Here’s What A Super Max Prison Is About

For those of you who don’t know, a Super Max prison is more secure than a maximum-security prison and houses the highest-risk inmates. But it’s really just a bastardized term for what it really is: a mental torture chamber. It is composed of: cop and inmate killers, violent people, people in protective custody, high-profile snitches, and straight-up lames that could not survive in ANY prison no matter what level it was. So essentially anyone can be Super Max worthy.

It is a 23 hour lockdown with one hour—five days a week—in either an outside cage or an inside cell, both areas that have nothing except empty space to occupy your mind.

It seems as though everybody here has a beef with everybody. Yeah, there are little cliques of people who move around the unit together and they form pacts against others, but NOBODY has loyalty here. Nobody. Like a venomous snake, they will turn on anybody. How do they turn on each other if we are on lockdown 23 hours a day and have only an hour out with zero human contact? They become cell-warriors, door-soldiers and straight-up killers—even though their hearts would really pump ice-cold cowardice if these doors weren’t between them.

So you may wonder how a door-soldier can get to you when there’s zero human contact. That’s the easiest part of all: noise. Constant noise. Name calling just like little kids. When I say constant noise, I mean CONSTANT noise. Repetitive noise, door knocking, door bang, desk taps, door kicking, sink taps… these noises carry and get amplified via the walls. The walls are like huge speakers. Most of us WILL snap—due to noise—no matter how sound your mind may be. It’s the noise that makes people turn on each other. 

Everybody is arguing, everybody is making noise to drive their enemy crazy, and everybody pays the price via insanity.

It was 6:00 a.m. and I was dead asleep until—like a light switch—my eyes popped open due to a noise I shouldn’t ever have heard—it was my door making that swish sound indicative of it opening. I was out of my bed in the shortest second of my entire life and then I heard EVERYBODY’S door swishing. My heart was a cage full of thunder. I jumped into my pants and got ready for war… I stood in my doorway daring anyone to enter my cell. I saw inmates popping their heads out of their doors wondering: WTF? And then realization hit home: It’s gang-bang time.

 I will tell ya, it was the quietest bunch of inmate-on-inmate assaults I have ever experienced in my life. It was downright eerie… you’d hear oomphs and thuds and grunts and mumblings—but nobody screamed, nobody was calling anybody names, nobody was taunting anybody. It was war time. 

Then the unmistakable odor of metallic blood permeated the air… and like little rats that just dined on a corpse, the killers retreated to their cells… 

At 6:16 a.m. the announcement came, EVERYBODY GET BACK TO YOUR CELLS! A solid SIXTEEN minutes of violence and chaos before the stupid cops figured out it was happening.

At 6:32 a.m. the Certified Extraction Riot Team entered the unit with their silly armor and guns and they went cell-to-cell shutting doors manually. 

The wounded were taken away and lemme tell ya, that unit became the quiet unit for many months after that. No more door-soldiers, no more noise, no more taunting. It was like a fire was extinguished when those doors finally closed. 

The reason the doors opened? “A system malfunction,” we were later told.

Yeah right. I knew better. More likely—a disgruntled employee was leaving for the day and overrode the security and opened all of the doors. That is my belief.

No, nobody entered my cell… 

Sean Riker # 567232

WSPF POB 1000

Boscobel, WI  53805