No Human Contact: Solitary Confinement, Maximum Security, and Two Inmates Who Changed the System

In 1983, Thomas Silverstein and Clayton Fountain, both serving life sentences at the U.S. Prison in Marion, Illinois, separately murdered two correction officers on the same day. The Bureau of Prisons condemned both men to the severest punishment that could legally be imposed, one created specifically for them. It was unofficially called "no human contact."



Each initially spent nine months in a mattress-sized cell where the lights burned twenty-four hours a day. They were clothed only in box...