By Claire Taggart
Davis Vanguard
April 7, 2026
FLORENCE, Colo. — Incarcerated individuals face inhumane and oppressive conditions at the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Fremont County, Colorado, and New Jersey State Prison in Trenton, New Jersey, according to recent reporting by Inquest and the Prison Journalism Project.
From NJSP’s 200-year-old West Compound building to the secretive isolation of Colorado’s ADX supermax, reports and first-hand accounts describe what those inside and officials have called inhumane living and hygiene conditions.
According to Eric King’s article on the Inquest website, individuals housed in the H-unit, the most restrictive unit of the ADX supermax, are subject to Special Administrative Measures (SAM), an individually personalized type of communication restriction that can only be imposed by the U.S. attorney general, and are subjected to “small indignities” such as stripping naked before recreation and losing all contact with their family.
As a former ADX prisoner, King described what he called an “oppressively restricted” culture across all units, emphasizing that H-unit prisoners are unable to write letters to anyone other than their parents, spouse or children. He added that mail takes a long time to arrive because it is closely monitored.
The article adds that SAM restrictions extend to certain books and media, and prisoners are allowed to make only two or three phone calls per month in an effort to “bury the prisoner and limit any influence they may have on the free world.”
Within what King describes as a “clean hell,” many people in the H-unit were taken from their home countries, “tortured brutally” and left in a unit “rife with brutality, racism, and disregard for human life.”
Each prisoner is required to walk to the shower in their underwear, timed by prison personnel, and then escorted back, with access limited to three days per week, King said. He added that staff may claim the prison is understaffed or too busy, resulting in prisoners being unable to shower that day.
Similarly, outdoor and indoor recreation is restricted by staff through delays or outright denial, according to Inquest, and compared to other ADX prisoners, those in the H-unit are limited in access to food, drinks and clothing.
At ADX, hundreds of lawsuits have been filed against the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the federal government for removing communal recreation and denying H-unit prisoners access to their religious rights, King said. He added that prisoners engaged in hunger strikes “with no intention of giving it up,” and while some efforts led to change, many were suppressed and “everything had to start over.”
In addition to the H-unit’s use to “beat these men’s psyche every single day” and create what King described as a degrading and isolating environment, prisoners at NJSP face infrastructure failures, sanitation problems, and rodent and roach infestations.
Shakeil Price’s article in the Prison Journalism Project reports that as early as 1917, officials recommended rebuilding the prison to meet “standards of modern penology,” noting the buildings were “wholly unsuited for the present needs either of the inmates or of the officers.” He added that a report by the New Jersey Office of the Corrections Ombudsperson recommended demolishing the West Compound and prioritizing funding for its replacement.
Christopher Greeder, a spokesperson for the New Jersey Department of Corrections, said the department continues to address maintenance issues to enhance infrastructure through repairs and upgrades while pursuing long-term modernization and replacement of aging units.
According to the report, more than 600 people are incarcerated in the prison and live in “shockingly small” 4-by-7-foot cells that are unsuitable for taller individuals. Price cited a prisoner who said he has not had “a comfortable night’s sleep in 24 years.”
The same prisoner described infestations of rodents and roaches, forcing those in corner cells to spray Ajax cleaner on the floor outside their entryways to deter pests.
Another prisoner said the toilet system is “more like a latrine,” explaining that prisoners must sit over a hole in the wall with a metal circle cut out to defecate and urinate, leaving them exposed to passersby.
Conditions at both facilities have drawn opposition from those incarcerated, as seen in lawsuits filed by individuals connected to ADX and repeated recommendations in reports to demolish the NJSP West Compound.
While NJSP presents a different set of inhumane living conditions from what King describes as the politically weaponized H-unit at ADX, he ultimately credits the exposure of the conditions within the H-unit to “prisoners and lawyers filing those lawsuits,” and said he hopes the number of people placed under SAMs does not increase.
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