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Alcatraz of the Rockies – USP Florence ADMAX

Dubbed the “Alcatraz of the Rockies,” the United States Penitentiary Florence Administrative Maximum (ADMAX) facility is the highest security prison in the country. Located in Fremont County southeast of Cañon City, the jail is home to some of the United States’ most dangerous high-profile criminals.

“ADX” is one of three facilities found in the Florence, Colorado Federal Correctional Complex, alongside separate medium security and high-security prisons. Without a single escaped convict in its history, the Alcatraz of the Rockies is the United States’ only level six super-maximum security prison.

Why is it called the Alcatraz of the Rockies?

In reference to San Francisco’s most notorious island prison, Florence ADMAX is the only facility that can claim to be as secure as the shark-filled, choppy waters of the Pacific Ocean. Today, ADX Florence can be referred to as either “a super-maximum” (supermax) or an “administrative maximum” (ADX or ADMAX) security prison.

So how secure is supermax? Well, if you’re stopping in Florence’s historic district for a bite to eat, we can assure you that America’s most dangerous captives will remain safely behind bars. The facility is surrounded by 12-foot razor-wire fencing and its 1,400 steel doors, motion detectors, and cameras are all remote-controlled.

Onsite, there is a high guard to prisoner ratio, and many additional security measures are taken outside of the control unit. Beyond the fences of ADX Florence, the area is filled with watchtowers, sharpshooters, pressure pads, laser beams, and guard dogs ready to stop any prion brave enough to attempt an escape.

Infamous Inmates

Designed to house the most dangerous criminals in the country, many of the inmates living in Florence ADMAX have been convicted of violent crimes or have a history of incidents within other prison facilities. The penitentiary is most publicly known for imprisoning high-profile individuals that may be a threat to national or global security.

Today, the Alcatraz of the Rockies is home to many infamous inmates, including convicted terrorists associated with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center Attacks, and other national tragedies.

Here is a quick look at a few of the most notorious prisoners of Florence ADMAX:

• Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera: Commonly known as El Chapo, the Sinaloa Cartel leader was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2019 for a number of criminal charges related to drug trafficking.
• Theodore Kaczynski: Also known as “The Unabomber,” Kaczynski was sentenced to eight consecutive life in prison sentences for his connection to sixteen domestic bombings between 1978 and 1995. In December of 2021, he was transferred from ADX Florence to the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina.
• Richard Reid: Serving three life terms plus 110 years in prison without parole, “The Shoebomber” was sent to ADX after unsuccessfully denoting footwear packed with explosives on a 2001 transatlantic flight.
• Tyler Bingham & Barry Mills: Prominent members of the Aryan Brotherhood, both Bingham and Mills are serving life sentences without parole.
• James Marcello: Nicknamed Little Jimmy, Jimmy Light, and Jimmy the Man, James Marcello is a Chicago Outfit crime boss that is currently spending part of his life sentence in Florence ADX.
• Robert Phillip Hanssen: A former FBI double agent and Soviet spy, Hanssen is serving 15 consecutive life sentences for espionage without the possibility of parole.
• Dzhokhar Tsarnaev: Known for his involvement in the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings, Tsarnaev will spend the rest of his life in ADX. Although originally sent there to be executed, his death sentence was appealed in 2020. In 2021, the Department of Justice presented an argument to reinstate his death sentence.
• Omar Portee: Universally recognized as “OG Mack,” Protee founded both the Nine Trey Gangsters and the United Blood Nation while imprisoned in Rikers Island. In 2021, OG Mack was transferred from ADX to Florence’s High Security (USP Florence High) prison.

Inside the Facility

Completed in 1994, Florence ADMAX was designed to replicate the “permanent lockdown” model introduced in U.S. Penitentiary Marion after the murders of correctional officers Merle Clutts and Robert Hoffman. Today, it’s known for its extreme use of sensory deprivation and isolating rehabilitation practices.

A $60 million facility, the penitentiary was constructed to hold a capacity of 490 prisoners. However, it ‘s never been completely full. As of 2021, there are 335 male inmates currently living in the facility. Those imprisoned in the Alcatraz of the Rockies are typically put on a 3-year program before reevaluating privileges and possibly being transferred to another location.

Prisoners may be in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours a day and cells are outfitted with a desk, stool, bed, and toilet made of poured concrete. For the other hour of each day, captives may enter an adjacent cell nicknamed the “empty swimming pool.” Here, a 4-inch by 4-inch skylight serves as the only window in the room and prisoners have slightly more space to walk around.

Over time, good behavior is rewarded with books, radios, and on rare occasions, black and white televisions. Most inmates won’t see another person during their first three years behind bars in ADX. With hundreds of inmates serving life sentences in unimaginable living conditions, a total of eight Florence ADMAX prisoners have been reported dead by suicide.

As the subject of multiple class-action lawsuits and much media scrutiny, some of the treatment (or lack of proper treatment) that prisoners have received have been deemed inhumane.

Despite its unparalleled security, there have also been two murders reported in ADX Florence. While left without guard supervision in 2005, Former Mexican Mafia member Manuel Torres was brutally beaten to death by inmates Silvestre Rivera and Richard Santiago. In the same year, Gregory Joiner was killed by James Duckett and Dominic Stewart.

Want to visit the Alcatraz of the Rockies?

Unlike the real Alcatraz, which welcomes hundreds of thousands of tourists every year, ADX Florence has very strict visitation rules and regulations, requiring that all visitors be preapproved by the facility . Alternatively, interested parties can also write a letter to an inmate .

For more information on penitentiaries in Colorado, check out our article on prominent prisons in Colorado and the inmates that occupy them .

Address: 5880 CO-67, Florence , CO 81226

Phone: (719) 784-9454

Prison Stats:

• Size: 37 acres
• Capacity: 490 inmates
• Current population: ~335 inmates (all male)
• Warden: Charles A. Daniels

Website: bop.gov…

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ADMAX Florence United States Penitentiary

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ADMAX Florence United States Penitentiary, also known as ADX Florence , Florence ADMAX , Supermax , or the Alcatraz of  the Rockies , is an administrative maximum security penitentiary located in Fremont County of Colorado.  Opened in 1994, the facility takes up 21 acres of land and is part of the Florence Federal Correctional Complex.  It houses dangerous male prisoners who require high levels of security.  In total, the prison currently incarcerates 429 inmates, meanwhile the facility was designed to hold up to 490 prisoners.  ADX Florence has 9 housing units which is encompassed by a secure fence.  Every cell has a desk, stool, bed, a toilet, shower, sink, and sometimes a steel mirror, radio, and an electric light.  On rare occasions, some cells have black and white television for religious and recreational purposes.  Cells are also sound proof to avoid any contact at all between prisoners.  The window in each cell is so small that inmates cannot tell where they are by looking out the window, thus making it nearly impossible to plan an escape.  On average, the prisoners' ages range from 24-77 years old and the average sentence length is 22 years.

