u.n. special ruppert's war on torture slams the widespread use of solitary confinement for prolonged periods of time it's not the same to put somebody in solitary confinement for one day and to put him or her there for months it's common for those placed in solitary to be there for to. twenty three hours a day over the last two decades the number of supermax prisons in this country has grown to more than fifty david bossie director of the a.c.l.u.'s national prison project says the gloom was not a result of higher crime what happened in the mid one nine hundred ninety s. was there was really a wave of hysteria about super predators and predictions of a wave of fire alarm that never really materialized what did materialize hundreds of millions of dollars devoted to the business of building prisons if you look at how these places came to be built in many states it wasn't the corrections professionals it was the politicians politicians and presidents often have of hi this prison is owned by the corrections corporation of america got more than fifty prisons like this around the country and spend