走进美国最严酷的联邦监狱 Inside America’s Toughest Federal Prison

Inside America’s Toughest Federal Prison
走进美国最严酷的联邦监狱

For years, conditions inside the United States’ only federal supermax facility were largely a mystery. But a landmark lawsuit is finally revealing the harsh world within.
多年来，美国唯一一座超级联邦设施的内部条件始终是个谜，基本不为人知。但是，一宗里程碑式的诉讼案终于将这个残酷的世界暴露在公众面前。

In prison, Rodney Jones told me, everyone had a nickname. Jones spent time there as well, having shown signs of mental illness from an early age; he first attempted suicide at 12, when he drank an entire bottle of Clorox. Later, he became addicted to PCP and crack and turned to robbery to support his habit.
罗德·尼琼斯（Rodney Jones）告诉我，在监狱里每个人都有一个绰号。琼斯也在里面混时间，早年开始，他就表现出精神病的迹象；12岁时第一次试图自杀，喝了一整瓶“高乐氏”清洁剂。后来沉迷于致幻药“天使粉”和可卡因药丸“快客”，转而通过抢劫来维持自己的癖好。

Jones had been out of prison for three years, a record for him, at least as an adult, but he still sounded a bit like Rip Van Winkle as he marveled at how gentrified his old neighborhood had become.
琼斯已经出狱三年，至少堪称成年后的创纪录佳绩，但他说起话来仍然有点云里雾里，因为他惊奇地意识到过去的老街坊都已变得高雅起来。

It hadn’t been easy for Jones to transition back to a life of freedom. He managed to stick it out, he said, because he was determined not to return to the place where he spent the final eight years of his last sentence: the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colo., known more colloquially as the ADX. The ADX is the highest-security prison in the country.
对琼斯来说，过渡到自由的生活并非易事，他尽力坚持了下来，他说，因为已经决定不再回到度过最后八年刑期的地方——美国最高监管感化院（United States Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum Facility）。它位于科罗拉多州佛罗伦萨，在口语中简称ADX，是全美安全措施最严密的监狱。

It was designed to be escape-proof, the Alcatraz of the Rockies, a place to incarcerate the worst, most unredeemable class of criminal — “a very small subset of the inmate population who show,” in the words of Norman Carlson, the former director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, “absolutely no concern for human life.” Ted Kaczynski and the Atlanta Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph call the ADX home. The 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui is held there, too, along with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef; the Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols; the underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab; and the former Bonanno crime-family boss Vincent Basciano. Michael Swango, a serial-killing doctor who may have poisoned 60 of his patients, is serving three consecutive life sentences; Larry Hoover, the Gangster Disciples kingpin made famous by rappers like Rick Ross, is serving six; the traitorous F.B.I. agent Robert Hanssen, a Soviet spy, 15.
这处建筑的设计目的是防止越狱，俗称“落基山的恶魔岛”，专门监禁最最穷凶极恶、罪无可恕的囚犯，用美国联邦监狱局前局长诺尔曼·卡尔森（Norman Carlson）的话来说，他们是“一小撮绝对不把人命放在眼里的家伙”。泰德·卡钦斯基（Ted Kaczynski）和亚特兰大奥运会爆炸案主犯埃里克·鲁道夫（Eric Rudolph）把ADX称为家。9 / 11事件嫌疑人卡里亚斯·穆萨维（Zacarias Moussaoui）也被关押在这里，连同1993年世界贸易中心爆炸案的策划者拉姆齐•尤塞夫（Ramzi Yousef）、俄克拉荷马城爆炸案主犯特里·尼克尔斯（Terry Nichols）、内衣爆炸案制造者奥马尔·法鲁克·阿布杜穆塔拉布（Farouk Abdulmutallab）、前博纳诺犯罪家族老大文森特·巴西安诺（Vincent Basciano）。迈克尔·斯旺戈（Michael Swango）正在这里服刑，这位制造过连环杀人案的医生曾经毒死60名病人，被判处连续三个终身监禁；芝加哥最大黑帮GD（Gangster Disciples）的主要人物、因里克·罗斯Rick Ross等饶舌歌手而成名的拉里·胡佛（Larry Hoover）被判六个终身监禁，苏联间谍、F.B.I.叛国特工罗伯特·汉森（Robert Hanssen）正在苦熬15个终身监禁刑期。

Along with such notorious inmates, prisoners deemed serious behavioral or flight risks can also end up at the ADX — men like Jones, who in 2003, after racking up three assault charges in less than a year (all fights with other inmates) at a medium-security facility in Louisiana, found himself transferred to the same ADX cellblock as Kaczynski.
与上述臭名昭著的囚犯一样，被视为具有严重的行为风险或潜逃风险的犯人最终也被关进ADX，例如琼斯这种人，由于一年内在路易斯安那州某中级戒备的监狱里受到三次袭击指控（都是跟其他囚犯打斗），2003年他被转入ADX，与卡钦斯基同在一个监狱分区。

Inmates at the ADX spend approximately 23 hours of each day in solitary confinement. Jones had never been so isolated before. Other prisoners on his cellblock screamed and banged on their doors for hours. Jones said the staff psychiatrist stopped his prescription for Seroquel, a drug taken for bipolar disorder, telling him, “We don’t give out feel-good drugs here.” Jones experienced severe mood swings. To cope, he would work out in his cell until he was too tired to move. Sometimes he cut himself. In response, guards fastened his arms and legs to his bed with a medieval quartet of restraints, a process known as four-pointing.
在ADX，犯人每天约有23个小时处于禁闭状态，琼斯从未感到如此与世隔绝。在他的监区里，其他犯人连着几个钟头尖叫、撞门。琼斯说，精神病医生不准他服用治疗双相情感障碍的处方药思瑞康，告诉他说，“在这儿我们不开让人感觉良好的药。”琼斯经历了剧烈的情绪波动。为了应对，他在牢房里锻炼身体，直到累得不想再动为止，有时会划伤自己。对此，警卫用四根老式束缚带把他的胳膊和腿绑在床上，这一过程叫做四点固定法。