Each facility included in the Florence Federal Correctional Complex offers various educational opportunities and numerous programs to the inmates.  To educate the prisoners, programs such as the General Education Development Program, Adult Continuing Education, Adult Occupational Education, and English as a Second Language are available  Offenders can also take part in vocational training and parenting programs.  Religious, food, recreational, medical, and mental health services are provided to the inmates at this facility.  The Recreational Program, in particular, encourages an active lifestyle and allows inmates to take interest in new hobbies and activities. The Recreational Program lines up activities such as team sports, wellness instruction, and crafting for the offenders.  Although these programs are available, prisoners are still under 23 hour lock up in their cells and have only 5 hours of recreation time each week.  

ADMAX Florence was created after severe incidents that occurred at other federal prisons.  For example, at Marion United States Penitentiary, there were 2 incidents where correction officers were stabbed to death in 1983.  Following these incidents, it came to realization that there needed to be a higher level of security prison for such ruthless prisoners.  ADMAX Florence has had many notable inmates, due to the fact that the facility incarcerates some of the most dangerous criminals in the United States.  The prison holds leaders of a variety of violent gangs, along with terrorists from major organizations such as Al Qaeda.  The prison houses Zacarias Moussaoui, who happens to be the only person convicted in a civilian court for the terrorist attacks on 9/11.  Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was partially responsible for Boston Marathon bombings, was transferred to this prison in July 2015.  Overall, ADMAX Florence houses all sorts of dangerous criminals in one of the most secure environments.

Visiting Hours at ADMAX Florence United States Penitentiary:

• Visiting to the penitentiary occurs on Thursdays, Fridays, weekends, and federal holidays.  Visiting hours are from 8:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M. on each of these days.
• A prisoner is allowed 5 visits per month.
• One visit can last up to 7 hours, however, visits may be terminated if overcrowding occurs in the visiting room.
• Inmates can have no more than 3 visitors at once, including children.
• New visitors will not be processed into the visiting area after 2:00 P.M.
• Vending machines are available for the visitors.
• Prior to entering the visiting room, visitors will be required to clear a metal detector search.
• Visitors cannot leave the facility and come back to visit again later in the day.
• An offender can request up to 20 people on their visiting list.  One may not visit unless they are an approved member of the inmate's visiting list.
• Physical contact is limited to occasional hand holding and an embrace at the beginning and end of each visit.
• A clear change purse - no larger than 8" x 8"
• Up to $25.00 in bills no larger than $5
• Prescription medications
• A clear diaper bag with up to 6 containers of sealed baby food or formula, 6 empty plastic bottles, 6 diapers, and a baby blanket

Physical Address:

ADMAX Florence United States Penitentiary 5880 Highway 67 South Florence, Colorado 81226

(719)-784-9464

Inmate Mailing Address:

Inmate Name, ID Number ADMAX Florence United States Penitentiary P.O. Box 8500 Florence, Colorado 81226

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Here’s what makes ADX Florence the country’s most secure prison

El Chapo may soon reside in the “Alcatraz of the Rockies.”

By Eleanor Cummins | Published Jul 18, 2019 9:30 PM EDT

Off Colorado’s Highway 67, the U.S.’s highest-security “supermax” prison, ADX Florence sits in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. The Federal Bureau of Prisons, which owns and operates the facility, opened the “control unit” in 1994 for male prisoners deemed unusually violent or likely to escape from other facilities.

The “Alcatraz of the Rockies,” as it’s informally known, is currently home to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of the Boston Marathon Bombing; Theodore Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber; double agents like Harold Nicholson, a CIA spy secretly working for the Soviets; mafiosos Joseph Lombardo and James Marcello; Ramzi Yousef, who planned the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; and Zacarias Moussaoui of the 9/11 conspiracy, just to name a few.

Now, Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman may join their ranks.

On Wednesday, a judge sentenced Guzman to life in prison plus 30 years for drug trafficking and money laundering. Authorities have not yet assigned Guzman to a prison. But given his history of escapes—most notably, he broke out of a Mexican maximum-security prison via a mile-long tunnel — experts speculate he’ll end up in ADX Florence.

But in a nation of 1,719 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, and countless other municipal, military, and immigrant detention facilities , what elevates ADX Florence above the rest?

It’s a matter of design.

Alcatraz may have been surrounded on all sides by the frigid waters of the San Francisco Bay, but ADX Florence “is literally built into the side of a mountain, with a robust security infrastructure,” Martin Horn, a criminal justice professor, told Reuters . 12 gun towers surround the compound. Razor wire, guard dogs, and laser beams secure the perimeter.

This sense of isolation and control extends inside the buildings. At all times, prisoners, guards, and other personnel are under surveillance. Every building is equipped with motion sensors ; even floors have pressure sensors to track where people are walking. 1,400 remote-controlled doors control movement inside the building.

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.”

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.”

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.

Lawyers, criminal justice advocates, investigators, former inmates, and even former employees agree: the space is made to detain people who are no longer considered fully human. “It’s not designed for rehabilitation,” a former ADX Florence warden told the New York Times Magazine . “Period. End of story.”

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My Life in the Supermax

Finger handshakes, the toilet phone, and the “shoe bomber.”.

This article was published in collaboration with Vice .

Not many people ever make it out of the ADX.

Officially called the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence — and colloquially known as the “Alcatraz of the Rockies” — the ADX is the highest-security federal prison in the country, located in the Colorado mountains. It houses some of the more notorious inmates in recent American history, from Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui to Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols to Robert Hanssen, the FBI agent who became a Soviet spy. Inmates at the ADX are held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, and because of their crimes, many are never released.

Perspectives from those who work and live in the criminal justice system.

But Travis Dusenbury, a 46-year-old from Lexington, N.C. who was locked up at the ADX for ten years, made it out. And he has much to say about the prison and the famous people he says he met there, including the “Unabomber” and the “shoe bomber.”

Dusenbury, a self-described “righteous black power type,” first went to prison at the age of 16 for aggravated assault. He has been in and out ever since, for everything from inciting riots to gun charges. In 2005, he was doing time in a federal prison in Florida when he assaulted a prison guard who, he said, had been bullying black and Latino inmates. That got him sent to the ADX as a behavioral risk, where he remained until January of last year.

Dusenbury spoke with us about what life is like inside the most isolated, rarely glimpsed prison in the United States.

What was your first impression of ADX Florence when you arrived there?

It wasn’t like any of the prisons I’d been to, and I’ve been to a lot of prisons. I’ve been locked up in some isolated, rural places, but at least at those places I could always see a highway, see the sky.

Travis Dusenbury in an undated photo taken at ADX.

But at the ADX, you can’t see nothing, not a highway out in the distance, not the sky. You know the minute you get there you won’t see any of that, not for years and years.

You’re just shut off the world. You feel it. It sinks in, this dread feeling.

What did the place look like — the cell you lived in, the bed you slept on?

It’s just the harshest place you’ve ever seen. Nothing living, not so much as a blade of grass anywhere.

