Supermax lockups adjust to decreasing demand

“Just to endure the conditions takes a very strong person or else a person who can retreat into a very narrow place”

Kunta Kenyatta struggles to describe the 33 months he spent in the tight four walls of a super-maximum security cell at the Ohio State Penitentiary.

'It's extreme isolation, sensory deprivation. It's hard to explain really,' said Kenyatta, 39, out since 2001.

Supermax prisons _ where inmates spend roughly 23 hours a day locked in soundproofed cells _ were trendy when Ohio cut the ribbon on its angular, steel-bedecked penitentiary April 9, 1998.

One decade later, the winds favoring ultrasecure incarceration have shifted. Read more