ABSTRACT
In a volume devoted to considering the effects of imprisonment it is important to examine what is known about the effects of the most extreme form of lawful confinement–the use of supermaximum custody, or ‘supermax’, as it has come to be called. For the purposes of this chapter, I shall try to consider four types of possible effect–albeit with diminishing degrees of certainty about the data at my disposal: the effects upon prisoners, the effects upon staff, the effects upon prison systems and the effects upon society. The data reported here were mainly collected under the auspices of two research projects funded by ESRC 1 and Leverhulme; 2 but I shall also draw upon experiences in the course of advising HM Prison Service on the feasibility of supermax, and the development of the system of Close Supervision Centres, 3 as well as investigations conducted in the United States at the request of Amnesty International. 4