My cell was all concrete. Every single thing, made out of concrete. The walls, floor, the desk, the sink, even the bed — a slab of concrete. Then you get a little fortified [recreation cage] that’s outside that you get to go walk around in for an hour a day.

It ain’t no lollygagging solitary confinement like you have at some other prisons — it’s 22, 23 hours in this concrete room, then one [to two] hours in this fenced-in area, and two days a week there was no rec though, and sometimes they just canceled it for no reason.

Did you ever run into any of the well-known terrorists and other criminals who are at the ADX?

Well, I never got sent to the control unit, where they keep the “worst” of them.

But I did meet Ted Kaczynski, the “Unabomber,” on the range [i.e. he was on the same cell block]. He was just a fucking weird little guy — he wouldn’t even go outside when he was allowed to. I didn’t like him because I knew about his crime and that crime was a weird thing to do, but I guess I respected him because he was older. So I called him “Mr.” and I think he really liked that. He ended up giving me an IQ test, because to him, intelligence was everything.

I also got to know Eric Rudolph [the Atlanta Olympics bomber]. I appreciated him because he could have easily gotten cozy with the Aryan Brotherhood, but he didn’t, he talked to me, talked to everybody, never said ‘nigger.’ When a black dude was banging all night in the cell next to us, he took it peacefully. He was a gentleman, and that’s one thing we can all get with at the ADX.

And I ran across guys like the “shoe bomber,” Richard Reid, all them with terrorism charges. I’m glad Richard wasn’t successful at blowing up the plane. That would have been fucked up. But I got along with them fine enough and learned about how they practiced Islam.

Wait, how did you communicate with those guys?

There was a couple [of ways to communicate]. We got moved around to different units, and sometimes I was on the same unit as them. Sometimes I was the “orderly” and would go around to different cells on the unit, cleaning up. Or I could just sometimes holler loud as I could down the unit and they’d hear you and talk back.

Sometimes, also, you could take a whole toilet paper roll, put it over the drain in your sink or shower, and blow as hard as you could. That would blow the water down the pipes just far enough that the pipes were empty between you and your neighbor’s cell. Then you keep holding the toilet paper roll over the drain, you talk into it, and your neighbor can hear what you’re saying clearly. It depended on the cell you were in, if the pipes were lined up and all that, but you could usually contact your neighbor this way or even one more inmate down the line.

And then if your rec time happened to line up, you might be able to see them through the fence of your rec area. The closest human contact you could get was what we called “finger handshakes” through the fence.

What did you do with your days?

Wasn’t much you could do — pushups, reading. You could also write, but the only pens you could get were expensive and then when you got them, they were these little floppy rubber ink pens, the length of a crayon — so that it can’t be made into a [weapon]. But you couldn’t write with those floppy things at all.

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You could listen to the radio too, but they didn’t have no rap station!

The one thing I would have liked to be able to do was sleep. But I had this monstrous insomnia. I just couldn’t sleep. I’d lie there all night, for ten years, not being able to sleep, and by the end I had this sleep deprivation that was absolutely monstrous. The cell just became my world and I couldn’t get out of it, not even into sleep.

It’s so claustrophobic in there. I know claustrophobia is a condition, but I think that place was claustrophobic. It got to the point where absolutely anything that changed, like if I saw snow falling outside, was what allowed me to survive.

Did they offer you any treatment, any psychological help?

I mean, at first, they would try to catch me sleeping, because they didn’t believe me that I was an insomniac — they thought I just wanted the meds. That went on for years.

Then they gave me the meds, but they didn’t care if it was the right meds. They didn’t care if the meds were working. They just cared that they were giving it to me, and there was no checking on me to see if I could sleep, which I still couldn’t.

And did you ever have a chance to get out of solitary?

After five years, I made it into the Step Down program — which was next to where they had a larger yard, so you could see the sky. You were with two to seven people at a time, instead of just yourself.

I’m a people person, and before long, I was hugging other inmates, and the guards were all saying, “Damn, usually motherfuckers don’t want to go near other motherfuckers after they’ve been inside.”

But at one point I got into an argument with a former comrade of mine (it boiled down to he was jealous that I was going to get out in four years and I had family waiting for me). But the guards moved us apart, and not long after that they deemed me unfit for the program, saying that I had “failed to adjust.” So they sent me back to solitary after only six months in the program.

What about the staff? What kinds of interactions did you have with the guards?

Opening Statement

Ain’t no black people in rural Colorado. The staff were all white, all lower-class, and they could be more easily manipulated by white inmates than by black inmates. The white inmates could get them to bring in contraband, but the black inmates could never do that. They even sometimes called the white inmates “brother.”

They couldn’t stand me personally because I was a righteous O.G. type of cat, a righteous black power type of cat, always causing disruptions — and I wasn’t in any type of gang or nothing (the Aryan Brotherhood, the Mexican Mafia) to back me up.

On the whole they just viewed you as less than human, there was this contemptuous look all the time. And they experimented with you by putting you next to people they knew you had violent histories with.

I think most people take it for granted that they are human, but when you get to the ADX, you realize that being human isn’t a birthright.

How did the guards punish you when you broke a rule or acted out, the way you’ve done at other prisons?

It only happened to me three times at the ADX, and I think they did it a lot more to some other guys. But what they would do is they would send this unit that we called the Goon Squad. They’d come in with the tear gas, nightsticks, steel boots, riot gear.

When I was real angry though, I’d get in at least of few punches before my lights went out. They felt it. They knew I was there.

And then you finally got out.

Yes. On January 13 of last year, they shipped me to a medical hospital in Springfield, Missouri; then they flew me to a prison in Oklahoma; then they sent me to Terre Haute, Indiana.

By May 13, I was going home to North Carolina. I’m staying with my mom now, and I’m on the right meds and I’m finally sleeping.

And you know I heard they finally have a rap station at the ADX. That’s my legacy.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Maximum Security Federal Prison: ADX Supermax

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US Penitentiary Administrative Maximum, also known as ADX Florence, the "Alcatraz of the Rockies," and "Supermax," is a modern super-maximum security federal prison located in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains near Florence, Colorado. Opened in 1994, the ADX Supermax facility was designed to incarcerate and isolate criminals deemed as being  too dangerous for the average prison system .

The all-male prison population at ADX Supermax includes inmates who experienced chronic disciplinary problems while at other prisons, those who have killed other prisoners and prison guards, gang leaders, high-profile criminals, and organized crime mobsters . It also houses criminals who could pose a threat to national security including Al-Qaeda and U.S. terrorist and spies.

The harsh conditions at ADX Supermax have earned it a place in the Guinness Book of World Records as being one of the most secure prisons in the world. From the prison design to the daily operations, ADX Supermax strives for complete control over all prisoners at all times.

Modern, sophisticated security and monitoring systems are located inside and along the outside perimeter of the prison grounds. The monolithic design of the facility makes it difficult for those unfamiliar with the facility to navigate inside the structure.

Massive guard towers, security cameras, attack dogs, laser technology, remote-controlled door systems, and pressure pads exist inside a 12-foot high razor fence that surrounds the prison grounds. Outside visitors to ADX Supermax are, for the most part, unwelcome.

