The consistent challenge posed by supermax settings is their demonstrably adverse impact on the mental health of difficult, but vulnerable prisoners. These high-tech segregation settings also pose additional problems having to do with regimes that include gratuitous stressors and custodial overkill, and treatment liable to enhance rather than reduce the violence potential of inmates. To survive ongoing and future litigation, supermax confinement settings will have to undertake serious proactive ameliorative reforms.
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