By Gangsters Inc. Publishers
Eric King spent nearly two years buried inside the ADX Florence, the federal supermax nestled in the high desert of southern Colorado. Widely considered the most restrictive prison in the United States, ADX is where the government warehouses men it considers out of control. Men like Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols.
In an interview with Business Insider, King pulls back the curtain on life inside what many inmates call a living tomb. He describes the poured concrete cells, designed to muffle sound and movement, and the unrelenting isolation that defines daily existence. Twenty-three hours a day alone is not a punishment at ADX, it is a policy. The psychological toll, King explains, is cumulative and deliberate.
King also details the internal ecosystem of the prison, where the usual rules of federal detention do not apply. Bandsthe traditional power structure of prison life, are effectively neutralized. The guards maintain a cold, procedural distance, and even basic interactions follow rigid, unwritten rules. Visits are rare, tightly controlled and devoid of normal human contact.
Initially sentenced in 2014 to ten years in federal prison for throwing two Molotov cocktails at an empty government building, King would ultimately find himself at the very top of the Bureau of Prisons' severity scale. Since his release, he has rebuilt his life on the outside, working as a paralegal and documenting his time in supermax confinement in his book, A Quiet Hell, a firsthand account of what it means to survive in America's most extreme prison.
Watch his interview below:
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