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(5-24-23) What should society do with men who commit multiple murders in prisons and have no qualms about killing again?
Andrea Dukakis, a producer/reporter/host for Colorado Matters on Colorado Public Radio, raised this question during a phenomenal interview with me about my new book, NO HUMAN CONTACT: Solitary Confinement, Maximum Security, and Two Inmates Who Changed The System.
My book describes the troubled lives of Thomas Silverstein and Clayton Fountain who murdered other inmates in federal prisons before each killed a correctional officer on the same day in the same cellblock. Because there was no federal death penalty, both were held under total isolation – cut off from society – for decades.
Colorado is home to the federal Bureau Of Prison’s “Super Max” penitentiary in Florence, Colorado, where Thomas Silverstein was being housed before his dead in 2019.
During our conversation, Reporter Dukakis asked if long-term solitary confinement is harmful (it is) and if there a better alternative. Our interview begins with her questioning me about the horrific childhoods of both Silverstein and Fountain.
You have to visit the Colorado radio website to listen to our conversation.
Kevin J. Beaty/DenveriteThe book “No Human Contact” examines what to do with people in prison who are deemed dangerous, and whether isolation is cruel and unusual punishment. Author Pete Earley profiles two men who spent years in solitary confinement with virtually no direct contact with the outside world. Their crimes were by all accounts heinous: Each man killed a prison guard and other men incarcerated with them. The book traces their childhoods, their crimes and their punishment and explains why their actions led to the construction of the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.
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