In early July, a new detention facility designed to house migrants awaiting deportation emerged in the Everglades, a swampy region of Florida: Alligator Alcatraz, as the U.S. media dubbed it because of its location in an alligator-infested area and its resemblance to the Alcatraz prison.
The stories emerging from inside the center show a complicated reality for the guests, and also for those who work there. According to several testimonies collected by major U.S. newspapers, the inmates live in extremely uncomfortable conditions, with inadequate toilets, scarce and insect-infested food, tents that regularly flood during frequent tropical storms, and artificial lights left on without interruption. In fact, the facility is not particularly adequate to deal with the region’s harsh climate and environment, an issue that had already been raised by several media outlets during the initial announcements.
Since two Italian nationals, Fernando Eduardo Artese and Gaetano Mirabella Costa, ended up among the detainees, Italy has also begun to pay attention to the detention center. Their stories shed light on the conditions under which thousands of people are detained, often for minor infractions or bureaucratic irregularities.
This is a concentration camp. They treat us like criminals in order to humiliate us. We are all workers and people looking after our families.
Fernando Eduardo Artese, detenuto italiano, al quotidiano Tampa Bay Times
The two Italians held at the facility represent two examples of the inmates of Alligator Alcatraz. The first, Artese, had been living in the United States for years and was leaving the country with his family when he was arrested for failing to show up for a hearing related to a traffic violation. Mirabella Costa, on the other hand, had just finished serving a sentence for common crimes and was held beyond the time limit for release due to a violation of immigration regulations. Both complain that they are being treated as criminals simply because they do not have proper papers.
Il governatore della Florida Ron DeSantis, la segretaria alla Sicurezza nazionale Kristi Noem e il Presidente Donald Trump visitano la struttura appena realizzata
In the wake of Alligator Alcatraz, other similarly harsh prisons emerge globally. Five of these prisons represent emblematic cases of overcrowding, violence, torture and systematic death.
1. La prigione di Sabaneta a Maracaibo, Venezuela
The Cárcel Nacional de Maracaibo, better known as Sabaneta, was built in 1958 to house about 700 inmates, but by about 2013 its population steadily exceeded 3,700, with severely overcrowded situations in which some guests slept on floors or in hammocks hanging in corridors. Control was in the hands of internal gangs, with the “pran” dictating food, water and living spaces, committing arbitrary violence. Sanitation conditions were poor, with very little access to medical care, drinking water and basic assistance, while prisons, especially men’s prisons, had very high rates of contagious diseases and severe untreated trauma.
On Jan. 3, 1994, Sabaneta was the scene of one of the worst prison massacres in Venezuela: a fire sparked during an internal gang riot claimed at least 108 lives, according to official sources, but several accounts suggest the death toll exceeded 150, many from asphyxiation or gunshot wounds, as authorities forced their way in to quell the mutiny.
Dei detenuti sul tetto della prigione di Sabaneta durante una protesta nel 2013
That tragic event uncovered the absence of external controls and the failure of the prison system, and was followed only years later by direct government intervention that led to the closure of the facility in 2013, with the promise of turning it into a prison memory museum.
2. Black Beach, Bioko, Guinea Equatoriale
Black Beach is a prison located in Malabo on Bioko Island, famous for its dark reputation since the Spanish colonial period. Built in the 1940s, it initially housed common inmates, but after independence and the establishment of Francisco Macías Nguema’s regime it became the main place where political opponents and those accused of treason were locked up. Over time it established a reputation as a prison of horror: fights between inmates, malnutrition, lack of medical care and systematic torture. Between arbitrary arrests, sham trials, and violence, for Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, conditions at Black Beach have been definable as a “hell on earth,” in which incarceration takes on not only a criminal but also an intimidating and political function.
Reports of abuses and arbitrary detention have also continued in recent years: for example, human rights lawyer Anacleto Micha Ndong was detained there prejudicially in 2023 after reporting his previous arrest, while cases of torture have been widely documented by NGOs and UN rapporteurs. The manner in which prisoners are treated – solitary confinement, beatings, forced labor, minimal amounts of food – have been repeatedly denounced as serious violations of international standards on the treatment of prisoners.
3. L’ADX Florence, in Colorado, USA
ADX Florence, known as the “Alcatraz of the Rockies,” is the only U.S. federal supermax penitentiary designed to isolate inmates described as “the worst of the worst.” Located in Colorado, the center houses about 490 men, all locked in individual concrete cells-often no larger than 2×3 meters-where they spend between 22 and 24 hours each day without any meaningful human interaction. The windows are small, the only common areas are tiny courtyards, and every movement is rigidly monitored by cameras and remote-controlled steel doors. The absence of activity, oppressive silence and total deprivation of social contact have led organizations such as Amnesty International and the UN to describe the facility’s regime as a form of “psychological torture.”
Over time, the treatment of mentally ill prisoners has become a source of strong criticism and even the subject of lawsuits. In 2012, a group of 11 prisoners filed a class action lawsuit against the Bureau of Prisons, alleging repeated abuse and failure to provide adequate mental health care. The suit ended in 2016 with a settlement that mandated more frequent medical screenings and the ability to administer psychotropic medications, as well as the transfer of seriously ill inmates to better-equipped facilities. Nevertheless, the facility continues to operate under an extreme punitive model, designed not to rehabilitate, but to contain and neutralize any perceived “threat,” regardless of the impact on inmates’ mental health.
