Florence complex, totals 3,200 inmates.

There is a law library and a lending library: "What we find is that most of them read Westerns and romances," the librarian said.

Zohn says many inmates practice yoga. "They love it," he said.

The board games, including "Fact or Crap," are checked out by inmates who are "earning" their way out of the ADX through docile behavior. Those on the cusp of transition to the nearby maximum-security prison live in K-Unit. It includes an exercise yard with basketball hoops, a sweat lodge and steel cables overhead to deter escape by helicopter.

Inside, Rudolfo Rivera Rios loitered with fellow inmates at tables anchored to the floor between two stories of cells in what looked like a traditional prison.

"I hijacked a plane," said Rios, a native of Puerto Rico who diverted a Pan American flight to Havana in 1970. Now 64, he said he had "had trouble" in other prisons, including a bad fight in a Beaumont, Tex., facility. But the supermax, he said, was under control.

"It's locked down, eh? No problem."