Just 2 hours outside of Denver sits the highest-security prison in America. It’s official name is the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, but it's better known as ADX. It is the one and only federal “Supermax” prison, home to the most dangerous criminals and escape-prone offenders in the federal prison system. Among the nearly 400 inmates incarcerated at ADX are Ted Kaczynski, the “Unabomber”; Eric Rudolph, the Atlanta Olympics bomber; Zacarias Moussaoui, the 9/11 conspirator; Terry Nichols, the Oklahoma City bomber; Ramzi Yousef, the 1993 World Trade Center terrorist; Michael Swango, a doctor who poisoned up to 60 of his patients; Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber”; and Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, the notorious drug kingpin. ADX inmates are confined to their 7X12-foot cells of poured concrete 23 hours a day. They receive all of their meals through a slot in the cell door, and their only glimpse of the outside world is through a thin slit of a window aimed at an empty sky. This deprives prisoners of learning the layout of the prison and the location of their cells. The only time inmates are allowed out of their cells is for an hour of exercise. Handcuffed and shackled at their feet, inmates are either led to an empty room with a single pull-up bar, or taken outside to the yard, where they are locked alone inside a caged pen. No one has ever escaped from ADX.