One day in 2009, Jones was in the rec yard and spotted Michael Bacote, a friend from back home. The familiar face was welcome but also troubling. Bacote was illiterate, with an I.Q. of only 61, and suffered from acute paranoia. He had been sent to the ADX for his role as a lookout in a murder at a Texas prison, and he was not coping well. His multiple requests for transfers or psychological treatment had been denied. He was convinced that the Bureau of Prisons was trying to poison him, so he was refusing meals and medication. “You would have to be blind and crazy yourself not to see that this guy had issues,” Jones said, shaking his head. “He can barely function in a normal setting. His comprehension level was pretty much at zero.”
2009年的一天，琼斯在院子里放风时发现了迈克尔·巴科特（Michael Bacote），一位来自家乡的朋友。见到熟悉的脸孔令人开心，但也麻烦。巴科特是文盲，智商只有61，还患有严重的妄想症。因为在德克萨斯某监狱的一宗谋杀案中他是负责望风的，所以被送进ADX，而且过得不太好。他多次要求转到别的监狱或接受心理治疗，均被拒绝。他确信监狱局想毒死他，拒绝进食和吃药。“除非你眼瞎或是疯了才注意不到这个有毛病的人，”琼斯摇着头说。“他几乎无法在正常环境中生活，理解水平几乎为零。”

Bacote had paperwork from previous psychiatric examinations, so Jones went to the prison’s law library (a room with a computer) and looked up the address of a pro bono legal-aid group he had heard about, the D.C. Prisoners’ Project. Because Bacote couldn’t write, Jones ghosted a query. “I suppose to have a hearing before coming to the ADX,” Jones, as Bacote, wrote. “They never gave me a hearing.” He continued, “I need some help cause I have facts! Please help me.”
巴科特以前的精神病检查都记录在案，于是琼斯去了监狱里的法律图书馆（一个装有电脑的房间），查到了一家无偿法律援助组织的地址，之前他听说过该组织，它的名称是“哥伦比亚特区囚犯项目”（D.C. Prisoners’Project）。因为巴科特不会写字，琼斯代他执笔，发出一份咨询信件。“我认为在进到ADX之前应该有一场听证会，”琼斯以巴科特的口吻写道。“他们没有为我听证。”他继续说，“我需要一些帮助，因为我掌握事实！请帮帮我。”

The story of the largest lawsuit ever filed against the United States Bureau of Prisons begins, improbably enough, with this letter. Deborah Golden, the director of the D.C. Prisoners’ Project, fields approximately 2,000 requests each year, but Bacote’s, which she received in October 2009, caught her eye. “I thought I might be missing something, because it was inconceivable to me that the Bureau of Prisons could be operating in such a blatantly illegal and unconstitutional manner,” she said. Golden was referring to B.O.P. regulations that forbid the placement of inmates who “show evidence of significant mental disorder” in prisons like the ADX.
令人难以置信的是，这封信拉开了历史上针对美国监狱局的最大一起诉讼案的序幕。身为哥伦比亚特区囚犯项目的主管，德波拉·高登（Deborah Golden）每年要处理大约2000件申请，但在2009年10月，巴科特的信件却引起了她的注意。“我想我可能错过了一些东西，因为在我看来，监狱管理局竟然可以这样公然违法、违宪，实在不可思议，”她说。高登指的是按照监狱管理局规定，禁止将“明显患有重大精神疾病”的囚犯安置在ADX之类的监狱。

Groups like Golden’s D.C. Prisoners’ Project tend to focus their reform efforts on state-run prisons — in part because the Prison Litigation Reform Act, passed by Congress in 1996, made it more difficult for prisoners to file federal lawsuits, and in part because the federal government possesses, as Golden put it, “an inexhaustible supply of resources.” Her organization had never considered filing such an enormous suit. Because it is so difficult to win cases against the federal government, challenging the B.O.P. “just didn’t fit into anyone’s strategic goals,” Golden explained. But the clarity of Bacote’s claims gave her pause. “I wasn’t sure if we had a chance. But it seemed like a court had to see it.”
像哥伦比亚特区囚犯项目这种组织倾向于将其改革努力锁定在州立监狱——部分原因在于国会1996年通过的《监狱诉讼改革法案》，使得囚犯起诉联邦诉讼难上加难，还有一部分原因，用高登的话说，是联邦政府拥有“取之不尽的资源”。她的组织从未考虑过接受如此重大的诉讼，因为与联邦政府对簿公堂、向监狱管理局发起挑战是难以获胜的，“不符合任何人的战略目标，”高登说。但巴科特的诉状事实清楚，令她犹豫不决。“我不确定我们是否有机会。但法庭似乎必须看看这个案子。”