Prison Units

When inmates arrive at ADX, they are placed in one of six units depending on their criminal history . Operations, privileges, and procedures vary depending on the unit. The inmate population is housed at ADX in nine different maximum-security housing units, which are divided into six security levels listed from the most secure and restrictive to the least restrictive.

• The Control Unit
• The Special Housing Unit ("SHU")
• "Range 13," an ultra-secure and isolated four-cell wing of the SHU.
• Special Security Unit ("H" Unit) for terrorist
• General Population Units ("Delta," "Echo," "Fox," and "Golf" Units)
• Intermediate Unit/Transitional Units ("Joker" Unit and "Kilo" Unit) which houses prisoners entered into the "Step-Down Program" which they can earn their way out of ADX.

To be moved into the less restrictive units, inmates must maintain clear conduct for a specific time, participate in recommended programs and demonstrate a positive institutional adjustment.

Inmate Cells

Depending on which unit they are in, prisoners spend at least 20, and as many as 24-hours per day locked alone in their cells. The cells measure seven by 12 feet and have solid walls that prevent prisoners from viewing the interiors of adjacent cells or having direct contact with prisoners in adjacent cells.  

All ADX cells have solid steel doors with a small slot. Cells in all units (other than H, Joker, and Kilo units) also have an interior barred wall with a sliding door, which together with the exterior door forms a sally port in each cell.

Each cell is furnished with a modular concrete bed, desk, and stool, and a stainless steel combination sink and toilet. Cells in all units include a shower with an automatic shut-off valve.

The beds have a thin mattress and blankets over the concrete. Each cell contains a single window, approximately 42 inches tall and four inches wide, which allows in some natural light, but which is designed to ensure that prisoners cannot see anything outside of their cells other than the building and sky.  

Many cells, except those in the SHU, are equipped with a radio and television that offers religious and educational programming, along with some general interest and recreational programming. Inmates wishing to take advantage of the educational program at ADX Supermax do so by tuning into specific learning channels on the television in their cell. There are no group classes. Televisions often are withheld from prisoners as punishment.

Meals are delivered three times a day by guards. With few exceptions, prisoners in most ADX Supermax units are allowed out of their cells only for limited social or legal visits, some forms of medical treatment, visits to the "law library" and a few hours a week of indoor or outdoor recreation.

With the possible exception of Range 13, the Control Unit is the most secure and isolated unit currently in use at ADX. Prisoners in the Control Unit are isolated from the other prisoners at all times, even during recreation, for extended terms often lasting six years or more. Their only meaningful contact with other humans is with ADX staff members.

The compliance of Control Unit prisoners with institutional rules is assessed monthly. A prisoner is given "credit" for serving a month of his Control Unit time only if he maintains clear conduct for the entire month.

Inmate Life

For at least the first three years, ADX inmates remain isolated inside their cells on an average of 23 hours a day, including during meals. Inmates in the more secure cells have remote-controlled doors that lead to walkways, called dog runs, which open into a private recreation pen. The pen referred to as the "empty swimming pool," is a concrete area with skylights, which inmates go to alone. There they can take about 10 steps in either direction or walk around thirty feet in a circle.

Because of the inability for prisoners to see prison grounds from inside their cells or the recreation pen, it is nearly impossible for them to know where their cell is located inside the facility. The prison was designed this way to deter prison breakouts.

Special Administrative Measures

Many of the inmates are under Special Administrative Measures (SAM) to prevent the dissemination either of classified information that could endanger the national security or of other information that could lead to acts of violence and terrorism.

Prison officials monitor and censor all inmate activity including all mail that is received, books, magazines and newspapers, phone calls and face-to-face visits. Phone calls are limited to one monitored 15-minute phone call per month.  

If prisoners adapt to the rules of ADX, they are permitted to have more exercise time, additional phone privileges and more television programming. The opposite is true if prisoners fail to adapt.

Inmate Disputes

In 2006, Olympic Park Bomber, Eric Rudolph contacted the Gazette of Colorado Springs through a series of letters describing the conditions at ADX Supermax as one meant to, "inflict misery and pain."

"It is a closed-off world designed to isolate inmates from social and environmental stimuli, with the ultimate purpose of causing mental illness and chronic physical conditions such as diabetes , heart disease, and arthritis," he wrote in one letter."

Hunger Strikes

Throughout the prison's history, inmates have gone on hunger strikes to protest the harsh treatment that they receive. This is particularly true of foreign terrorists; by 2007, over 900 incidents of force-feeding of the striking prisoners had been documented.

In May 2012, the family of Jose Martin Vega filed a lawsuit against the United States District Court for the District of Colorado alleging that Vega committed suicide while incarcerated at ADX Supermax because he was deprived of treatment for his mental illness.

On June 18, 2012, a class-action lawsuit, "Bacote v. Federal Bureau of Prisons," was filed alleging that the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) was mistreating mentally ill prisoners at ADX Supermax. Eleven prisoners filed the case on behalf of all mentally ill prisoners at the facility.   In December 2012, Michael Bacote asked to withdraw from the case. As a result, the first-named plaintiff is now Harold Cunningham, and the case name is now "Cunningham v. Federal Bureau of Prisons" or "Cunningham v. BOP."

The complaint alleges that despite the BOP's own written policies, excluding the mentally ill from ADX Supermax because of its severe conditions, the BOP frequently assigns prisoners with mental illness there because of a deficient evaluation and screening process. Then, according to the complaint, mentally ill prisoners housed at ADX Supermax are denied constitutionally adequate treatment and services.

According to the complaint

Some prisoners mutilate their bodies with razors, shards of glass, sharpened chicken bones, writing utensils and whatever other objects they can obtain. Others swallow razor blades, nail clippers, broken glass, and other dangerous objects.

Many engage in fits of screaming and ranting for hours on end. Others carry on delusional conversations with the voices they hear in their heads, oblivious to reality and the danger that such behavior might pose to them and to anyone who interacts with them.

Still, others spread feces and other waste throughout their cells, throw it at the correctional staff and otherwise create health hazards at ADX. Suicide attempts are common; many have been successful."

Escape artist Richard Lee McNair wrote to a journalist from his cell in 2009 to say:

"Thank God for prisons [...] There are some very sick people in here... Animals you would never want living near your family or the public in general. I don't know how corrections staff deal with it. They get spit on, s*** on, abused and I have seen them risk their lives and save a prisoner many times."

Cunningham v. BOP was settled between the parties on Dec. 29, 2016: the terms apply to all the plaintiffs as well as present and future inmates with mental illness. The terms include the creation and revision of policies governing mental health diagnosis and treatment; the creation or improvement in mental health facilities; the creation of areas for tele-psychiatry and mental health counseling in all units; the screening of inmates prior to, after, and during incarceration; the availability of psychotropic drugs as needed and regular visits by mental health professionals; and ensuring that the use of force, restraints and discipline are applied appropriately to inmates.

