Former New England Patriots NFL football player Aaron Hernandez, left, sits beside his lawyer Charles Rankin during his murder trial at Bristol County Superior Court, Tuesday, March 24, 2015, in Fall River, Mass. (AP Photo/The Boston Globe, Aram Boghosian, Pool)
(CNN) – Prison life won’t be pretty for Aaron Hernandez, the NFL football player and convicted murderer sentenced to life without parole.
After correction officers evaluate him, he will be shipped to Massachusetts’ flagship maximum-security prison, one of the most high-tech jails in the United States with no history of breakouts: the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley, about 40 miles outside downtown Boston.
It’s called Souza, for short, and it’s the state’s newest prison, opened in 1998, with a matrix of 366 cameras recording live 24 hours a day and a microwave detection perimeter with taut wire.
“I don’t know the date, but he’ll be going there. That’s the maximum-security facility,” Department of Corrections spokesman Darren Duarte said.
Legal advocates for inmates describe Souza as sterile and violent at once. Its diverse demographic includes the young and the old, many of whom are also doing life. One stubborn problem is that opiates are smuggled to inmates, the legal advocates said.