Since opening in 1994, the ADX has remained not just the only federal supermax but also the apogee of a particular strain of the American penal system, wherein abstract dreams of rehabilitation have been entirely superseded by the architecture of control. Throughout our country’s history, there have been different ideas about what to do with the “worst of the worst” of our criminal offenders, ranging from the 19th-century chain gangs, who toiled in enforced silence, to the physical isolation of Alcatraz Island. The use of solitary confinement in the United States emerged as a substitute to corporal punishments popular at the end of the 18th century. The practice was first promoted in 1787, by a group of reformers called the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons. At a salon hosted by Benjamin Franklin, a pamphlet was read calling for the construction of a “house of repentance,” in which solitude could work to soothe the minds of criminals — an enlightened alternative, the group believed, to inhumane “public punishments” like “the gallows, the pillory, the stocks, the whipping post, and the wheelbarrow.” Inmates at Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary, which opened in 1829, were completely isolated from one another in cells outfitted with skylights, toilets and access to private outdoor exercise yards, where they worked at various trades, took all meals and read the Bible. Other states tried, but quickly abandoned, the so-called Pennsylvania System, and an 1890 Supreme Court ruling against the use of solitary on Colorado’s death row noted that “a considerable number of the prisoners fell, after even a short confinement, into a semifatuous condition, from which it was next to impossible to arouse them, and others became violently insane; others still, committed suicide, while those who stood the ordeal better were not generally reformed.”
ADX从1994年开业至今，不仅是唯一一座联邦超级监狱，也是美国刑法系统登峰造极的表现形式，在这里，抽象的改邪归正梦想完全由控制机制所取代。纵观美国历史，从19世纪的一群被铁链锁住、默默做着苦工的囚犯，到恶魔岛的物理隔离，关于如何惩治“恶人中的恶人”，一直存在很多不同观点。在18世纪末的美国，单独监禁取代体罚成为通用的惩治方式。这一实践最初是1787年兴起的，倡导者是一群自称“费城减轻公共监狱中的痛苦协会”的改革者。在本杰明·富兰克林（Benjamin Franklin）主持的沙龙里，人们阅读的一本小册子呼吁建立“悔改小屋”，用孤独抚慰罪犯的心灵——该群体认为，相对于“绞刑、示众、股票、鞭刑柱和手推车”等不人道手段，这是一种开明的选择。费城东方州立监狱1829年开始运营，其中的囚犯全被隔离在一间间独立囚室中，里面有天窗、马桶，囚犯可以走进私用户外运动场，进行各种交易，取用饭菜，阅读圣经。其他一些州尝试使用所谓的宾夕法尼亚系统（Pennsylvania System），但很快都放弃了。1890年最高法院裁定，严禁对科罗拉多死刑犯使用隔离刑罚，同时指出，“即使仅仅经历过短暂的禁闭期，相当数量的囚犯仍会陷入一种半痴呆状态，几乎无法被唤醒，另一些人则变得极其疯狂，还有人甚至自杀，而那些在考验中表现较好的人通常未被成功改造。”

The concept soon fell out of favor, and beginning in the 1930s, the hardest cases in the federal system — men like Al Capone and George (Machine Gun Kelly) Barnes — were housed in the converted military prison on Alcatraz Island, until it was closed in 1963 because of the costly upkeep inherent to an island prison. By the end of the decade, many of its prisoners had been transferred to the new “control units” at a federal penitentiary in Marion, Ill., where they were kept in solitary confinement. In 1983, after the assassination of two guards in separate attacks on the same day, by members of the Aryan Brotherhood, the Marion penitentiary was converted to the first modern all-lockdown facility, the entire prison now a solitary unit.
这种理念很快变得不合时宜，并且从1930年代开始，联邦系统中最棘手案件不断冒出，艾尔·卡彭（Al Capone）和乔治·（机关枪凯莉）巴尼斯【George (Machine Gun Kelly) Barnes】等人均被安置在恶魔岛上一处由军事设施改建的监狱，直到1963年因维护费用太过昂贵，这种岛上监狱被最终封闭。到十年监禁期临近结束之际，许多犯人已经被转移到伊利诺伊州玛丽恩联邦监狱里的新型“控制单元”，被单独监禁。1983年，在同一天，两个警卫分别遭到暗杀，杀手是雅利安兄弟会（Aryan Brotherhood）的成员，此后，玛丽恩监狱被改建为第一座现代化全封闭设施，整个建筑现在完全与世隔离。

Beginning in 1989 with California’s Pelican Bay, states began building their own lockdown penitentiaries, inspired by the Marion model. The renewed use of solitary coincided with the era of mass incarceration and the widespread closing of state-run mental-health facilities. The supermax became the most expedient method of controlling an increasingly overcrowded and psychologically volatile prison population. A result of this unfortunate confluence has been a network of ever more austere and utilitarian penitentiaries, built specifically to seal off a significant portion of state and federal inmates, using methods that would shock many Americans. According to a 2014 Amnesty International report, more than 40 states now operate supermax prisons. On any given day, there are 80,000 U.S. prisoners in solitary confinement.
1989年初在加利福尼亚鹈鹕湾，各州仿效玛丽恩模式，开始建设自己的封闭监狱。隔离措施的重新使用与大规模监禁时代及州立精神卫生设施的广泛关闭不谋而合。超级监狱成为控制人员日益拥挤、心理日益动荡的监狱人口的最可取方法。这种不幸巧合所产生的后果是美国形成了一个越来越严酷、越来越功利的监狱网络，其设计宗旨是把绝大多数州和联邦囚犯监禁起来，所使用的方法令不少美国人大为震惊。根据大赦国际组织（Amnesty International） 2014年的一份报告，目前全美超过40个州拥有超级监狱，每天都有八万名美国囚犯正在关禁闭。

