Roderick MacArthur Justice Center

SUPERMAX PRISONS

Supermaximum prisons, increasingly popular in the United States, exercise control over inmates through extreme social isolation, severely restrict movement, and an environment that restricts stimulation. The prisons cause serious psychological damage to many inmates and make prisoners angrier and less able to control their impulses when they return to society, as many will. The Roderick MacArthur Justice Center (the Justice Center) has sued Illinois officials over the housing of seriously mentally ill prisoners at Illinois's supermaximum prison, Tamms Correctional Center, and has voiced in public forums its concerns about supermaximum prisons.