4. Il carcere di Bang Kwang, in Thailandia
Bang Kwang Central Prison, known in the West as “Bangkok Hilton” and in Thailand as “Big Tiger,” stands in Nonthaburi province, north of Bangkok. Built in 1933, it houses about 6,000 inmates, including many foreigners and a large component of death row inmates-about 1,000, including women and men in dedicated sections. It is a land of forced labor, lack of sanitation and casual violence by guards, a symbol of brutal severity that contradicts appearances of order and legality. The cells, which are also overcrowded, measure only a few square meters and can hold dozens of people, who sleep on mats on the floors, sharing minimal toilets and tiny common spaces. Until 2013 all prisoners were kept chained to their feet three months, and for those sentenced to death these chains were welded on as a form of extreme punishment. Authorities have only recently partially abolished this practice as inmates have been released from prison, but the use of chains remains for the most dangerous individuals.
Il primo ministro Yingluck Shinawatra assiste alla cerimonia durante la quale sono state levate per l’ultima volta le catene a 560 detenuti, abolendo il ricorso sistemico alla pratica
In addition to overcrowding, Bang Kwang is infamous for detention conditions bordering on physical and psychological torture: poor medical care, insufficient nutrition, poor hygiene, and punitive abuse are reported by Amnesty International and the UN Committee Against Torture for all of Thailand. Foreign detainees, often without legal representation, depend on foreign funds to obtain a minimum of nourishment or a hygiene kit. Guards apply arbitrary punishment, and suspicions of torture are rife. In addition, prominent prisoners-such as those sentenced to death-are constantly monitored by so-called “death cameras,” implanted even in cells in capital sections
5. La prigione di Sednaya in Siria
Sednaya, known as the “human butchery” of the Syrian Assad regime, is located about 30 km north of Damascus and was run directly by the army. From 2011 to 2015, Amnesty International estimated that between 5,000 and 13,000 detainees had been summarily executed through overnight hangings, often carried out in groups of 20 to 50 people, in a facility where physical and psychological torture was practiced daily. The testimonies collected recount systematic beatings since the “welcome party,” use of salt chambers to store corpses, extreme isolation measures, and modes of torture that included electric shocks, corporal suspension, and sexual violence.
After the fall of the Assad regime, Sednaya was occupied by rebels on December 8, 2024, who freed thousands of prisoners, including women and children, and discovered underground detention facilities where some people had been buried alive. Al Jazeera called the site “an inferno,” with bodies still in crematoria and obvious signs of daily executions. International recognition of these atrocities has been reinforced by Amnesty and UN reports that place Sednaya among the worst modern prisons-a tragic symbol of political genocide and institutionalized horrors.
Bonus. Il 41-bis italiano
In Italy, not so much one particular prison stands out-although conditions, in recent years, have deteriorated dramatically in all prisons due to the well-known problem of overcrowding. But raising quite a lot of criticism, especially recently, is the 41-bis regime.
Introduced in 1986 and strengthened after the 1992 Mafia massacres, 41-bis is designed to sever ties between Mafia or terrorist inmates and their outside organizations. In theory, it is supposed to prevent criminal interference from inside the prison, but over time it has become synonymous with very severe restrictions and deprivations: limited contact, almost total isolation, and a ban on books and newspapers. As of April 29, 2025, as many as 742 inmates (1.19 percent of the prison population) were under this regime, often for extremely prolonged periods, as extensions-renewable every two years-are easily granted, even in the absence of concrete evidence of contact with crime.
In recent years, 41-bis has repeatedly ended up at the center of controversy and judicial pronouncements. The European Court of Human Rights condemned Italy in 2025 for maintaining a harsh prison sentence on an 80-year-old man with Alzheimer’s disease, finding the treatment “inhuman and degrading.” Most recently, the Constitutional Court declared unconstitutionally legitimate the limitation of outdoor stay to two hours per day, ruling that it was an excessive constraint compared to constitutional principles on the dignity and re-education of prisoners. Adding to these criticisms are cases such as that of Alfredo Cospito – an anarchist on hunger strike for months – and the harsh stances of NGOs such as Amnesty International, which call the regime a form of “psychological and collective” torture.
L’importanza delle carceri
The degree of civilization of a society is measured by its prisons
Fyodor Dostoevskij, L’Idiota (1869)
In the modern idea of justice, prison should be a tool to accompany offenders out of a condition of marginality, violence, and illegality. It is a vision that has its roots in the aftermath of World War II, and which the Italian Constitution, in Article 27, sums up limpidly: “Punishments cannot consist of treatment contrary to the sense of humanity and must aim at the re-education of the convicted person.”
This vision, although embraced by most of the world’s great democracies and their respective constitutions, clashes with reality: prisons are too often dirty, overcrowded, and violent. It is not always an easy balance to maintain, but it is precisely in the most difficult places that the practical resilience of democratic values is measured.
The article Alligator Alcatraz and the world’s toughest prisons comes from TheNewyorker.