Norman Carlson, the B.O.P. director at the time of the Marion attacks, spearheaded the construction of a federal supermax that could eventually replace Marion. Florence, a faded Colorado mining town, lobbied hard for the $60 million prison to be built within its city limits, with residents eventually donating 600 acres of land to the B.O.P.
诺尔曼·卡尔森（Norman Carlson）在玛丽恩攻击案时期担任监狱管理局主任，负责主持联邦超级监狱的建设，后者最终将取代玛丽恩监狱。弗洛伦斯是科罗拉多州一座衰落的矿业城镇，居民们努力游说，希望政府将耗资6000万美元的监狱建在市区，最终他们向监狱管理局捐赠了600英亩土地。

The ADX can house up to 500 prisoners in its eight units. Inmates spend their days in 12-by-7-foot cells with thick concrete walls and double sets of sliding metal doors (with solid exteriors, so prisoners can’t see one another). A single window, about three feet high but only four inches wide, offers a notched glimpse of sky and little else. Each cell has a sink-toilet combo and an automated shower, and prisoners sleep on concrete slabs topped with thin mattresses. Most cells also have televisions (with built-in radios), and inmates have access to books and periodicals, as well as certain arts-and-craft materials. Prisoners in the general population are allotted a maximum of 10 hours of exercise a week outside their cells, alternating between solo trips to an indoor “gym” (a windowless cell with a single chin-up bar) and group visits to the outdoor rec yard (where each prisoner nonetheless remains confined to an individual cage). All meals come through slots in the interior door, as does any face-to-face human interaction (with a guard or psychiatrist, chaplain or imam). The Amnesty report said that ADX prisoners “routinely go days with only a few words spoken to them.”
ADX有八个单元，可容纳500名囚犯。犯人待在面积为12 x 7英尺的牢房里，四周是厚厚的混凝土墙壁合双层滑动金属门（外门密封，所以囚犯看不到彼此）。一扇窗户，离地大约三英尺高，但只有四英寸宽，除了一窥天空，别的东西基本都看不见。每间牢房里有一套水池-厕所用具、自动淋浴器，囚犯睡在水泥板上，上面铺一层薄薄的床垫。大多数牢房还有电视（带有内置收音机），囚犯可获得书籍和期刊，以及特定的工艺品制作材料。普通囚犯每周有最多十小时户外锻炼机会，可以走出牢房，独自走走，或到室内“体育馆”（那是一间没有窗的屋子，里面装有单杠，可做引体向上），还可以集体到院子里休闲一番（每个囚犯的活动仍局限在单独的笼子里）。所有饭菜都通过内门上的狭缝递进牢房，（囚犯与警卫、心理医生、牧师或阿訇的）任何面对面互动也通过这种方式进行。大赦国际的报告称，ADX囚犯“通常每天只能跟人说上几句话”。

Robert Hood, the warden of the ADX from 2002 to 2005, told me that when he first arrived on the campus, he was struck by “the very stark environment,” unlike any other prison in which he ever worked or visited — no noise, no mess, no prisoners walking the hallways. When inmates complained to him, he would tell them, “This place is not designed for humanity,” he recalled. “When it’s 23 hours a day in a room with a slit of a window where you can’t even see the Rocky Mountains — let’s be candid here. It’s not designed for rehabilitation. Period. End of story.”
罗伯特·胡德（Robert Hood）2002-2005年在ADX担任监狱长，他告诉我，第一次来到监区的时候，他被“非常严酷的环境镇住了”，不同于他曾就职或参观过任何其他监狱，这里没有噪音，没有混乱，没有犯人在走廊上行走。当囚犯向他抱怨时，他会告诉他们，“这个地方不适合人类居住，”他回忆道。“一天23个小时待在一个房间里，只有一道狭长的窗口，你甚至看不到落基山脉——让我们直说吧。这种设计不是让人改过自新，而是为了终结、完蛋。”

Hood was not trying to be cruel with such frankness. The ADX was built explicitly to house men often already serving multiple life sentences and thus facing little disincentive to, say, murder a guard or another prisoner. Still, during his own tenure, Hood said he made a point of developing one-on-one relationships with as many inmates as possible — he described Salvatore (Sammy the Bull) Gravano as “a very likable guy, believe it or not,” and he bonded with the Unabomber over their shared interest in running marathons — in hopes of eliciting good behavior in exchange for whatever he could do to make their sentences more bearable. But he also needed them to understand that even as warden, he lacked the authority to change the rules of their confinement. In the past, Hood has memorably described the ADX as “a clean version of hell.”
胡德如此坦率，并不意味着为人残忍。ADX的建立显然是为了关押那些往往已被判处多个终身监禁的囚犯，因此，他们决不在乎杀死警卫或其他犯人。不过胡德说，在他任职期间，提出了与犯人发展尽可能亲密的一对一关系——他称塞尔瓦托·（公牛萨米）格拉瓦诺【Salvatore (Sammy the Bull) Gravano】为“非常可爱的家伙，不管你信不信，”并且，出于对马拉松长跑的共同兴趣，与“邮寄炸弹的恐怖分子”（指泰德·卡钦斯基）私交不错——他的目的在于以自己的所作所为感化犯人，使后者在狱中表现良好，日子更好过一些。但他也需要他们的理解，虽然身为监狱长，他没有权力改变他们的约束规则。在过去，胡德曾经把ADX形容为“净化版地狱”，令人难以忘怀。

Five years ago, a major lawsuit against the Federal Bureau of Prisons would have sounded quixotic. But in the present moment, the ADX case feels like the crest of a wave, as the excessive use of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons has come under intensifying scrutiny. The emptiness that pervades solitary-confinement units “has led some prisoners into a profound level of what might be called ‘ontological insecurity,’”
五年前，针对联邦监狱局的大型诉讼案听起来不切实际。但在目前的情况下，ADX案似乎正处于风口浪尖，因为美国监狱对禁闭手段的过度使用已受到越来越严格的审查。弥漫在禁闭隔间的空虚气氛“已经使一些囚犯产生了深层次的“存在性不安’” 。