The BOP to Access of Its Solitary Confinement Practices

In February 2013 the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) agreed to a comprehensive and independent assessment of its use of solitary confinement in the nation’s federal prisons. The first-ever review of federal segregation policies comes after a hearing in 2012 on the human rights, fiscal and public safety consequences of solitary confinement. The assessment will be conducted by the National Institute of Corrections.

Shalev, Sharon. "Supermax: Controlling Risk Through Solitary Confinement." London: Routledge, 2013.

" USP Florence Administrative Maximum Security (ADX) Inspection Report And USP Florence-High Survey Report ." District of Columbia Corrections Information Council, 31 Oct. 2018. 

Golden, Deborah. " The Federal Bureau of Prisons: Willfully Ignorant or Maliciously Unlawful? " Michigan Journal of Race and Law , vol. 18, no. 2, 2013, pp. 275-294.

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'The Alcatraz of the Rockies': Why No One Ever Escapes From ADX Florence

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Just two hours outside of Denver, in the parched Rocky Mountain foothills, sits the highest-security prison in America. Its official name is the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, but everyone calls it the ADX. The ADX in Florence, Colorado, is the one and only federal "Supermax" prison, home to the most dangerous and escape-prone inmates in federal lockup.

Among nearly 400 male inmates at ADX are several infamous characters . Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, the notorious drug kingpin, was sent to ADX after escaping twice from maximum-security prisons in Mexico. The "Unabomber," Ted Kaczynski, is in there. So is Eric Rudolph, the Atlanta Olympics bomber; the 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui; the Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols; the 1993 World Trade Center terrorist Ramzi Yousef; and Michael Swango, a doctor who poisoned and killed up to 60 of his patients.

Prisoners don't end up in the ADX by accident. Many have committed murder — either on the outside or in other prisons, including killing guards. Others are hardcore gang members who have ordered or carried out prison hits. And a significant portion of the men housed at ADX — as many as a third by one estimate — have a diagnosed mental illness that makes them a serious threat to themselves and others.

But critics of the ADX and other Supermax prisons argue that regardless of these men's crimes or mental illnesses, the conditions inside these hyper-secure facilities — in which prisoners spend 23 hours a day in solitary confinement — are the very definition of "cruel and unusual" punishment. According to the United Nations, they even qualify as torture.

Life Inside ADX Florence

Why supermax prisons exist, what solitary confinement does to the body and mind, are supermax prisons unconstitutional.

At other prisons, inmates are placed in solitary confinement for short stints in response to violent or aggressive behavior. Corrections officials call this type of punitive solitary confinement " administrative segregation ," better known as "the hole." At ADX, also known as "the Alcatraz of the Rockies," the entire prison is essentially "the hole."

ADX inmates are confined to their 7-by-12-foot (2-by-4-meter) cells 23 hours a day, according to The New York Times . They receive all their meals through a slot in the cell door, and their only glimpse of the outside world is through a thin slit of a window aimed at an empty sky. This deprives prisoners of learning the layout of the prison and the location of their cells. No one has ever escaped from ADX Florence.

Since ADX inmates can't be trusted with anything that could be broken down and made into a weapon, all the cell furniture is solid concrete and immovable: a concrete writing desk, concrete chair and a concrete slab topped with a thin foam pad that serves as a bed. The "bathroom" is a combination toilet/sink and a shower that turns on automatically three times a week.

With good behavior, inmates earn the right to buy a small, black-and-white TV with a built-in radio, and to borrow books and magazines from the prison library. Phone calls are limited to 15 minutes a month to close family members. Prisoners are allowed five visits each month, under strict circumstances .

The only time that inmates are allowed out of their cells is for an hour of exercise. Handcuffed and shackled at their feet, inmates are either led to an empty room with a single pull-up bar, or taken outside to the yard, where they are locked alone inside a caged pen.

Robert Hood, a former warden at the ADX told The New York Times that the ADX was "not designed for humanity. When it's 23 hours a day in a room with a slit of a window where you can't even see the Rocky Mountains — let's be candid here. It's not designed for rehabilitation. Period. End of story."

In another interview with The Boston Globe, Hood described the eerie quiet of walking through a modern prison facility where all of the inmates are locked down. "The ADX is a far more stark environment than any other prison I've ever seen, and I've been to all of the federal prisons," said Hood. "[I] call it a clean version of hell."

There are roughly 2 million people in prison or jail in the United States at any given time.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, a small segment of that population poses significant challenges to wardens, guards and other corrections workers. The difficulty of controlling those individuals, described as "the most dangerous, recalcitrant, aggressive, and antagonistic inmates in a prison system," drove the design and construction of increasingly secure facilities.

The first "Super Maximum-Security" prisons were built in the 1980s, and there are now more than 30 so-called Supermax prisons in the United States. ADX, the only Supermax for federal prisoners, was built in 1994.

Keramet Reiter teaches criminology and law at the University of California Irvine and wrote a book about a Supermax prison in California called " 23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement ."

"The explicit rationale [for Supermax prisons] is that there are people who are so dangerous they have to be removed from the general prison population, and by removing them, everybody else would be better off," says Reiter. "Theoretically there would be less violence and you could deter gang behavior by locking people away in these really harsh and restrictive conditions."

But Reiter says that there's little evidence to support the rationale that near-total solitary confinement is an effective way to address prison violence. On the flip side, there's mounting evidence that long-term solitary confinement is akin to psychological torture and increases the risks of certain types of violence, particularly self-harm and suicide .

Reiter says that doctors have known since the 1960s and 1970s that solitary confinement and sensory deprivation have immediate and lasting effects on the brains and bodies of prisoners, as evidenced by the experiences of American POWs in Vietnam.

"We know that locking someone up in solitary confinement can cause all kinds of psychological problems within days, if not hours," says Reiter. "With Supermax prisons, we've essentially been running a mass experiment on the effects of long-term solitary confinement for the last two decades."

For ADX prisoners, their only regular contact with other human beings are the brief interactions with guards who bring them meals and escort them to the yard. A 2014 report by Amnesty International found that ADX prisoners "routinely go days with only a few words spoken to them."

The effects of long-term solitary confinement range from depression and anxiety to full-on hallucinations and psychotic breaks. The New York Times tells the disturbing story of an ADX inmate named Jack Powers, jailed for robbery and sent to ADX after escaping from another prison. The isolation sent Powers spiraling into insanity. He cut off his earlobes, chewed through a finger and smashed his head open in order to inject his brain with "bacteria-laden fluid."

"It's just the harshest place you've ever seen. Nothing living, not so much as a blade of grass anywhere," said Travis Dusenbury in an interview with the Marshall Project . He spent 10 years at ADX for assaulting a guard at another prison, before being released. "It's so claustrophobic in there ... It got to the point where absolutely anything that changed, like if I saw snow falling outside, was what allowed me to survive."

