Top 11 Highest Security Prisons In the World

If you ever commit a crime, try your best not to get sent to one of top 11 highest security prisons in the world. These are the places where society keeps its most vicious and irredeemable members, convicted of heinous crimes. Some governments around the world also used them to keep their political opponents out of the public eye and to prevent them from stirring troubles. Their population is too small to allow them a place on our list of biggest federal prisons in the US, but what they lack in numbers, these prisons more than enough make up in security features.

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The first penal codes in human history, like Hammurabi’s, didn’t envision prisons as a part of its system. Instead, the emphasis was on retribution. You steal an apple, the store owner gets to chop off your left hand. Steal again and you lose the right one as well.  If a poorly built house collapses and kills the owner’s son, builder’s son would be killed as punishment. But in any case, after the punishment was exacted, the criminal is released to continue with their life (sans hand or son, though). Nobody bothered with prisons and guards until Pluto, famous Greek philosopher suggested that instead of revenge, it may be prudent to try and reform criminals into useful members of society. Initially, prisons were used as a means to force people to pay their fine. Since the majority of prisoners couldn’t afford to pay them, they were kept in prisons indefinitely, creating a fiscal problem for the state of Athens, so time terms were introduced. Romans eagerly accepted the concept and, as with many other things they took from Greeks, improved it by creating first purpose-built prisons in history.

Today, the concept remains largely unchanged on the first glance. The highest security prisons in the world are using the technology we are used to seeing only in movies. However, some of them rely on old and proven methods, like chaining the prisoners to the wall or refusing to let them out of their cells for the duration of their sentence.  In some countries, the prevailing attitude is that going to jail equates to forfeiting civil rights, especially for political prisoners.