No escape? El Chapo likely off to ‘prison of all prisons’

In the world of corrections, there are inmates who pose security risks, and then there’s “El Chapo”.

Drug lord Joaquin Guzman has an unparalleled record of jailbreaks, having escaped two high-security Mexican prisons before his ultimate capture and extradition to the United States.

So with Guzman convicted Tuesday of drug trafficking and staring at an expected life sentence, where will the US imprison a larger-than-life kingpin with a Houdini-like tendency to slip away?

Experts say Guzman seems the ideal candidate for the federal government’s “Supermax” prison in Florence, Colorado, also known as ADX for “administrative maximum”. The facility is so secure, so remote and so austere that it has been called the “Alcatraz of the Rockies”.

“El Chapo fits the bill perfectly,” said Cameron Lindsay, a retired warden who ran three federal lock-ups, including the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn. “I’d be absolutely shocked if he’s not sent to the ADX.”

Located outside an old mining town about two hours south of Denver, Supermax’s hardened buildings house the nation’s most violent offenders, with many of its 400 inmates held alone for 23 hours a day in 7-by-12-foot (2.1-by-3.7m) cells with fixed furnishings made of reinforced concrete.