ADX has six different levels of security, and inmates can move from restrictive to less restrictive housing and possibly to other prisons. But even when released from solitary, the effects of isolation linger. In 1993, a doctor named Stuart Grassian described a condition called " SHU syndrome " (solitary confinement facilities are also called Security Housing Units) that's characterized by paranoia, panic attacks, aggression and psychotic symptoms.

The Eighth Amendment of the Constitution prohibits "cruel and unusual punishment," and given the known psychological effects of solitary confinement, shouldn't prisons like ADX be outlawed?

"Legally the conditions inside Supermax prisons are constitutional," says Reiter. "They have been challenged extensively and no court has held that keeping someone in solitary confinement for any specific period with any specific degree of deprivation is unconstitutional."

There is increasing pressure, however, from the international legal community to end the practice of long-term solitary confinement in America. The United Nations, for example, has established the " Mandela Rules " governing the treatment of prisoners, which prohibits the use of "prolonged solitary confinement" (defined as 22 hours or more per day) and equates it with "torture."

There have been some small victories for prisoner rights at ADX. In 2016, the Bureau of Prisons settled a class-action lawsuit with 100 mentally ill ADX inmates who were denied antipsychotic medications and left to languish in awful conditions. The settlement led to the transfer of some of the most disturbed inmates to special federal facilities where they can receive better psychiatric care.

For the rest of the ADX inmates deemed mentally fit, they are still in their cells serving life sentences in near-absolute isolation.

Despite the tight restrictions at ADX, at least one murder was committed there in 2005, when members of a Mexican gang beat a fellow prisoner to death in the yard.

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ADX Florence: Inside the World’s Most Secure Prison

ADX Florence was built in 1994 just south of Florence, Colorado in 1994. It is widely considered the most secure prison in the United States.

Commonly referred to as a “Supermax” prison, ADX Florence takes up 37 acres and can accommodate around 550 prisoners.

Part of the appeal of ADX Florence is the notoriety of the criminals it houses within it.

Some of the highest-profile and most dangerous prisoners have been sent to the facility.

Over 90 percent of all inmates in ADX Florence were transferred in with a history of violence and other uncontrollable actions in other prisons.

ADX Florence Conditions

Florence prisoners are kept in solitary confinement 23 hours per day, with one hour for “recreation.”

This sounds standard, but conditions are much harsher than normal prisons.

Unlike other prisons where inmates get to spend time outside, the one hour of recreation consists of being put into a bigger cell called the empty swimming pool . There’s only one window in the room.

Prisoners spend this time alone and are shut off from other prisoners and essentially the rest of the world.

In other facilities, inmates get to interact with others. However, at ADX Florence, prisoners do not come into contact with other prisoners for at least the first three years.

Good behavior can get inmates more time outside their cell and possibly even a transfer back to a lower-security prison.

Sensory deprivation

Florence’s conditions create not only solitude but sensory deprivation.

Because inmates have no contact with each other or the outside world, they’re left to themselves. This can create hallucinations, memory loss, and various forms of irascible behavior.

The prison is nonetheless clean and treatment is fair considering what caused them to be placed there in the first place.

Former ADX Florence wardens have described the prison as a type of “clean version of hell.”

ADX Florence Cell Furnishings

Cell furnishings are limited to a bed, desk, and stool. All are made of concrete to prevent them from being moved.

Showers are on timers to prevent flooding. The toilet, sink, and water fountain are built into one unit. Toilets will not operate if plugged.

Some cells may have additional furnishings, such as lights, mirrors, radios, and TVs . But they are rarely given to any inmate, especially televisions.

If they are awarded, it’s based on good behavior.

Food at ADX Florence

Inmates don’t eat in a cafeteria or mess hall. Food is delivered to the cell by guards.

There are three meals a day, mostly consisting of simple carbohydrates.

ADX Florence Security Features

Florence has razor-wire fencing surrounding the facility that goes up 12 feet.

The prison makes extensive use of technology to keep its security.

There are nearly 1,500 steel doors that are remote-controlled.

Cameras and motion detectors are throughout the ground. Laser beams and guard dogs help protect the surrounding fences.

Pressure pads exist within the razor-wire fences to alert guards.

ADX Florence Tours and Visiting

Visiting the penitentiary occurs on Thursdays, Fridays, weekends, and federal holidays.

Visiting hours are from 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM on each of these days. A prisoner is allowed 5 visits per month.

One visit can last up to 7 hours; however, visits may be terminated if there’s overcrowding in the visiting room.

There are no actual tours of a security or operational facility. 60 Minutes once gave a segment on the prison, which can be found below.

Famous inmates

While ADX Florence has held some of the country’s and world’s most violent and malevolent criminals, it is also the primary holding facility for convicted terrorists.

The prison currently holds around 350 violent criminals (of a maximum 551 possible). This includes those involved in the February 26, 1993 World Trade Center bombing and September 11, 2001 World Trade Center attacks.

Osama bin Laden accomplice Mamdouh Mahmud Salim

Thomas Silverstein, in particular, is often credited with being the reason behind the ADX Supermax system in the first place.

The inability of guards to control his activities led to a record 36 years in solitary confinement in the US prison system, from 1983 to his death in 2019.

Proponents of ADX Florence and the Supermax system argue that criminals who’ve shown no regard for human life on a repeated basis should be placed in a maximum-security facility of the likes of Florence.

The likes of Silverstein, who commit additional murders on top of their initial heinous acts, are simply not dissuaded by a judge tacking on an additional life sentence for each murder they commit.

They view themselves as in for life and essentially see that as a free ticket to do whatever they’d like.

Harsher penalties are needed to keep these types of inmates in check to prevent further sprees of extreme violence or even murder.

The threat of solitary confinement at ADX Florence is a better deterrent than another life sentence.

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What it's like inside the 'Alcatraz of the Rockies,' America's toughest prison

More than 40 US states run " super-maximum security " prisons for particularly violent or ill-behaved convicts. But the federal government runs only one "Supermax:" the notorious  US Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado.

More widely known as the ADX or the "Alcatraz of the Rockies," it's the highest-security prison in the entire country. There, every inmate spends roughly 23 hours a day in solitary confinement, The New York Times reported in a lengthy article over the weekend.

The ADX was designed for  “a very small subset of the inmate population who show absolutely no concern for human life," Norman Carlson, the former director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, has said, according to The Times.  The ADX currently houses 422 inmates, including  some of the world's most infamous names , like the Unabomber. 

The Times described their daily life like this:

Inmates spend their days in 12-by-7-foot cells with thick concrete walls and double sets of sliding metal doors (with solid exteriors, so prisoners can’t see one another). A single window, about three feet high but only four inches wide, offers a notched glimpse of sky and little else. Each cell has a sink-toilet combo and an automated shower, and prisoners sleep on concrete slabs topped with thin mattresses. Most cells also have televisions (with built-in radios), and inmates have access to books and periodicals, as well as certain arts-and-craft materials. Prisoners in the general population are allotted a maximum of 10 hours of exercise a week outside their cells, alternating between solo trips to an indoor “gym” (a windowless cell with a single chin-up bar) and group visits to the outdoor rec yard (where each prisoner nonetheless remains confined to an individual cage). All meals come through slots in the interior door, as does any face-to-face human interaction (with a guard or psychiatrist, chaplain or imam). The Amnesty report said that ADX prisoners “routinely go days with only a few words spoken to them.”