Golden recognized that a lawsuit against the B.O.P. would still be a long shot — and that a co-counsel with deeper pockets than her own would be necessary. So she approached Arnold & Porter, a white-shoe law firm with a history of taking on high-profile pro bono cases. Ed Aro, a partner based in Denver, was intrigued; a close family member had spent time in prison, and other relatives had suffered from mental illness.
高登认为，起诉监狱管理局仍然将是一场持久战，需要找到一位比她自己人脉更广的合作律师。于是，她找到了阿诺-波特（Arnold & Porter），这家业内知名的律师事务擅长受理高调公益案件，他们在丹佛的合伙人艾德·阿罗（Ed Aro）对此案颇感兴趣，他的一位至亲曾在监狱里呆过，其他亲属则患有精神疾病。

As he tried to get a handle on the lawsuit, he made the two-hour drive to Florence nearly every week. For years, conditions inside the ADX had remained largely a mystery; from 2002 on, the Amnesty report noted, ADX officials denied every media request for a visit or prisoner interview, aside from a restricted tour in 2007. (The B.O.P. declined to comment for this article or to allow a site visit.) Aro assumed he would find a small number of prisoners who had somehow slipped through the cracks. “The thing that shocked me most was how massive the problem was,” Aro said. “The ADX is the most closely monitored and evaluated subset of the prison population in the entire country. With the extent of the problem, it’s incomprehensible to me that the B.O.P. didn’t notice what was going on.” How, Aro wondered, did the toughest prison in the United States become a mental asylum — one incapable of controlling its own population?
为了尝试了解案情，几乎每个星期他都驱车两小时到弗洛伦斯。多年来ADX的内部条件一直是个谜；大赦国际的报告指出，从2002年起，ADX官员拒绝了媒体的所有访问要求，也不许囚犯接受采访，除了在2007年接待过一次限制性游览项目。（监狱管理局拒绝对本文发表评论，也不准访问网站。）阿罗以为能找到几个以某种方式躲过监查的犯人。“令我最为震惊的是问题的严重程度，”阿罗说，“ADX是整个国家监测最密切、囚犯评估最频繁的监狱。就问题的影响程度而言，我无法理解监狱管理局竟然对这里正在发生的一切视若罔闻。”阿罗想知道，美国最严厉的监狱如何变成了一座精神病院？为什么对其中的人员束手无策？

Aro had interviewed about 25 ADX prisoners when, in October 2011, he met the man who would become the face of the lawsuit. This particular inmate, Jack Powers, who was 52, refused to take a seat during their first meeting; years in solitary had made him skittish around other humans. Still, Aro immediately found Powers striking: bright, articulate, no history of institutional violence.
阿罗曾经采访过25 名ADX犯人，2011年10月，他遇到了可以为此案代言的人。这位特殊的犯人名叫杰克·鲍威斯（Jack Powers），52岁，在双方第一次会面时拒绝落座；多年独处一室，已经让他在其他人旁边坐立不安。不过，阿罗立即发现鲍威斯非同凡响：头脑清晰，言语利落，没有系统性暴力的历史。

“If you looked at Jack’s criminal history,” Aro said, “at the bizarre, unhappy confluence of circumstances that led him to the ADX and into this incredible descent into madness, it’s impossible to believe what happened to him has nothing to do with his conditions of confinement.” In his search for a compelling character whose story could explain the lawsuit, Aro thought as he left the prison that day, it wouldn’t get much better than Jack Powers.
“如果你看过杰克的犯罪历史，”阿罗说，“看到导致他被送入ADX、陷入这种不可思议的疯狂状态的种种稀奇古怪又令人不快的际遇巧合时，你不可能相信眼下他所经历的一切与禁闭关押毫无关系。”那天离开监狱时阿罗心想，如果要寻找一个令人信服的角色把这起诉讼案的来龙去脉解释清楚，没有比杰克更合适的人选了。

Jack Powers grew up in Norwich, N.Y., the son of a Vietnam veteran who beat him regularly. Powers ran away from home at 14; a few years later he was sent to prison on burglary charges. He was released in 1982, at 21, and he married and moved to Holland, Mich., where he founded a construction company and beauty salon. But by the end of the decade, both businesses had gone bankrupt, and he began robbing banks — at least 30, according to his 1990 conviction. He never armed himself; he always just slipped a note to the bank teller. He thinks his wife (now ex) turned him in.
杰克·鲍威斯在纽约州诺维奇长大，父亲是越战老兵，动不动就打他。14岁时鲍威斯从家里跑了出来，几年后因盗窃罪被捕入狱。1982年他被释放，当时他21岁，结了婚，搬到密歇根州霍兰德市，在那里他创建了一家建筑公司和一家美容院。但在1980年代末企业破产了，他开始抢劫银行，根据1990年的判决，至少作案30次。他从不携带武器，总是把一张字条悄悄递给银行出纳。他认为是妻子（现在是前妻）告发了他。

At the U.S. penitentiary in Atlanta, where he was serving his 40-year sentence, he befriended a new inmate named Eduardo Wong, a heroin smuggler with supposed ties to Chinese organized crime. “Nice guy,” Powers said in a recorded deposition. “I mean, relatively speaking.” Wong and Powers liked to play chess. “But it wasn’t that long, just a matter of weeks,” Powers said, “before things went awry.”
他被判处40年刑期。在亚特兰大的美国监狱服刑期间，他结识了名叫爱德华多·王（Eduardo Wong）的新犯人，是一个与中国有组织犯罪有牵连的海洛因走私犯。“不错的家伙，”鲍威斯在一份作证录像中说。“我的意思是，相对而言。”王和鲍威斯喜欢下棋。“但时间并不是很长，短短几个星期，”鲍威斯说，“在出事之前。”

