A while back I was invited to tour a newly opened maximum-security prison. My host, an upper echelon officer of the state's Department of Corrections, drove me to the big gate at the multi-facility prison grounds. Along the way were a half-dozen subsequent checkpoints with mirrored, bulletproof windows that housed the vaguely-silhouetted guards who monitored dozens of cameras. At the huge, brick and concrete 'New Max', we walked among twenty-foot-high cyclone and barbed-wire walls topped with concertina wire. The building's massive iron door reminded me of a bank vault. The locks surrounding it clunked loudly before another motor opened that. Inside a final security chamber we stood momentarily while the warden signed a clipboard for one of the guards manning a control panel that looked like NASA ground control. In that moment I muttered to my friend, "Man, there must be some really bad people in here!" Looking straight ahead at the warden, he quietly returned, "Well, nobody's in here for traffic tickets .... But you know what's even more impressive to me when I look at all this?" I shrugged and shook my head. The thirty-five-year law enforcement veteran looked me straight in the eyes and said, "Most of the really bad ones are still running around loose on the outside. The folks in here were just slow or sloppy enough to get caught."

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