Click here for photos »

In 2012,  Michael Bacote , an illiterate inmate with an IQ of 61, along with a handful of other inmates, sued the government, alleging the ADX violated their basic rights by placing them in such deplorable conditions. It's the largest lawsuit ever filed against the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

“This place is not designed for humanity,” Robert Hood, the warden from 2002 to 2005, told the Times. He also described the facility as a "cleaner version of hell" to " 60 Minutes " back in 2007. 

Built for $60 million on 600 acres of land donated by Colorado residents, the ADX succeeded another Supermax facility in Marion , Illinois after a wave of guard killings shut it down. 

An Amnesty International representative toured the facility in 2001 and allowed Business Insider to reprint her photos.   Between then and now, the prison only granted access one other time.

A typical cell in a General Population Unit (gen pop).

Source:  Amnesty International

Another angle of the cell.

Prisoners spend 22 to 24 hours a day confined to these rooms.

The doors in gen pop have slats, so prisoners can see outside their cells and interact.

Here's the Control Unit, one of the ADX's most restrictive areas along with the Solitary Housing Unit (SHU) and Range 13. The doors barely have windows.

Prisoners in the Control Unit exercise alone and have no contact with anyone other than staff.

The cells in SHU have concrete cots, adjacent to toilets, and only a small window.

The ADX allows gen pop prisoners up to 10 hours of out-of-cell exercise in two-hour slots five days a week, alternating between indoor and outdoor exercise. Some outdoor exercise happens in these cages.

Source: Amnesty International

These outdoor recreation cages are for prisoners in the Step Down Program, which allows inmates to transfer to less restrictive areas.

The outdoor recreation area in the Control Unit has only one pull-up bar.

Source: Amnesty International , New York Times

Indoor exercise for gen pop takes place in a similar space. Inmates may also have their exercise privileges suspended for up to three months at a time for minor violations, like feeding crumbs to birds.

During social visits, inmates use a telephone to communicate through a glass pane. Guards may shackle their ankles the entire time.

While America takes a harsher approach to incarceration ...

Norway has unbelievably nice prisons »

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Album review

On ‘The Tortured Poets Department,’ Taylor Swift Could Use an Editor

Over 16 songs (and a second LP), the pop superstar litigates her recent romances. But the themes, and familiar sonic backdrops, generate diminishing returns.

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By Lindsay Zoladz

If there has been a common thread — an invisible string, if you will — connecting the last few years of Taylor Swift’s output, it has been abundance.

Nearly 20 years into her career, Swift, 34, is more popular and prolific than ever, sating her ravenous fan base and expanding her cultural domination with a near-constant stream of music — five new albums plus four rerecorded ones since 2019 alone. Her last LP, “Midnights” from 2022, rolled out in multiple editions, each with its own extra songs and collectible covers. Her record-breaking Eras Tour is a three-and-a-half-hour marathon featuring 40-plus songs, including the revised 10-minute version of her lost-innocence ballad “All Too Well.” In this imperial era of her long reign, Swift has operated under the guiding principle that more is more.

What Swift reveals on her sprawling and often self-indulgent 11th LP, “The Tortured Poets Department,” is that this stretch of productivity and commercial success was also a tumultuous time for her, emotionally. “I can read your mind: ‘She’s having the time of her life,’” Swift sings on “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” a percolating track that evokes the glitter and adoration of the Eras Tour but admits, “All the pieces of me shattered as the crowd was chanting ‘more.’” And yet, that’s exactly what she continues to provide, announcing two hours after the release of “Poets” that — surprise! — there was a second “volume” of the album, “The Anthology,” featuring 15 additional, though largely superfluous, tracks.

Gone are the character studies and fictionalized narratives of Swift’s 2020 folk-pop albums “Folklore” and “Evermore.” The feverish “Tortured Poets Department” is a full-throated return to her specialty: autobiographical and sometimes spiteful tales of heartbreak, full of detailed, referential lyrics that her fans will delight in decoding.

Swift doesn’t name names, but she drops plenty of boldfaced clues about exiting a long-term cross-cultural relationship that has grown cold (the wrenching “So Long, London”), briefly taking up with a tattooed bad boy who raises the hackles of the more judgmental people in her life (the wild-eyed “But Daddy I Love Him”) and starting fresh with someone who makes her sing in — ahem — football metaphors (the weightless “The Alchemy”). The subject of the most headline-grabbing track on “The Anthology,” a fellow member of the Tortured Billionaires Club whom Swift reimagines as a high school bully, is right there in the title’s odd capitalization: “thanK you aIMee.”

At times, the album is a return to form. Its first two songs are potent reminders of how viscerally Swift can summon the flushed delirium of a doomed romance. The opener, “Fortnight,” a pulsing, synth-frosted duet with Post Malone, is chilly and controlled until lines like “I love you, it’s ruining my life” inspire the song to thaw and glow. Even better is the chatty, radiant title track , on which Swift’s voice glides across smooth keyboard arpeggios, self-deprecatingly comparing herself and her lover to more daring poets before concluding, “This ain’t the Chelsea Hotel, we’re modern idiots.” Many Swift songs get lost in dense thickets of their own vocabulary, but here the goofy particularity of the lyrics — chocolate bars, first-name nods to friends, a reference to the pop songwriter Charlie Puth ?! — is strangely humanizing.

Taylor Swift’s New Album Reviewed

For all its sprawl, though, “The Tortured Poets Department” is a curiously insular album, often cradled in the familiar, amniotic throb of Jack Antonoff’s production. ( Aaron Dessner of the National, who lends a more muted and organic sensibility to Swift’s sound, produced and helped write five tracks on the first album, and the majority of “The Anthology.”) Antonoff and Swift have been working together since he contributed to her blockbuster album “1989” from 2014, and he has become her most consistent collaborator. There is a sonic uniformity to much of “The Tortured Poets Department,” however — gauzy backdrops, gently thumping synths, drum machine rhythms that lock Swift into a clipped, chirping staccato — that suggests their partnership has become too comfortable and risks growing stale.

As the album goes on, Swift’s lyricism starts to feel unrestrained, imprecise and unnecessarily verbose. Breathless lines overflow and lead their melodies down circuitous paths. As they did on “Midnights,” internal rhymes multiply like recitations of dictionary pages: “Camera flashes, welcome bashes, get the matches, toss the ashes off the ledge,” she intones in a bouncy cadence on “Fresh Out the Slammer,” one of several songs that lean too heavily on rote prison metaphors. Narcotic imagery is another inspiration for some of Swift’s most trite and head-scratching writing: “Florida,” apparently, “is one hell of a drug.” If you say so!

