Today African-Americans and Latinos are vastly overrepresented in these supermax prisons and control units, the first of which emerged when federal correctional authorities began to send prisoners housed throughout the system whom they deemed to be “dangerous” to the federal prison in Marion, Illinois. In 1983, the entire prison was “locked down,” which meant that prisoners were confined to their cells twenty-three hours a day. This lockdown became permanent, thus furnishing the general model for the control unit and supermax prison.49 Today, there are approximately sixty super-maximum
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