ABSTRACT
In the prison world, however, there is still another degree of extreme constraint – a corner in which the steel, the concrete, and the shadows converge into a massive and gloomy cell block. Its walls are thicker, its bars more closely spaced, and its regimentation more exacting. This most heavily guarded section is the incorrigible unit. Confned in individual cells within that unit are rows of men removed from contact with free society and the prison community by every device available to the management of the institution. For months or, in some case, even years, these isolated men live in a perceptual universe which consists of the steel walls of their cells and the more barren wall beyond the grated cell door. The stark simplicity of life in the incorrigible unit combines the qualities of a nightmare with those of an extremely rational, and artifcial, logic. In the ordered squares of steel, restriction and denial of individuality reach an extreme that cannot be extended, even in one’s imagination. The governing of men within this unit becomes in part a prototype and in part a fantastic caricature of the authoritarian situation. (McCleery 1961: 264)
McCleery’s description of the regimented, highly controlled and heavily guarded isolation cells of Oahu Prison’s incorrigible unit in Hawaii in the late 1950s immediately brings to mind the design and operation of supermax units as described so far. His assumption that the extremity of the incorrigible units could not be extended further, however, is disproved with the construction of each newer, starker and
more tightly controlled supermax. Viewed on a continuum, presentday supermax prisons use the old strategy of solitary confnement as devised in the separate penitentiaries of the early nineteenth century, enhanced by professional knowledge and experience that have accumulated over time, as well as by the most advanced measures of control and surveillance offered by modern technology.
