Is the Justice Department putting prisoners rights ahead of citizens security?
It wasn’t his murder of two pregnant women and their husbands that landed Rico Marzano in Maryland’s supermax prison, but his second escape attempt. Marzano, who avoided conviction on six rather than four first-degree murder counts only because the unborn children of his victims did not die outside the womb as a result of their injuries, made his second escape from a Maryland State Trooper’s squad car just hours after his conviction. But life on the lam was brief, and for just a few minutes of freedom, Marzano landed a stint in Maryland’s highest-security prison. Supermaximum-security prisons, or supermaxes, are the hottest trend in corrections today. Thirty states, the federal government and Canada all have supermaxes — one third of which have been created since 1991. As prisons of last resort — the end of the line in the corrections system for murderers and rapists who continue their violent behavior while on the inside — supermaxes are premised on isolation. They isolate “bad” pr
