Supermax institutions and solitary confinement

History, term definition and rationale for spreading

Abstract

After short reminding on more than a one-century abandoned Philadelphian model of solitary confinement, the definition of supermax prison has been given: this is a penitentiary institution in which persons deprived of freedom are held in the long cell confinement by a decision of authorities in the conditions of strict control and supervision. By opinion of the author, this definition includes all institutions if they satisfied stated condition, regardless of organizational model, the judicial status of persons situated in those institutions, as well as decision and reasons of detention. The birthplace of these institutions are the USA, and time of its introduction (the last quarter of 20th century) is characterized by the sharpening of criminal reaction in the wave of penal populism and strengthening of retributive models of sentencing which broth to brutal rebellions in the prisons, which has been violently suppressed, and resulted in more serious rebellions. Way out form this circle of violence was traced in institutions in which prisoners are whole day isolated without any human communication. This new solution has been popularized not only by penitential authorities, but also by: workers in the prison industry complex; local communities in which those prisons are situated; and by citizens, to whom has been suggested that is the only way to protect themselves from the most dangerous criminals. At first sight, we can recognize that those arguments are without serious weight. Although those institutions still survive and represent one of the bases of the penitential system in America. This trend, with few exceptions, has spread in the other parts of the world, including Serbia, in which the heaviest crime perpetrators can be sanded to isolation by the court decision.