Wong became a target of members of the Aryan Brotherhood, who threatened to kill him if he didn’t procure cash for them. Powers warned Wong about the seriousness of his situation, but Wong hesitated. One afternoon, a group of men ran onto their tier and stabbed Wong multiple times while Powers was held in the cell next door at knife point. After they ran off, Wong stumbled into Powers’s arms, blood gushing from his neck. “John, help me,” he said. Powers managed to carry Wong down several floors to the prison hospital, where he died.
王成了雅利安兄弟会成员的目标，他们威胁说，如果不给钱就杀了他。鲍威斯警告王说情况很严重，但王犹豫不决。一天下午，一伙人跑到他们的楼层，对着王猛刺几刀，鲍威斯则被刀点逼着，押到隔壁牢房。当他们跑开后，王跌进鲍威斯的臂弯，鲜血从脖子上喷涌而出。“约翰，帮帮我，”他说。鲍威斯竭尽全力总算把王背下几层楼，来到监狱医院，王死在那里。

During the murder investigation, Powers was moved to a protective custody unit. Shortly after his transfer, though, the face of an Aryan Brotherhood member appeared at the food slot of his door. “If you tell on my boys,” the man warned, “I’m going to chop your head off.” But Powers had a teenage son in Syracuse he wanted to reconnect with, so in exchange for what he believed would be a sentence reduction, he agreed to appear as a witness for the government. Three of the four Aryan Brotherhood members he testified against were convicted and received life sentences.
在谋杀案调查过程中，鲍威斯被转移到一间保护单元。不过，在他调换房间不久，一张雅利安兄弟会成员的脸就出现在他牢房的食物传递狭槽。“如果你供出我的孩子，”男人说，“我就砍掉你的头。”但鲍威斯在雪城有个十几岁的儿子，他想与之重新联系，因此，为了换取一个在他看来可能会减刑的机会，他同意为政府出面作证，他指证了四名雅利安兄弟会成员，其中三人被判终身监禁。

Powers had no history of mental illness before his incarceration. But after Wong’s murder, he began to display symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, which manifested in the form of panic attacks, near-constant anxiety and nightmares in which inmates with weapons cornered Powers in an isolated area of the prison. By 1999, he had not received his sentence reduction and had become convinced that the B.O.P. was planning on transferring him out of protective custody. So he decided to escape.
鲍威斯被监禁前没有精神病史，但在王被杀后，他开始显示出创伤后应激障碍症状，表现为担心遇袭、时常焦虑，梦见手持凶器的室友把自己逼进监狱的囚犯隔离区。到1999年，他还未收到减刑通知，越来越确信监狱管理局正在计划将他转移出保护区，于是他决定逃走。

He put a dummy in his bed, hid inside a grate in the rec yard and scaled the side of a building with a homemade grappling hook. From the rooftop, he jumped over a 16-foot electric fence, then climbed a second barbed-wire fence with FedEx boxes tape to his arms and legs. Once outside, he stole a car and headed to Syracuse to see his son.
他把一个假人放在床上，躲在放风院子里的炉子后面，利用自制抓钩爬到一座建筑旁边。在屋顶上，他跳过16英尺高的电网，然后把联邦快递的纸盒绑到胳膊和腿上，翻过第二道带刺铁丝网。一到外面，他就偷了一辆汽车，开往雪城看儿子。

When his son didn’t answer his phone, he tried to visit his half sister. (She wasn’t home, but when he spotted a neighbor struggling with a lawn mower, he cut her grass.) The police picked him up after two days. A reporter from The Syracuse Post-Standard interviewed Powers at the local jail and asked him whether he would do it again. The article reads as a lighthearted human-interest feature about a gentleman bandit, and Powers’s affirmative answer became the kicker. “Without life’s normal sensations and emotions and feelings,” Powers said, “what have you got?”
儿子不接他的电话，他尝试去看望同父异母的妹妹。（她不在家，但当他看到邻居费力地操控割草机，他便帮她割了草。）两天后警察将他缉捕归案。《雪城旗帜邮报》（The Syracuse Post-Standard）在当地监狱采访鲍威斯，问他是否会重操旧业。这篇文章像是一位绅士大盗的特写，读起来轻松愉快，颇具人文色彩，鲍威斯的肯定回答却在唱反调。“没了人生的正常感觉、情绪和感情，”鲍威斯说，“你还有什么？”

In October 2001, Powers, now considered a flight risk, was transferred to the ADX — where all three of the Aryan Brotherhood members Powers had testified against were serving their own sentences. Powers’s PTSD intensified. Tagged as a snitch and, more damaging, as an enemy of the Aryan Brotherhood, even unaffiliated prisoners avoided speaking to him. The guards, Powers said, treated him differently as well. If the whole unit is against a prisoner, he explained, “it’s like, the majority prevails. If they’re trying to be cool with the rest of these guys, then they can’t be cool with you.”
2001年10月，由于被认定存在越狱风险，鲍威斯被转到ADX——他曾指认的全部三名雅利安兄弟会成员都在这里服刑。鲍威斯的创伤后应激障碍恶化了。他被贴上告密者的标签，更具破坏性的是被视为雅利安兄弟会的敌人，甚至连不属于该组织的囚犯都避免跟他搭话。鲍威斯说，警卫也对他另眼相待。他解释说，如果整个监狱里的人都跟一个囚犯作对，“这就像是一边倒。如果说他们在试图冷静对待其他人，但是临到你这儿，他们就不会冷静。”

