In the world of corrections, there are inmates who pose security risks – and then there’s El Chapo.
By Jim Mustian, Associated Press
February 13 2019 7:52 AM
In the world of corrections, there are inmates who pose security risks – and then there’s El Chapo.
Drug lord Joaquin Guzman has an unparalleled record of jailbreaks, having escaped two high-security Mexican prisons before his ultimate capture and extradition to the US.
With Guzman convicted of drug trafficking and facing an expected life sentence, where will the US imprison a larger-than-life kingpin with a Houdini-like tendency to slip away?
Experts say Guzman seems the ideal candidate for the federal government’s Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado – also known as ADX for “administrative maximum” – a facility so secure, so remote and so austere that it has been called the “Alcatraz of the Rockies”.
“El Chapo fits the bill perfectly,” said Cameron Lindsay, a retired warden who ran three federal lock-ups, including the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn.
“I’d be absolutely shocked if he’s not sent to the ADX.”
Located outside an old mining town about two hours south of Denver, Florence’s hardened buildings house the nation’s most violent offenders, with many of its 400 inmates held alone for 23 hours a day in 7ft by 12ft cells with fixed furnishings made of reinforced concrete.
Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and Oklahoma City bombing accomplice Terry Nichols are among those who call it home.
But Guzman, due to be sentenced in June for smuggling enormous amounts of narcotics into the US and having a hand in dozens of murders, would stand out even from this infamous roster because of his almost mythical reputation for breaking out.
That includes a sensational 2015 escape from the maximum-security Altiplano prison in central Mexico, where he communicated with accomplices for weeks by mobile phone, slipped into an escape hatch beneath his shower, hopped on the back of a waiting motorcycle and sped through a mile-long, hand-dug tunnel to freedom.
