By C1 Staff
CLEVELAND, Ohio — After his escape last week from the Allen Correctional Institution, convicted school shooter T.J. Lane was transferred to the state’s most secure prison: the Ohio State Penitentiary.
Cleveland.com reports that the facility is known for housing many of Ohio’s most deviant and violent predators, including four gang leaders convicted in the Lucasville prison riot in 1993.
Nearly two out of every three inmates at the facility are gang members. Family visits and phone calls are monitored extremely closely, and many inmates leave their cells for only an hour a day.
Meals are shuttled to prisoners in their cells, instead of being served in a dining area. Inmates who are allowed to leave their cells are watched carefully by corrections officers, who strive to keep them moving and separated.
The prison is divided into two sections, one for super max inmates and one for maximum security. Lane will be held in the super max, where the cells are the size of a parking space. He is in a cell by himself, according to a spokesperson for the Ohio DORC, and cannot interact with other inmates. Corrections officers are closely monitoring his movements.
“The severity of his crimes and the threats that had been made against his life by other inmates led inmate Lane to be assigned the highest level security grade typically give to a first-time inmate,” the spokesperson said.
Lane spent most of his first 18 months in prison at the Lima facility, until his recent escape attempt. He pleaded guilty to killing three Chardon High School students in 2012, along with shooting and injuring three others.
He was sentenced to three life sentences without parole.
It’s unlikely that state prison officials will ever let Lane out of his closely supervised quarters, as he’s a target of other inmates due to his highly-publicized case.