Over the next decade, Powers, by any rational accounting, lost his mind. He cut off both earlobes, chewed off a finger, sliced through his Achilles’ tendon, pushed staples into his face and forehead, swallowed a toothbrush and then tried to cut open his abdomen to retrieve it and injected what he considered “a pretty fair amount of bacteria-laden fluid” into his brain cavity after smashing a hole in his forehead. In 2005, after slicing open his scrotum and removing a testicle, Powers was sent to the medical center for federal prisoners in Springfield, Mo., for treatment, where a psychiatrist determined he was “not in need of inpatient psychiatric treatment or psychotropic medication” and that his behavior “was secondary to his antisocial disorder.”
在接下来的十年里，无论从任何理智的角度看，鲍威斯都疯了。他剪下两只耳垂，咬掉了一根手指，切开了自己的跟腱，把订书钉按进脸部和额头，吞下一只牙刷，在前额撞出一个洞，然后试图切开腹部，找出他所认为的“相当数量的细菌液”，并将其注入到脑腔。2005年，在鲍威斯切开自己的阴囊、取除睾丸后，他被送到位于密苏里州斯普林菲尔德联邦监狱医疗中心接受治疗，在那里一名精神病学家确定他“不需要住院接受精神科治疗，也无需服用精神药物”，他的行为“仅次于反社会障碍”。

In 2007, an inmate named Jose Vega was placed in the cell directly below Powers. Vega had come to the ADX after attacking an associate warden with a razor blade at another prison. He had received a diagnosis of depression, and because he was sick and disruptive — flinging feces and urine at the staff — the guards came to despise him, according to Powers. But he and Vega began talking through the drains of their sinks. (Prisoners in neighboring cells could communicate through the plumbing if they used toilet-paper rolls to blow the water from the U-shaped pipes, called sink traps, that ran beneath their basins.) For the first time in years, Powers had someone he considered a friend. They would chat about the prison, their families, legal issues. Vega had lost his television privilege, so Powers would place his own headphones near the sink drain and play music loud enough so that his friend could listen, too.
2007年，一位名叫何塞·维加（Jose Vega）的囚犯被安排住进鲍威斯下方的牢房。维加曾在另一个监狱用刀片攻击副监狱长，之后被关进ADX，被诊断为抑郁症，因为有生病和搞破坏——把粪便和尿液泼在工作人员身上——警卫都不待见他，鲍威斯如是说，但他们两人开始通过排水管交谈（相邻牢房的囚犯可以沟通，具体方法是使用卫生纸卷把水从洗脸池下方的U形存水弯管里吹出来）。多年来第一次，鲍威斯认识了一位可称为朋友的人。他们会聊聊监狱、彼此的家庭、法律问题。维加已经失去了看电视的特权，所以鲍威斯将自己的耳机贴近水槽排水口，大声播放音乐，以便让他的朋友也能听到。

At times, a guard would provoke Vega. He became convinced that staff members were sneaking into his cell at night and assaulting him. Powers knew that was impossible — the heavy cell doors could not be opened without Powers hearing — but he said that guards did withhold Vega’s mail and intentionally dropped his food on the floor. One guard told Vega that he might as well kill himself, because things weren’t going to get any better. “They started to break him,” Powers said. “Almost like you see with pro wrestlers, like a tag-team-type thing, where one of them passes it off to the next and to the next and to the next.”
有个警卫时不时招惹维加，维加确信监狱工作人员在夜间潜入他的牢房袭击他。鲍威斯知道那是不可能的——如果沉重的牢房门被打开，鲍威斯不可能听不到。但他说，警卫确实扣住了维加的信件，还故意把后者的食物掉在地上。一位警卫告诉维加，他也可以自杀，因为事情不会有什么转机。“他们开始做掉他，”鲍威斯说。“很像你看到职业摔跤选手，那种组队角力，其中一人将对手抛给下一个队友、下一个、再下一个。”

On the morning of May 1, 2010, Vega was found dead in his cell. He had hanged himself with a bedsheet. After Vega’s death, Powers shaved his head and began decorating his body with what he would describe as his “Avatar stripes,” a reference to the striped blue aliens in the James Cameron movie. Using a razor blade to make tiny cuts in his skin and then rubbing carbon-paper dust into the wounds, Powers tattooed spiky black slashes along his arms, legs, neck, skull, under his eyes and around his Adam’s apple. A photograph from 2011 presents an astounding transformation: The smirking, shaggy-haired young bank robber who entered the federal prison system in 1990 no longer existed, and the man who replaced him looked like something out of a nightmare.
2010年5月1日早上，维加被发现死在牢房里，他用床单把自己吊死了。维加死后，鲍威斯剃了头，开始用他所描述的“阿凡达条纹”装饰自己的身体，灵感来自詹姆斯·卡梅隆电影中蓝色外星人身上的条纹。他用刀片把皮肤划开一些小口，然后把复写纸屑抹在伤口上，鲍威斯身上布满了刺眼的长长纹身，沿着手臂、腿到脖子、头、眼睛下方，还有喉结周围，随处可见。2011年的一张照片显示出他在形象上的惊人变化：1990年进入联邦监狱系统的那个故作笑脸、头发蓬乱的年轻银行抢劫犯已不复存在，取而代之的是一个看上去刚刚走出噩梦的人。