That song , though, is one of the album’s best — a thunderous collaboration with the pop sorceress Florence Welch, who blows in like a gust of fresh air and allows Swift to harness a more theatrical and dynamic aesthetic. “Guilty as Sin?,” another lovely entry, is the rare Antonoff production that frames Swift’s voice not in rigid electronics but in a ’90s soft-rock atmosphere. On these tracks in particular, crisp Swiftian images emerge: an imagined lover’s “messy top-lip kiss,” 30-something friends who “all smell like weed or little babies.”

It would not be a Swift album without an overheated and disproportionately scaled revenge song, and there is a doozy here called “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?,” which bristles with indignation over a grand, booming palette. Given the enormous cultural power that Swift wields, and the fact that she has played dexterously with humor and irony elsewhere in her catalog, it’s surprising she doesn’t deliver this one with a (needed) wink.

Plenty of great artists are driven by feelings of being underestimated, and have had to find new targets for their ire once they become too successful to convincingly claim underdog status. Beyoncé, who has reached a similar moment in her career, has opted to look outward. On her recently released “Cowboy Carter,” she takes aim at the racist traditionalists lingering in the music industry and the idea of genre as a means of confinement or limitation.

Swift’s new project remains fixed on her internal world. The villains of “The Tortured Poets Department” are a few less famous exes and, on the unexpectedly venomous “But Daddy I Love Him,” the “wine moms” and “Sarahs and Hannahs in their Sunday best” who cluck their tongues at our narrator’s dating decisions. (Some might speculate that these are actually shots at her own fans.) “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” is probably the most satisfyingly vicious breakup song Swift has written since “All Too Well,” but it is predicated on a power imbalance that goes unquestioned. Is a clash between the smallest man and the biggest woman in the world a fair fight?

That’s a knotty question Swift might have been more keen to untangle on “Midnights,” an uneven LP that nonetheless found Swift asking deeper and more challenging questions about gender, power and adult womanhood than she does here. It is to the detriment of “The Tortured Poets Department” that a certain starry-eyed fascination with fairy tales has crept back into Swift’s lyricism. It is almost singularly focused on the salvation of romantic love; I tried to keep a tally of how many songs yearningly reference wedding rings and ran out of fingers. By the end, this perspective makes the album feel a bit hermetic, lacking the depth and taut structure of her best work.

Swift has been promoting this poetry-themed album with hand-typed lyrics, sponsored library installations and even an epilogue written in verse. A palpable love of language and a fascination with the ways words lock together in rhyme certainly courses through Swift’s writing. But poetry is not a marketing strategy or even an aesthetic — it’s a whole way of looking at the world and its language, turning them both upside down in search of new meanings and possibilities. It is also an art form in which, quite often and counter to the governing principle of Swift’s current empire, less is more.

Sylvia Plath once called poetry “a tyrannical discipline,” because the poet must “go so far and so fast in such a small space; you’ve got to burn away all the peripherals.” Great poets know how to condense, or at least how to edit. The sharpest moments of “The Tortured Poets Department” would be even more piercing in the absence of excess, but instead the clutter lingers, while Swift holds an unlit match.

Taylor Swift “The Tortured Poets Department” (Republic)

Inside the World of Taylor Swift

A Triumph at the Grammys: Taylor Swift made history  by winning her fourth album of the year at the 2024 edition of the awards, an event that saw women take many of the top awards .

‘The T ortured Poets Department’: Poets reacted to Swift’s new album name , weighing in on the pertinent question: What do the tortured poets think ?  

In the Public Eye: The budding romance between Swift and the football player Travis Kelce created a monocultural vortex that reached its apex  at the Super Bowl in Las Vegas. Ahead of kickoff, we revisited some key moments in their relationship .

Politics (Taylor’s Version): After months of anticipation, Swift made her first foray into the 2024 election for Super Tuesday with a bipartisan message on Instagram . The singer, who some believe has enough influence  to affect the result of the election , has yet to endorse a presidential candidate.

Conspiracy Theories: In recent months, conspiracy theories about Swift and her relationship with Kelce have proliferated , largely driven by supporters of former President Donald Trump . The pop star's fans are shaking them off .

Women's prison hosts Vatican's Venice Biennale show

A women's prison is the site of an immersive art show from the Vatican at the 60th Venice Biennale, an unlikely venue that its curator says is a "message in itself".

The Canale della Giudecca in Venice

(Copyright: MARCO BERTORELLO / AFP)

Away from the spotlight and the crowds of the prestigious international art fair, the former convent on the island of Giudecca in the Venetian lagoon now houses women serving long sentences. 

But during this year's Biennale it is home to the exhibit "With my Eyes", which considers the daily lives of the prisoners through the work of 10 different artists. 

Setting the tone on the exterior facade of the prison is an imposing painting of the soles of two bare feet with rough skin by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan.

"It was not a matter of turning the prison into a mundane exhibition space, but of engaging artists in artistic and relational work with female inmates," said Bruno Racine, the curator.

The invited artists were "united by a conscience of the context and a willingness to participate in a unique artistic and human experience", he said. 

"We had to find a concept, a place that was a message in itself" for the Vatican's show.

Pope Francis, who has repeatedly championed the cause of prisoners and others on society's margins, plans to tour the exhibition during a visit to Venice on Sunday.

- 'No armour' - 

Even gaining access to the show is part of the experience as visitors must comply with stringent security measures, including reserving in advance and leaving mobile phones in lockers during the visit.

Photography is not allowed. 

Twenty prisoners out of the institution's 80 are taking part in the show as guides, including Pascale and Marcella at a recent press day. 

In a decrepit outdoor brick corridor topped with barbed wire, poems and messages have been transcribed onto lava slabs by the Lebanese artist Simone Fattal. 

"I would like to isolate myself, to roll up in a ball in my chest, here there is no armour", one of them reads. 

At the end of the corridor is a work by the Claire Fontaine collective -- a neon eye that has been crossed out, symbolising invisibility and inmates' inability to access the outside world. 

Nearby, rows of lettuce are planted in a large garden with greenhouses, a rare glimpse into the daily life of the prisoners. 

"This is the part I call home. This is where we grow the fruit and vegetables that are sold outside," Marcella said.

In the courtyard, a blue neon message hanging on the wall calls out to visitors: "Siamo con voi nella notte" ("We are with you in the night"), a slogan born in Florence and used in 1970s Italy in support of political prisoners. 

Illuminated 24 hours a day, it can be seen from the cells. 

It's "a way of showing women that they're not alone", said a guard who was supervising the visit. 

- 'Intimate stories' -

A black-and-white short film by the Italian director Marco Perego features some of the inmates as well as his wife, the American actor Zoe Saldana, telling the story of a woman's last day in prison.

In another room are paintings of the prisoners and their loved ones by the French artist Claire Tabouret, reproduced from family photos. 

"She has collected pieces of intimate stories, of life. Here, there's my son," said Marcella, pointing to one of the paintings. 

At the end of the visit, Marcella recited a poem she had written and expressed enthusiasm about the pope's visit.

"We can't wait to see him. This whole project is a message of hope."

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