According to Golden, prisons have a history of getting lawsuits mooted by simply transferring the litigious inmate to a different facility. In anticipation of such a maneuver, Golden and Aro assembled a broad platform of plaintiffs, unwieldy enough to make the transfer strategy impractical: The initial complaint featured six primary inmates, including Powers and Shelby, and 11 backups, demonstrating a range of illnesses, races and backgrounds. (The legal team also filed a suit on behalf of the family of Jose Vega seeking damages for abuse and wrongful death.)
据高登说，历史上监狱方面有一种对付诉讼的传统，就是简单地把涉案犯人转移到另一个监狱，使案件不了了之。因为预期这种情况还会重演，高登和阿罗组建了一个庞大的原告队伍，人员之众使移送策略变得不再可行：最初的投诉来自六名囚犯，包括鲍威斯和谢尔比，还有11个后备人选，疾病、种族和背景各异。（法律团队也代表何塞·维加的家人提起诉讼，罪名是虐待致残和意外死亡。）

In 2013, Aro and a U.S. attorney representing the B.O.P. spent two days questioning Powers in a filmed deposition (the source of much of the preceding account of his time at the ADX). The video frames Powers, dressed in the standard prison uniform, seated behind a table, his hands shackled. At one point, he tells a lawyer he can’t remember the last time he was in a room with so many people, probably years ago. He’s thoughtful and deliberate, obviously intelligent. Despite the litany of horrors he relates, you can almost understand how people might have judged him sane.
2013年，阿罗和监狱管理局的美国代表律师花了两天时间对鲍威斯进行质询，全程录像（后者在ADX的大部分经历由此为人所知）。视频中的鲍威斯身穿标准的囚服，坐在桌子后面，双手被铐住。有一次他告诉律师，已经记不清上次跟许多人待在一间屋子里是什么时候了，也许是几年前。他思维缜密、小心翼翼，显然聪明睿智。听着他叙述一桩桩可怕的往事，你基本可以理解人们为什么断定他神志清醒。

Matsch assigned a federal magistrate judge to oversee the potential settlement, and Aro and Golden presented the B.O.P. with a list of 27 points that needed to be addressed, including specific demands for diagnosis and treatment and an oversight board to ensure that these demands were met. (The lawsuit does not include any financial settlements.) After nearly a year of negotiations, Golden told me in January, “I think we’re very close to a settlement.” Aro, though also increasingly optimistic, told me this month that he still couldn’t predict whether there would be a settlement or a trial.
Matsch任命了一位联邦地方法官，对可能的和解加以监督。阿罗和高登向监狱管理局列出了27点需要解决的事项，包括诊断和治疗的具体要求，以及成立一个监督委员会，确保这些要求得到满足。（诉讼不包括任何财务和解项目。）经过近一年的谈判后，高登在今年一月告诉我，“我认为我们非常接近于达成和解。”阿罗虽然也越来越乐观，却在这个月对我说，他还不能预测是否会有和解或审判。

Simultaneous to the settlement negotiations, however, the B.O.P. unilaterally began effecting certain (though by no means all) of the requested changes at the ADX. New mental-health programming was added, additional psychologists were hired and a new unit for high-security mentally ill prisoners opened in Atlanta. As predicted, a number of the inmates named in the suit have been transferred out of the ADX — including Powers, who was sent to a high-security prison in Tucson last year.
不过，在和解谈判的同时，监狱管理局单方面变更了某些（虽然不是所有）要求，并开始在ADX实施。增加了新的精神卫生规划，额外聘请了几名心理学家，在亚特兰大新开设了一间分部，专门关押安全性很高的精神病犯人。根据之前的预测，诉讼中提及的一些囚犯已被移出ADX，包括鲍威斯，去年，他被送到了图森一间高度安全的监狱。

Powers couldn’t cope with the openness of the new facility. Aro believes the B.O.P. acted with good intentions, but it dismally failed to acclimate a man who spent much of the previous 13 years alone in a cell. Prisoners’ cell doors were left unlocked for much of the day, but Powers rarely ventured out into communal areas, and his mood turned ugly. After he struck a staff member during an argument, he was put in solitary. There, with a drill bit fashioned out of a battery, he managed to bore a hole through the top of his skull in an attempted trepanation.
鲍威斯无法适应新设施的开放环境。阿罗认为监狱管理局是好意，但可悲的是，对于一个过去13年来大多独自一人孤独度日的犯人来说，新习惯难以养成。在一天中的大部分时间，囚犯牢房的门都不上锁，但鲍威斯很少冒险进入公共领域，心情糟糕透顶。在一次与工作人员的争吵中他打了对方，之后便被单独关押。在单人牢房里，为了尝试环锯术，他拿着一把用电池改造而成的钻头，想方设法在颅骨上方钻了一个孔。

David Shelby, the ADX inmate who ate his finger, was also transferred to a medium-security facility, in Butner, N.C. He is six feet tall and 300 pounds, with thick-framed prison-issue glasses and a round, clean-shaven face. (At the ADX, he had an unruly beard, suggestive of a backwoods survivalist). Before he described a violent episode from his past when I visited him this fall, he paused and said, softly: “I hope I don’t make you feel uncomfortable, sir. I’m well-medicated now, so you’re perfectly safe.”
戴维·谢尔比（David Shelby），就是那个吃掉手指的ADX囚犯，也被转移到北卡罗来纳州巴特纳的一处安全设施。他有六英尺高，300磅，带着监狱发的厚框眼镜，圆圆的脸刮得干干净净。（在ADX，他的胡须散乱，貌似蛮荒地带的幸存者）。去年秋天我去看他，在讲述从前一起暴力事件前，他停了下来，轻轻地说：“我希望，我没有让你感到不舒服，先生。我现在按时吃药，所以你是绝对安全的。”